Poem

Soliloquy from Hamlet

By Shakespeare

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 wished. 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, [poor]
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay, [disprized]
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? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
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 pitch and moment, [pith]
With this regard their Currents turn awry, [away]
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

Analysis:

Shakespeare carefully hones his language to illustrate the movements of Hamlet's mind in this famous speech.

Hamlet’s soliloquy begins with what must be the most famous line in the English canon: “To be or not to be.” For the character at that moment, it is an important question, literally one of “life and death”, but the general terms in which it is phrased gives it a resonance that reaches out past Hamlet. Hamlet poses the question on the most metaphysical level – not “shall I kill myself?”, nor “can I live like this?” but “to be or not to be”. It is existence itself that is up for debate in this speech.

The form of words guarantees that Hamlet’s question will be interpreted on a general level: the line uses one of the most basic verbs in the language, one without which English itself would surely be impossible to speak. The verb is then phrased in the infinitive, “to be”, rather than attaching it to any specific noun or pronoun (not even Hamlet’s own “I”). Balancing it on the other side of “or” is the simplest possible opposition, the same verb with a one syllable prefix: “not”.

Again, at the risk of labouring the point, “to be” is not opposed by “suicide”, “death” or “non-existence” but its simple grammatical opposite. Shakespeare boils down the issue to its simplest and most abstract form, until it almost doesn’t make sense – it would be interesting to know how many people who recognise the phrase “to be or not to be” could explain what it means. Shakespeare avoids any imagery, any particular reference that could narrow the question’s application, which is surely one reason why the phrase has resounded throughout our literate culture.

Having made this deliberately stark declaration, bare of imagery or ornament, Shakespeare then has Hamlet produce sudden flood of images. The “slings and arrows” of fortune, the “arms” to be employed against a “sea of troubles”, the “sleep of death, the “whips and scorns” of time, the “undiscovered country” of the afterlife. Indeed some of these images jar against each other: how exactly is one meant to “take up arms” (to employ weapons) against a “sea of troubles”?

The contrast with the bare elegance of the first line is striking, but this is not simply Shakespeare being careless or overwriting the speech. The rush of imagery shows Hamlet attempting to wrestle with the eternal question he has raised, and their number demonstrates that he cannot easily get a grip on the problem – he cannot find an analogy with which to work through to a solution that has the clarity and purity of the question itself.