Thread: Prince Hamlet's Soliloquy

"To be or not to be"...that begins what may be the most famous soliloquy in modern Western culture.

Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Prince Hamlet deliberates over life and living versus death and suicide. Hamlet contemplates suicide so as to bring cessation to suffering. He considers that he would be leaving in this life the misery and sadness...but he realizes the fear of what is beyond death, the unknown, and so he changes his tune.

-------------------------------------------------------------

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
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

Originally Posted by Mr.PissShivers

....and?

For your contemplative pleasure my dear Piss.

Originally Posted by Mr.PissShivers

Thanks, though I prefer tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow myself.

nice.

Originally Posted by DimTriad

these two, along with the st crispin's day speech should be known to any western man who wants to consider himself educated

another great one. We are three for three.

Originally Posted by Merovingian11

"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."

General Chang: "I am constant as the northern star."

McCoy: "I'd give real money if he'd shut up."



taH pagh taHbe.

That was a pretty cool scene.

Bump, for misc culture