By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?’ So begins one of the most famous soliloquies in Shakespeare’s Macbeth – indeed, perhaps in all of Shakespeare. Before we offer an analysis of this scene – and summarise the meaning […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’: so exclaims Hamlet in one of his more despairing soliloquies in Shakespeare’s play. But what prompts him to exclaim ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’ and what does he say in this important speech […]
‘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 […]