SOURCE: Bowers, Fredson. “Hamlet's Fifth Soliloquy, 3.2.406-17.” In Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, edited by Richard Hosley, pp. 213-22. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1962.

In the following essay, Bowers connects Hamlet's “'Tis now the witching hour of night” soliloquy (III.ii) with the prince's conduct in the closet scene (III.iv). The critic contends that in the second part of this speech Shakespeare purposely directed the audience to interpret Hamlet's subsequent confrontation with Gertrude not as a murderous assault on her but an attempt to convince her that she must repent her incestuous marriage to Claudius.

Of the soliloquies in Hamlet, the twelve lines at the end of 3.2 beginning “'Tis now the very witching time of night” seem, on the surface, to be the least interesting. In this brief fifth soliloquy no ‘philosophy’ is being propounded, no consideration of the world and...