"How All Occasions Do Inform Against Me"


From "Hamlet," Act 4, Scene 4, Line 32


How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

32. occasions, incidents, event. Inform against, generally defined as "show," "betray" (i.e., his tardiness)
39. fust, grow moldy
58. Excitements of, incentives to
61. trick, toy, trifle
62. plot, i.e, of ground

At this point in the play, Hamlet has confronted and killed Claudius and is ordered to go to England. On his way, he comes upon an army led by Fortinbras crossing Denmark on their way to Poland (described by the Captain as "a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name"). In this soliloquy, Hamlet reflects, comparing his inaction in the face of having "a father kill'd, a mother stain'd," while twenty thousand men are off to fight and die "fight for a plot."

It is the last of Hamlet's six soliloquies, and its importance lay in expressing the moment when he has decided to move from being a man of thought to a man of action ("O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!").

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