Ben Whishaw: Hamlet's Soliloquy

Lingua Stage
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"To be or not to be..." Hamlet's Soliloquy Act 3, Scene 1
#english #acting #monologue #hamlet #shakespeare
To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is 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 heartache
and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished,
to die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream I dares the rub, for in that sleep of death
what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.
Heirs the respect that makes calamity of so long life, for who would bear the whips and scorns of
time, the oppressors 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 coitus 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 undiscovered 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.
