Hamlet: A Penny for Your Thoughts (Play Analysis)

The act of thinking in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, serves as a powerful role in the evolution of the characters, the play itself, and can be connected to the outside world. In Act 2, Scene 2, Hamlet announces, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (2.2.268-70). Thinking can be tied into the morality of the characters, influence their decisions, and act as a damper on their potential. While some characters overthink and waste time that could bring about positive action, others tend to speak, and act before they think- whether this be a force of good for them or not. Hamlet himself is a deep, philosophical thinker who struggles with decision-making; his ideas about the soul and its connection to self, the afterlife, and how thinking itself affects him, are shown throughout this tragedy.

Thinking is portrayed in Hamlet as an important asset, but also a force of resistance. Education and higher thinking are well admired and encouraged, but those who think too much can find themselves yearning for a quieter mind. In Hamlet, those who spend considerable amounts of time in their own minds, or express their thoughts in ways that are uncommon, are considered “mad.” Ophelia sings in riddles and popular tunes, while inside her mind, grief-stricken and heartbroken, she really could be going mad. “He is dead and gone, lady, / he is dead and gone; / at his head a grass-green turf, / at his heels a stone” (4.5.34-37). Here we don’t know what she is thinking–all we know is that she isn’t making sense, and she isn’t in her right mind. The only time we know for sure what someone is thinking is during a speech, or when they are speaking to themselves.

How Hamlet thinks is complex and in-depth. His thoughts can get the best of him, hold him back, and even scare him and the others around him. He is a tortured young man- in his mind, and in his life. He often contemplates suicide and death in general, making for a dark take on life and his own life even darker. “O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst [self-slaughter!] O God, God, how [weary,] stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world” (1.2.133-)! In this deeply sorrowful speech he begins to admit how miserable in his mind, body, and grief over his father he is. Though this part of Hamlet is not obviously a constant or forefront throughout the play, it is clear that his pain never really goes away. In Hamlet’s possibly most famous soliloquy, he says, “to be or not to be—that is the question: Whether 'tis 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” (3.1.64-68). When Hamlet’s suicidal thoughts come to light every now and then, to the audience, it is evident that he could be on the edge of losing his battle.  

Thinking is a force of good for Hamlet in the beginning of the play. He contemplates ending his own life, but after overthinking and scaring himself enough with his own thoughts, he comes to a conclusion as he succumbs to the fear: “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought… with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action” (3.1.91-96). Though this moment of “cowardice” forces Hamlet to step away from ending his life, his thinking does not always do what is best for him. For example, he had the chance to kill his uncle, King Claudius, but decided against it when he saw that he was praying; If Hamlet killed Claudius while he prayed, Claudius would go to heaven. “And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven, and so I am [revenged.] that would be scanned: A villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven” (3.3.78-83). After Hamlet decides against the murder, we see that Claudius wasn’t able to pray and Hamlet could have killed him then, preventing the slaughter at the end of the play. Hamlet couldn’t make a decision to save his life.

Hamlet’s thoughts about the soul, its connection to self, and ideas about the afterlife, are each shown through different parts of the play. In Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet says that he believes in a soul. “When we have shuffled off this mortal coil” (3.1.75). In this passage, the “mortal coil” represents the human body that the soul wraps itself around. “Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will and makes us bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of” (3.1.84-90). Here he is afraid of what will happen to his soul when he dies, but eventually he comes to terms with his fate: “Not a whit, we defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is 't to leave betimes? Let be” (5.2.233-238). Here we see Hamlet accepting death, however it comes, rather than spending any more time thinking about his mortality. The evolution of the way Hamlet thinks makes him a more likeable character in the end, but we don’t get to see how much farther he could have gone. 

And as Hamlet dies, he finally gets the release he wanted his whole life. “The rest is silence” (5.2.395). His pain subdues, his grief washes away, his mind is quiet. His torture relents, his eyes close, and he can relinquish the burden of thought. Hamlet shows us time and time again through the play how his mind had trapped him in many ways. His thoughts were bloody and vengeful. Hamlet is an example of characters’ morality, discovering conscience, its limits, and the severity of the hindrance that having a mind can cause.