SOURCE: Orange, Linwood E. “Hamlet's Mad Soliloquy.” South Atlantic Quarterly 64, no. 1 (winter 1965): 60-71.

In the following essay, Orange asserts that as Hamlet is delivering his “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (III.i) he is fully aware of Ophelia's presence and suspects that Claudius and Polonius, though not visible onstage, can hear his words. Thus the speech is not an introspective reflection, the critic argues, but a calculated strategy to deceive his enemies into believing that he is so mentally distracted that he is considering killing himself.

To the two major groups into which nearly all Hamlet critics inevitably fall, the “to be” soliloquy is of crucial importance.¹ The Romantic critics and the enormous number of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers who hold that Hamlet's delay is occasioned not by external circumstances but by some innate personal weakness have found strong support in this introspective consideration of...