A rebel without a clue.

(Submitted in an alternate reality to Richard Pryor, BA Hons. Third Year, 1995)... The traditional academic view of Shakespeare’s Hamlet posits it as the pinnacle of existential human inquiry, a text that masterfully delineates the agony of a consciousness grappling with the fundamental questions of existence. The soliloquy, "To be or not to be," is universally lauded as the ultimate expression of the human mind’s capacity for self-reflection and tragic indecision. This paper, however, posits that such a reading is fundamentally flawed, as it remains confined within a Cartesian dualism that Hamlet, and indeed much of the Elizabethan canon, ultimately fails to transcend. Rather than a testament to the heights of human thought, Hamlet’s struggle is a profound, albeit brilliant, portrait of the Ego's weakness—a philosophical cul-de-sac from which a truly awakened consciousness must necessarily depart. The tragedy of Hamlet is not his indecision but his unwavering belief in a...