With respect I think you have said literally nothing in all that. Get specific. If you think 2B is a soliloquy, what does he say that so desperately needs a special channel of communication to the audience and requires us to imagine the Ophelia can’t hear him despite being literally in his way and the spies can’t hear him despite having located themselves precisely in order to do so? Do you not think it’s possible that our failure to pin down what he says is related to our assumption that it’s a soliloquy?

Both words are of Proto-Germanic origin, and Proto-Celt along with Proto-Germanic are considered to be of Indo-European in origin. Which is different than being Latin in origin. I would assume that perhaps they made an error in mentioning they were Celtic in origin instead of Germanic.

With respect, Shakespeare, while complex, is not inscrutable. The idea that nobody knows what this means, and we can’t know what this means – is perhaps not the best way to read Shakespeare, or anything else for that matter. Shakespeare wrote plays that were meant to be seen, experienced, understood and thought deeply about. That every generation since has done this, is why he is loved, and is why he is believed to be the best to ever put pen to paper.

It seems to me that the original author might benefit from another possibility. Namely, that the question for Hamlet is not just contemplating his own life, but whether or not to directly avenge the murder of his father. To be, or not to be, is, “to avenge” or “not to avenge” which Hamlet (perhaps mistakenly) conflates with his life and existence.

If that holds, he feels that if he does not act, then his life and existence are meaningless. Everything, for Hamlet, has reduced to this moment and this singular choice.

In this mindset, the choice becomes framed as a choice to live or not live, because that is how deeply he feels compelled to act. You could argue that he is rationalizing revenge to be an act that his very life and meaningful existence depend on. When put that way, it’s not a choice at all. He must be. He must act.

The problem is, that this isn’t true. He isn’t faced with a real binary choice in this way. He has options. Hamlet could forgive. He could walk away and forge another life in exile. He could build evidence and try to make a case for private, or even public support against the king. He could raise an army and stage a coup. He could live quietly and wait out the king’s eventual mortality. There are lots of other possibilities that could be framed.

Now, those may seem like feckless choices in the face of great injustice. But imagine what would happen to society if everyone made Hamlet’s choice in every situation. If we, took the direct handling of revenge, even arguably just revenge, into our own hands – it is Hatfield and McCoys forever, with blood in our homes and in our streets. It never stops. I would argue that history clearly teaches us that revenge almost always spills outside or our control and ends up hurting people that weren’t initially involved. Hamlet made the wrong choice and it destroyed him, his family and a lot of innocent people.

Shakespeare is brilliant and complex, and my goodness can he write the most trivial detail in the most beautiful and compelling way. But on another level, he is super simple in terms of bigger picture understanding. The question to help us understand Shakespeare (especially in the tragedies) is this: read the basic events like a child would; namely what is the result of the choices made?

Macbeth – a lot of death and chaos. Is that good or bad? Bad. It may be that Shakespeare’s larger message is that MacBeth and Lady MacBeth made wrong choices in handling ambition.
Romeo and Juliet – double suicide by teen / pre-teen couple over a misunderstanding. Wrong choices in handling personal romance.
Hamlet – literally everyone but a single survivor dies. Wrong choices in handling revenge and societal injustice.

The “to be or not to be” monologue is showing us how Hamlet goads his own thinking into unalterable action and shows us the setting of his will onto a path that will be incredibly destructive.

Our author here, would set this up as a choice to commit suicide (not to be), or not, and the right answer would necessarily be to live (to be). The problem is, this doesn’t fit with the play, or the outcome of the play. Hamlet is not choosing to refuse suicide in a narrative vacuum. Hamlet choosing to live, also results in the death of a lot of other people. In the narrative, his choosing to live is tightly tied to the execution of his revenge. And he dies anyway.

I suppose you could make the argument that Hamlet was justified in his decision for revenge, but it went badly, because life is messy. I would argue that while life is messy, Shakespeare is not, and his clarity of vision and expression are fraught with intentionality.

And that his insight, when apprehended, leads us to see the ripple of truth and the wisdom of his subject in the real world as well, in ways which are useful and virtuous when rightly understood.

My read would be that the right answer, according to Shakespeare, is to “not be”, leaving direct vengeance to God while pursuing justice as best we can through other means.

I agree with these comments. I am not satisfied with either the analysis of the writer nor with the later comment that Hamlet is a weak ‘cry baby’ It is a reflective speech not one seeking a decision. He is not choosing, he is considering the inherent options, and we can generally agree with them, although in these more secular days it is the obliteration of life and subsequent oblivion that stays our hand at self-slaughter rather than some post mortem reality. An although it is legitimate to infuse a Christian flavour to Shakespeare’s use of the word ‘conscience’, I dont choose to see the use of that word as implying ‘sin’, more an attempt to avoid making an ill informed and incorrect decision, which in fact is the inherent problem Hamlet faces throughout the play. Is his uncle really guilty, is the spirit of his father benign or demonic, and all the other questions he is constantly asking. From the writer’s point of view, these questions are the tactics he chooses to use to delay the outcome. Hamlet after all is a revenge tragedy, and must needs therefore delay the resolution of the problem posed by his father’s death. Those, like one of the above commentators, who see the whole play as a series of vacillations, are also people I am sure who have never had to kill a member of their own family to avenge the murder of another.