To be, or not to be, that is the question, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?
To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd. You can also view a contemporary English translation of the speech here. In this scene, often called the "nunnery scene," Prince Hamlet thinks about life, death, and suicide.
Specifically, he wonders whether it might be preferable to commit suicide to end one's suffering and to leave behind the pain and agony associated with living. The first line and the most famous of the soliloquy raises the overarching question of the speech: "To be, or not to be," that is, "To live, or to die. Interestingly, Hamlet poses this as a question for all of humanity rather than for only himself.
However, he quickly changes his tune when he considers that nobody knows for sure what happens after death , namely whether there is an afterlife and whether this afterlife might be even worse than life. This realization is what ultimately gives Hamlet and others, he reasons "pause" when it comes to taking action i. In this sense, humans are so fearful of what comes after death and the possibility that it might be more miserable than life that they including Hamlet are rendered immobile.
Title page of Hamlet , printing. Shakespeare wrote more than three dozen plays in his lifetime, including what is perhaps his most iconic, Hamlet. But where did the inspiration for this tragic, vengeful, melancholy play come from?
Although nothing has been verified, rumors abound. Others believe Shakespeare was inspired to explore graver, darker themes in his works due to the passing of his own father in , the same year he wrote Hamlet. This theory seems possible, considering that many of the plays Shakespeare wrote after Hamlet , such as Macbeth and Othello , adopted similarly dark themes.
Finally, some have suggested that Shakespeare was inspired to write Hamlet by the tensions that cropped up during the English Reformation , which raised questions as to whether the Catholics or Protestants held more "legitimate" beliefs interestingly, Shakespeare intertwines both religions in the play. There are no clear answers to any of these questions, and he knows this.
Hamlet is struck by indecisiveness, leading him to straddle the line between action and inaction. It is this general feeling of doubt that also plagues his fears of the afterlife, which Hamlet speaks on at length in his "To be or not to be" soliloquy. As the opening line tells us, "To be or not to be" revolves around complex notions of life and death and the afterlife. Up until this point in the play, Hamlet has continued to debate with himself whether he should kill Claudius to avenge his father.
He also wonders whether it might be preferable to kill himself — this would allow him to escape his own "sea of troubles" and the "slings and arrows" of life. But like so many others, Hamlet fears the uncertainty dying brings and is tormented by the possibility of ending up in Hell —a place even more miserable than life. He is heavily plagued by this realization that the only way to find out if death is better than life is to go ahead and end it, a permanent decision one cannot take back.
Despite Hamlet's attempts to logically understand the world and death, there are some things he will simply never know until he himself dies, further fueling his ambivalence.
The entirety of Hamlet can be said to revolve around the theme of madness and whether Hamlet has been feigning madness or has truly gone mad or both. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality.
He wonders if he would be more noble if he took his own life and end his sorrows than if he continued to endure him. This question shows the pain and grief that Hamlet has experienced since the death of his father.
According to Ophelia, later in Act 3 Scene 1, she reveals that Hamlet was once the obvious successor to the throne since he was charismatic and admired by the people. Clearly, in this part of the play, he is suicidal, and he is uncertain about many of the big decisions in his life. Is his feigned madness transforming into true insanity? However, his comparison to death and sleep suggests that Hamlet is in a state of reflection and learning.
Just as no one knows what dreams they will experience when they lay in bed, no knows what they will experience when their body is finally laid in a grave. Furthermore, Hamlet seems to b Furthermore, he is frustrated by the fact he cannot end his suffering because suicide is a mortal sin.
Hamlet is irked by the inadequateness of humans about their knowledge of the afterlife. He is equally angered by the fact he was assigned the task to kill Claudius. At this point in the play, Hamlet does not possess the willpower and strength to carry out such a questionable and immoral act. He feels as if the relationship is one-sided, and he has lost another important part of his life.
This famous soliloquy offers a dark and deep contemplation of the nature of life and death. Get Access. Good Essays. To Be or Not to Be. Read More. Best Essays. Satisfactory Essays. This staging speaks to the troubles as written by Shakespeare and had great emotional and visceral impact. Similar to the first staging, I can see a full production of this sort of Hamlet. He did the job of a playwright well, creating the skeleton of his plays. It falls to us to give that skeleton a heart, a soul, and scars.
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Seems legit. May 12, am. Shakespeare Magazine Your source for the bard. Leave a Comment. Follow Shakespeare Magazine. Latest Issue. Recent Posts In a ground-breaking new book, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare, Professor Paul Edmondson and Professor Sir Stanley Wells aim to redefine the way in which we think about the poems — and provide us with a renewed insight into the man himself. Quite a lot, actually, when it comes to the key characters of Hamlet.
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