SOURCE: "Hamlet's Fear of Death," in The University Review, Vol. 37, ào. 1, Autumn, 1970, pp. 11-19.

In the following essay, Hutton calls attention to Hamlet's last soliloquy in a discussion of Hamlet's changing attitude toward death.

The soliloquy that Hamlet pours forth in response to seeing Fortinbras and his army has suffered the twilight fate of a poor, unmarried, female relation: kept on because it is "there," but neglected as one of Shakespeare's expendable superfluities. Stage productions not only generally omit the soliloquy, as does the Folio text, but often go beyond the Folio in excising Fortinbras from the play altogether. And the cut, at least of the soliloquy, has seemed justified by the desperately needed saving of time at the expense of little that is new. For the soliloquy appears to be simply a delayed replay of the second soliloquy, where Hamlet berates his inaction, raises the issues of...