To be or not to be

To Be Or Not To Be
[3, 1, 56-88]

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,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'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 undiscovere'd 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
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.


Translation:
To live, or to die? That is the question.
Is it nobler to suffer through all the terrible things
fate throws at you, or to fight off your troubles,
and, in doing so, end them completely?
To die, to sleep—because that’s all dying is—
and by a sleep I mean an end to all the heartache
and the thousand injuries that we are vulnerable to— that’s an end to be wished for!
To die, to sleep. To sleep, perhaps to dream—yes,
but there’s there’s the catch. Because the kinds of
dreams that might come in that sleep of death—
after you have left behind your mortal body—
are something to make you anxious.
That’s the consideration that makes us suffer
the calamities of life for so long.
Because who would bear all the trials and tribulations of time—
the oppression of the powerful, the insults from arrogant men,
the pangs of unrequited love, the slowness of justice,
the disrespect of people in office,
and the general abuse of good people by bad—
when you could just settle all your debts
using nothing more than an unsheathed dagger?
Who would bear his burdens, and grunt
and sweat through a tiring life, if they weren’t frightened
of what might happen after death—
that undiscovered country from which no visitor returns,
which we wonder about and which makes us
prefer the troubles we know rather than fly off
to face the ones we don’t? Thus, the fear of
death makes us all cowards, and our natural
willingness to act is made weak by too much thinking.
Actions of great urgency and importance
get thrown off course because of this sort of thinking, and they cease to be actions at all.
The soliloquy revolves around Hamlet differentiating the pros and cons that come with committing suicide. He argues that by doing this act you are preventing yourself from facing the pains, heart ache, and the suffering that life has to provide. But also a main issue that comes with death is that you will have to face the judgement and the unknown that comes with the long sleep following life. The speaker of the speech is Hamlet, and he is speaking to himself. While Polonius and Claudius secretly spy on him. He says the speech in the castle.before he did these words, he was planning in creating a part in a play to test to see the guilt of Claudius, and if he really did kill his father. After the speech Ophelia comes to talk to Hamlet, note this is after she was told to avoid him by her father and brother, She plans on breaking up with him, by giving him a belonging, only to be yelled by Hamlet: “Get thee to a nunnery!”. The mood of the speech, is dull and dark, shows Hamlets fall into insanity. Highlights Hamlets depression.

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