ENG4U1 Hamlet Unit Test Sample Answer
Passage Analysis Sample: “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” soliloquy
Speaker: Hamlet
Spoken to: Himself in the form of a soliloquy
Significance to the Play:
This poignant soliloquy is extremely significant to the play, Hamlet, in terms of
both character development and plot advancement. Hamlet delivers this soliloquy in
Act 2, scene 2, in response to the First Player’s moving speech about King Priam’s
slaughter and his wife, Hecuba’s, resulting grief. Throughout the entirety of this passage,
Hamlet berates himself for his lack of action and his unsuitable emotional response now
that two months have passed since his father’s ghost prompted him to his revenge (in
Act 1, scene 5), and therefore, he repeatedly likens himself to a cowardly and dullspirited servant because he has done nothing to fulfill his promise to the ghost. Hamlet
ashamedly compares himself to the First Player, who is able to successfully act out his
feigned grief more convincingly and passionately than Hamlet is able to execute his
own real reason for revenge saying, “Yet I,/A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,/Like
John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,/And can say nothing; no, not for a king,/
Upon whose property and most dear life/A damn’d defeat was made” (2.2.562-567).
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This moment develops Hamlet’s character further as it demonstrates his own selfloathing, and his own recognition that he is not behaving in a way that befits his
princely status or that proves the deep love and loyalty that he still possesses for his late
father, King Hamlet Sr. Hamlet hates himself for his inaction, and he refers to himself as
nothing more than a dreamer without a concrete plan for revenge, as well as
questioning his own ability to be brave. In this soliloquy, Hamlet continues to struggle
against his own tendency to over-think things, and yet, he also continues to question
the human condition and his own cowardice. Next, this soliloquy is very important to the
plot advancement of the play, because Hamlet proves in this passage that he is so
sickened by his failure to act that he will devise a crafty plan to verify the guilt of King
Claudius before he is willing to actually kill him. This is part of the play’s rising action.
Some critics find Hamlet’s plan ironic because although Hamlet seems to have
convinced himself by the end of this soliloquy that he is beginning to act, he is actually
finding another elaborate way to delay his actual revenge. Hamlet’s plan is to have the
acting troupe who have recently arrived in Denmark to put on an edited version of the
play, The Murder of Gonzago, for King Claudius (and the rest of the royal court) that reenacts the murder of a king, similar to how King Hamlet Sr. claims to have been
murdered by his villainous brother while he slept in his garden. Hamlet says the
memorable line, “the play ‘s the thing/wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king!”
(2.2.602-603). This plan will lead to the climax of the play in Act 3 when Claudius is
successfully caught by Hamlet’s “mousetrap”. While some critics may interpret this final
line as another cause for Hamlet’s frustrating delay, other academics view this as a
thoughtful precaution that Hamlet must take if he truly cares about the state of his own
conscience and morality.
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