Oct 19, 2012 - Communication    1 Comment

Shakesphare play phrase

“To be not to be that is the question”
After all these years I’ve still not been able to find the answer to this question nor find a reason why it even existed in the first place.
Can anyone help me on this please

1 Comment

  • Christopher Waugh October 19, 2012 at 11:52 pm

    I like this answer, from this site:

    http://www.enotes.com/hamlet/q-and-a/why-did-hamlet-said-not-what-its-mean-hamlet-256699

    In the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet wonders whether to live or die, given the pain he feels at his father’s death/murder, and his mother Gertrude’s hasty remarriage to the murderer. In this soliloquy, he wonders if it is nobler to bear his grief, or to take action.

    His father’s ghost has told him what happened and demands revenge. Hamlet has two ways of taking arms against the sea of troubles he faces–commiting murder, or committing suicide. In his belief system, both would lead to eternal damnation. Ay, there’s the rub. There’s the nightmare that troubles the eternal “sleep” of death.

    Thoughts of what could happen after death “give us pause”. He wonders who would bear the injustice and disappoint-ments of life, knowing suicide would end these. It is the “dread of something after death (that) puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have/than fly to others that we know not of…”

    The next line is one of Shakespeare’s famous double entendres, full of irony: “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”: conscience is both knowledge and knowledge of right and wrong. He goes on to say that ” thus the native hue of resolution/is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought; enterprises …lose the name of action.” This conflict between thought and action is an oft explored theme in this play. It is perhaps too facile to call it procrastination as it is also about the conflict of reason versus rationalization.

    Finally, catching sight of Ophelia, Hamlet asks (whether or not she hears him) that she remember his sins in her prayers (orisons). As this soliloquy reflects, it seems that everywhere he looks, everything he considers–whether inaction, murder, or suicide–he is doomed.

    I really like Hamlet as a play. Hopefully we may study it in a future year!.

    CW

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