“For who would bear the whips and scorns of time”

“SCORN”
noun
1.
“a feeling and expression of contempt or disdain for someone or something.”

This phrase is extracted from Hamlet’s soliloquy in the play Hamlet by Shakespeare and the definition from an online dictionary.

Whips are a form of torture and are weapons that don’t need much force to have a big impact. By using this word I think that Shakespeare is trying to show that life causes torture without effort and that the pain is not bearable. Whips were also an old fashioned form of discipline which Shakespeare also uses to imply that life disciplines us and we sometimes can’t take it. Within the play I think that the situation that Hamlet is in, causes him to question whether he should take and withstand the blows and the disciplines from his life or just end it all with one simple action.

Scorn is a feature to describe a human action which shows that Shakespeare is personifying Hamlet’s situation and makes it look like a deliberate act of Evil.

This phrase is a metaphor to describe Hamlet’s dilemma as a person rather than a thing.

Another metaphor similar to the previous one that Shakespeare uses in the play is when Hamlet is delivering his soliloquy.

“Or to take arms against a sea of troubles”

This to me means that Shakespeare is referring to life as a journey on sea that sometimes gives is storms and huge waves and to overcome it, we need to take arms and stand firm. This metaphor also implies that in the play, that Hamlet wants help and he wants to tell someone else about his dilemma but he can’t and he is now in a sea of troubles with endless waves of problems that he has to face on his own which will steal him away with it. In the play Shakespeare uses this metaphor to show Hamlet’s situation as him being in the middle of the sea with no help around him leaving him to face it all on his own.