Question

: Reread Act 1.2, lines 136–138, in which Hamlet says “O God, God, / How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world,” and examine how this statement is further developed in Act 3.1, lines 64–84 (from “To be or not to be – that is the question” to “might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin”).

Answer 1

In the lines 136-138 of Act 1.2, Hamlet seems to struggle to find meaning or pleasure in his life and in the world. In the lines 64-84 of Act 3.1, he digress about the reasons that make the man to stand and take all the pain and misery of life. It is because of the unknown of death. If a man would be sure that after death there were nothing, nothing at all, and not somehow the continuation of life or something similar to it, a man would put an end to it with a bare bodkin (a dagger)