By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘How all occasions do inform against me’: so begins one of Hamlet’s most reasoned and level-headed soliloquies in Shakespeare’s play. The soliloquy comes relatively late in Hamlet, in Act IV scene 4, after Hamlet has been dispatched to England by Claudius (ostensibly on a diplomatic mission, but in reality Claudius has arranged for Hamlet to be killed en route). We have a full plot summary of Hamlet here.