Soliloquies
“Soliloquy. An actor’s address to the audience, a prolonged ‘aside’; the soliloquy
reveals character... The tragic soliloquy is generally confined to the
introspective characters: to Brutus, Hamlet, Macbeth.”
'A Shakespeare Companion' by F.E. Halliday by Penguin Shakespeare Library
(1964)
There are moments when characters, in theory, tell us the truth. When they confide in the audience or
allow the audience to know their innermost thoughts. There’s always a challenge particularly on film about
whether you talk directly to the audience or whether they overhear, or, you allow them to overhear.
Essentially it’s for you’ but there are moments of revelation and of real truth as opposed to what a
character might have been dissembling in a scene up to that point.” Kenneth Branagh
One of the key points about the soliloquies in any Shakespeare play, as Branagh indicates, is that we, the
audience, are being presented with information from one viewpoint. Whilst they seem to be a monologue,
they are, in fact, a dialogue between the character and the audience. The audience, in the case of’ the play
itself is the character himself. However, in a film we, the audience, take that part of the audience. If they
are character revealing then we should look very carefully at all of’ Hamlet’s soliloquies, as of all of
Shakespeare’s characters he soliloquizes the most. What do they reveal about Hamlet? Do they show a
change in character as the play progresses?
Adapting Hamlet
“In the filming of ‘Hamlet’, we tried with most of the soliloquies, not necessarily consciously, but it
worked out that way, to let the soliloquy probably play in one take, in one shot, in one sustained shot. It
was, I thought, to make it a little easier for the audience to understand if’ the actor, from line to line, was,
in the theatre. You know, following one thought into the other. Sometimes, these are quite complicated
thoughts, quite complicated sentences. Sometimes I was concerned that cutting also cuts the sense of it as
well. Also, and particularly in ‘Hamlet’, these soliloquies are difficult to bring off and even if people aren’t
that familiar with the play, there’s something about the soliloquies that seems familiar. In any case you’re
expecting ‘Hamlet’ to talk on his own. So there’s an expectation brought to it that means you have to give
the actor the best chance you can of explaining it. I often find that it’s through having a run at it rather
than doing it in bits that you can really maintain the overall sense of what Hamlet’s saying.” Kenneth
Branagh
Take Hamlet’s first soliloquy “Oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt,” (Act I Scene ii). Where,
within a soliloquy, would he have introduced the various cuts?
Almereyda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOPMrdJepYM
Branagh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOPMrdJepYM
Zeffirelli: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTHwCmPz9j4&feature=related
Read the speech carefully and then decide where any natural breaks occur.
1. Is this where you would edit to another shot?
2. Are there any other moments where you feel that you could edit and still retain the overall
meaning of the soliloquy?
3. What would you actually show in each shot?
4. When would you use a close-up shot?
5. When would you use a long shot? Bear in mind that close-ups are usually used at a crucial moment
in the action so you need to consider carefully which the key moments of the soliloquy are.
Act 1 scene 2
HAMLET (soliloquy)
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
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As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
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Act 1 scene 2
KING CLAUDIUS (to Hamlet)
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd: whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Act 1 scene 2
HAMLET (soliloquy)
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
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Act 1 scene 3
LAERTES
Think it no more;
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and health of this whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
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Act 1 scene 3
LORD POLONIUS (to Laertes)
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
Act 1 scene 3
LORD POLONIUS (to Ophelia)
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment leisure,
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.