That which we call 'the conscious self', and regard as the heart of our individual identity, is, if you think about it, little more than the surface of an ocean- specifically, the subconscious. We constantly find ourselves barraged by irrational impulses and emotions, which we then try to suppress, only to find them popping up in our dreams or, worse, in times of distress. This conflict is dramatized in Irish myth in a story where the hero Chulain, overcome by a battle rage, does battle with the sea. And, of course, it pops up in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

In his first soliloquy in Act I, scene ii, Hamlet starts off by wishing that his "too, too sullied flesh would melt", effectively liberating his soul from the physical realm (he later imagines this flesh as a "mortal coil" of skin imprisoning the soul in Act III, scene i). This, and the next few lines, all inhabit a more intellectual plane of abstract philosophy, the kind that Hamlet would have studied at Wittenberg, which he had to leave to attend his father's funeral.

However, near the middle of his speech, as he grows more emotionally agitated, this intellectual tone breaks down as he starts to think about his mother's speedy marriage to his uncle. Although he tries to stop himself ("Let me not think on't!"), he still finds his intellect unraveling, frequently interrupting himself with bromides against his mother, like when he goes from referencing the Greek myth of Niobe to call her worse than "a beast, that wants discourse of reason". This unwitting descent culminates with Hamlet mentally traveling directly into his mother's soiled bed sheets ("O, most wicked speed, to post/With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!"). When Hamlet ends his soliloquy by saying that "It is not, nor it cannot come to good", he may be referencing this descent into his subconscious as much as his mother's marriage.

Not only is this soliloquy our main introduction to Prince Hamlet of Denmark, it is also one of the first moments in literature where a character succumbs so heavily to the random impulses of their subconscious, as most previous works didn't allow for such tangents. And if this can happen to as intellectual a character as Hamlet, what chance do we have to resist it?