"To be or not...?

Question

Hamlet's sililoquy has been considered to have deep roots in an Oedipus complex - the really desire to have sex with his mother. Is this true?

Answer 1

The Oedipal parts of the play are much more obvious in Act III, scene IV, with Hamlet in his mother's bedroom. His language with her is frankly sexual:

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,--

The rest of the Freudian analysis is built on that scene. Hamlet wants kill Claudius; it must be the Oedipal urge to kill the father figure (so that he can have his mother to himself).

Hamlet constantly wears black wants to kill himself, as in the "To be..." speech; it must be depression brought on by his unresolved Oedipal conflicts.

To my mind it gets even more reaching from there. Freudian psychology has been heavily discredited (or at least radically amended) among psychiatrists, but among the English major types it's still taken as gospel.

Hamlet was clearly attached to his father, perhaps overly attached. Gertrude says in Act I scene I that his father has been dead a long time and it's time to cast off the mourning clothes. I'm not convinced that she's right; I read the scene to suggest that it hasn't actually been all that long since the death of Hamlet's father. Even so, attachment to his actual father isn't Oedipal; if anything it's evidence to the contrary.

It's certainly possible to read that famous speech in the light of an Oedipus complex. Lord knows that having done this play for 400 years we're always looking for new takes on it, and incest is nothing if not interesting. But I find it easier to read the Gertrude scene in the more literal terms: he's angry that his mother married his father's murderer (and in doing so passed up his chance at the throne).

At this point to shout "Freud" at the play is very 20th-century and it's time to find a 21st-century view of it.

Answer 2

The Oedipus complex is about a son wanting to replace his father. Hamlet is about a father's ghost wanting his son to replace him, but Hamlet just wanted to go back to Wittenberg. "To be or not to be" is related to an earlier line by Bernardo, speaking of the ghost: "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars." Hamlet's internal struggle is whether "TO BE OR NOT TO BE ...so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars." For more detail see my essay at http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Motifs_in_Hamlet

Answer 3

Sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me...but I'll bet someone, somewhere, earned a PhD. by expounding on the topic.

I'd like for somebody to direct my attention to the PRECISE line or lines in the soliloquy that could possibly support such an interpretation.

This sounds like the sort of stuff that literature professors find endlessly fascinating...and which drives theatre practitioners up the wall.

Answer 4

Forgive me this, but I had to.

In my experience I suspect ANYTHING can be equated with sexual inuendo and perversions, but why bother?

I happen to have a T shirt with that quote imprinted on it, but the main image is an Ape, posed like Rodins "Thinker" smiles.

It relates to me that the Ape is "thinking" and wondering if evolving to OUR species is in fact a valid choice.

In the era in which "Willie" operated and created, nearly everything was suppressed, or at least still subtly suggested, as the medevil MORES hadn't quite dissolved to the point of global, public acceptance.

Steven Wolf

Answer 5

yes, because in history, during the ancient times, it is ramphant

Answer 6

sheer perversion

Answer 7

to be or not to be a pervert?