Hamlet

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report back to Claudius and Gertrude, describing Hamlet’s strange behavior; Polonius confirms their report. Claudius has sent for Hamlet, intending to hide with Polonius and watch as Hamlet meets with Ophelia. Everyone else leaves, and Polonius instructs Ophelia to pretend to read a prayer book. He notes that it is sadly common for people to use prayers and devotions deceptively, covering up the evil inside them. In an aside, Claudius says that he knows this truth all too well: He is eaten up by his guilt. As Hamlet appears, Polonius and Claudius hide.

Hamlet enters thinking aloud: He is considering suicide: “To be, or not to be—that is the question” (3.1.56). Is it braver, he wonders, to struggle against life’s troubles, or to fight them by refusing to live? The sleep of death would end his pain, but, then, that’s not altogether sure: “In that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil / Must give us pause” (3.1.66-68). If the afterlife was not so uncertain, Hamlet wonders, no one would go through the agonies of life. It is the fear of the unknown that makes it difficult to act: “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” (3.