Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/55

Rh to his father's throne. And then what, let us ask. To be a king and live a life of such memories! Such insights!

When there is no remedy for a state of affairs, what can a man ask but to forget it all?

We cannot too tacitly fix upon our minds that in this part of the soliloquy Hamlet is wholly concerned, not with any dread of dying, but with the question as to whether memory persists after death. This is important to our understanding of the play inasmuch as it affects his course of action and shows his trend of thought.

It is next important for us to gather the exact meaning of those lines:—

Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them.

There is here no thought or intention of setting to work to straighten out mere affairs at court. A man cannot take a dagger to the shallowness of mother, sweetheart and friend; he cannot kill the crime of his father's brother by simply killing the man. The memory and the facts are left; and life to him must consist of that painful insight and knowledge of the world. Shakespeare here speaks of ending troubles immediately and at once by merely taking arms against them. This means simply