To be, or not to be

From Free net encyclopedia

For the 1942 film, see To Be or Not to Be (1942 film). For the Mel Brooks remake see To Be or Not to Be (1983 film)

The phrase "to be, or not to be" originates from a famous Shakespearean soliloquy by the main protagonist Prince Hamlet from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark in the first scene of Act Three. In it, Hamlet contemplates the pros and cons of continuing life ("To be") or preferring death ("not to be"). Some commentators have read it as a debate on suicide. Other commentators have argued that it is a description of how one's ideas and visions seldom seem to come to fruition, due to one's own indecisiveness. This speech is perhaps not only the most famous soliloquy in the whole of Shakespeare's works, but perhaps also in world literature.

The soliloquy in full form is as follows:

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? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn(e) 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 pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.

One of the clearest summaries of this soliloquy was provided by Schopenhauer :

'The essential purport of the world-famous monologue in Hamlet is, in condensed form, that our state is so wretched that complete non-existence would be decidedly preferable to it. Now if suicide actually offered us this, so that the alternative "to be or not to be" lay before us in the full sense of the words, it could be chosen unconditionally as a highly desirable termination ("a consummation devoutly to be wish'd" [Act III, Sc. I.]). There is something in us, however, which tells us that this is not so, that this is not the end of things, that death is not an absolute annihilation.' [1]

There have been several films entitled To Be or Not to Be. Other films taking their titles from this speech include Outrageous Fortune, What Dreams May Come and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country which has a number of references to the works of Shakespeare. As Hamlet has been translated into "original" Klingon, the Klingon translation of the term is taH pagh taHbe'.

The Danish translation of the phrase is at være, eller ikke at være.

The English composer Ivor Novello wrote a musical called Perchance to Dream.

This Mortal Coil is the name of a British goth supergroup, as well as a song by British grindcore band Carcass.

The first three lines are an anagram of "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten". Hamlet reveals that his self-doubt and inability to avenge his father’s death have led him to the brink of suicide.

Note: In the line And enterprises of great pith and moment, we use pith although some use pitch. Pitch comes from the Harold Jenkins edit while pith is believed to be the original text.