This document provides an analysis of William Shakespeare's soliloquy "To be or not to be" from his play Hamlet. It discusses how Hamlet is lamenting on the value of life versus death after recent events that have greatly disturbed him, including his mother remarrying his uncle shortly after his father's death. The soliloquy explores whether it is better to endure the hardships of living or to die and face the unknown of what comes after death. While death provides an end to suffering, Hamlet also wonders if what lies beyond could be even worse than life. Through this introspective soliloquy, Shakespeare examines the human struggle with existence and how we deal with the difficulties of living versus the

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Hamlet” Soliloquy.
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To be or not to be is a soliloquy by Hamlet who is lamenting on the value of life and
death. He is trying to strike a balance between how one deals with life and death. For Hamlet life
does not have power, he metaphorically compares life to slings and arrows that lead to some
outrageous fortune. This fortune is as a result of opposition that may arise and to end the
opposition, one must die. This soliloquy is as result of the events that take place in Act 1 and 2
where late at night, the guards in the castle meet Horatio Hamlet’s friend who was coming from
school and they relate to him the events that took place when they met a ghost that resembles the
king who recently died; Hamlet’s father. The very moment the guards are talking to Horatio, the
ghost reappears and a decision to tell Hamlet about the incident is passed. Hamlet is greatly
disturbed and he laments on the reason why his mother the queen of Denmark remarried
immediately after his father’s death and to make matters worse she marries his uncle Claudius
who assumes the position of the king yet he killed his father. Hamlet cannot fathom his mother’s
disloyalty since that was a time for mourning and not a time for getting married. Hamlet is
moved by the events where the ghost of his father was seen and he enthusiastically wants to see

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it. In another incident Laertes warns his sister Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet. The two are
children of the royal attendant Polonius and the warning comes at a time when Laertes is leaving
for France.
Hamlet is pondering about death and life. In the soliloquy, Shakespeare is questioning
human existence, particular, a reflection of weather human being should live or die. The balance
continues with consideration of the way human deals with consideration of life and death.
According to Shakespeare, to have life is to lack and the living survive at the mercy of
outrageous blows. The only way man can overcome, turbulent nature of life, the sorrows and
miseries of life is by ending it. Therefore, the sleep of death is killing one self by taking action,
opposing and defeating the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune. This is manifested at the ed
of the play when Hamlet decide to kill himself. Shakespeare posit that, to live is to have a
passive state and death is an active state and for one to chive the active state, one must end life.
The soliloquy point that death is a desirable, a consummation, imperfect closure. Death
cannot be compared with the living state because it is a catch which Hamlet calls a “rub”.
Meaning, forming a barrier on the bowls that diverts the blows”. The fear of life in this regard is
the obstacle that makes people be passive and may change the way people think. Human being
don’t t have control over their dreams and the dream may come in sleep in when we have
shuffled off all the fuss. Shakespeare uses the word “mortal coil”, a Victorian word for a big
fuss. With this, Hamlet stop to consider what can happen if we discard all bustle and hustle of
life (Bevington 2). The only challenge with this thinking is that people do not know what can
happen in the state death, may be it can be worse than life. Hamlet makes a decision profound
that conscious does not make cowards of hall human beings. There is an intensified fear in death
particularity what happens after death; may it is more unbearable. This is tied to the mission of

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killing himself, as the most significant part of his mission, (avenging his father’s death). Though
obscures chances present themselves, he turns way from avenging his father’s death. In the pay,
Hamlet says that “conscious does not make coward of us”. While conscious remind him that
murder is sin, his convention remind him that he should avenge his father’s death by killing
Claudius.
At some point, Hamlet wonder what lies behind the obscure side of death, may be
afterlife is more painful than living. His tone about death in this soliloquy is that life is devoid of
power and burdensome, it is stale, flat and unprofitable. Hamlets gives a list of things he disdain,
the whips and scorn of time, the proud man’s contumely, the oppressor’s wrong, the pangs of
love, the insolence of office, the delayed laws, and unworthy takes. In Act 5 and second of the
act helps hamlet understand his personal decision is a matter of the heart, however, everyone
must be ready for death since it come no matter what, meaning, even Hamlet has made a
decision to die. Through the language used in the soliloquy, Shakespeare appear to refer to the
‘dew” however, he speak of it passively in face of desperation, and thus he manages to phrase
the question of “to be or not to be” and thus making it as something that involves all humanity
and not just himself. This is an indication that the question of living or not to live is a constant
struggle that human being struggles against in their lives and thus Hamlet attempt to mediate the
a metric, “nobler in the mind” meaning that death is evaluated in its correctness.

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Woks Cited
Bevington, David. Hamlet. Britannica. (2020). P.2. Retrieved from:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hamlet-by-Shakespeare