Critical Analyses and Resources
King, Walter. Hamlet's Search for Meaning. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1982.
Line 66 To be or not to be = "esse aut non esse" which was a common Latin phrase of philosophy. In other words, Shakespeare did NOT coin this phrase.
King rephrases this first line, saying in essence that the question really asks, "What does it mean to exist as a living, sentient human being? and, What does it mean not to so exist? In essence, Hamlet is responding to three questions man has raised again and again throughout the history of the West. What is the value of life? What is the value of death? And which of the two is preferable?"(p 71)
King says that this soliloquy is "a summing-up of Hamlet's reflections thus far" (p 67). King explains this by saying that, at this point in the play, Hamlet has fallen out of love with everyone in the play except Horatio. He has lost his father, his mother is married to his presumably murderous uncle, he dumped his girlfriend, and he sees little to live for. "To be or not to be is a specutlative starting point" (69) says King. Obviously he chooses "to be." King divides this soliloquy into distinct sections of action versus inaction.
Lines 67-68 is the first consideration about whether or not "to be"--inaction. To do nothing is to live and suffer whatever comes your way.
Lines 69-70 is the second consideration about whether or not "to be"--action. To do something is to "take armes"--commit suicide and fight against life.
Lines 71-73 is the first consideration about the afterlife--inaction. To die passively is non-existence in an inactive sleep of death, a non-conscious state, an absolute end--there is really no afterlife.
Lines 74-78 is the second consideration about the afterlife--action. To die and dream is to potentially experience a conscious state of death where sins are punished--an afterlife.
DeMadariaga, Salvador. On Hamlet. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964.
"That is the true tragedy of Hamlet: not his incapacity to avenge his father; not his frustrated ambition; but his incapacity to be Hamlet. He can think Hamlet; he cannot be Hamlet" (p 95).
Line 66 DeMadariaga believes that Hamlet's loneliness, sadness, and procrastination are a direct result of his egocentrism. The "To Be" soliloquy attests to this in that "whomsoever [Hamlet] seems to be talking to, Hamlet only speaks to Hamlet" (p 105). DeMadariaga argues, then that Hamlet "drives all the dialogues within his own thought, turning them into monologues" (p 106). Hence in the soliloquy, Hamlet asks his own questions, provides his own answers, and never thinks to genuinely discuss his true concerns with anyone. Even when he seems to be discussing this with his best friend Laertes, Hamlet in essence never listens to anyone but himself.
Frye, Roland. The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.
Line 66 Hamlet brings to these problems a superb intellect, evidencing the finest mind of any literary character in our tradition. But he is pervasively aware of human sin and shortcomings, particularly in himself. He brings that general understanding of human nature directly to bear upon himself when he says to Ophelia, "I am myself indefferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me" (3.1.122-24). On an earlier occasion, Hamlet had said also to Polonius that "to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand" (2.2.178). As Martin Luther had declared, "if all those were hanged that are thieves and yet would not be called so, the world would soon be desolate, and there would not be either hangmen or gallows enough." Hamlet agrees with this when he says, "Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping?" (2.2.515-17).
Line 93 Conscience unites reason, moral obligation and fear in ways which would have seemd self-evident to an audience in 1600. It is specifically employed on eight different occasions, twice each by Claudius and Laertes and four times by Hamlet. Hamlet's first use of the word refers to Claudius, "The plays the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" (3.2.589-91). Hamlet's typical use of the word conscience is broader and more significant than that, and may be read as a conflation of Hellenistic and Roman with Christian influences extending from the Apostle Paul into Shakespeare's own time. Going well beyond a guilty feeling or revelation of guilt, it points forward as well as backward in time, and provides guidance to action. As St. Paul and later Christian writers held, conscience accused or excused acts both past and future as judged by rational thoughts under God. It operated in the light of the natural law available to all men and even more fully in light of the special revelation of Scripture. On this basis, all people, whether pagans or believers, are capable of appraising their thoughts and their actions in a moral as well as practical way.
In its broader sense, the word conscience is capable of extraordinarily complex use. The Latin etymology gives some clue both to its meanings and to its ambiguities: Conscientia means a "knowledge with." From the junction of con with scientia arises the potential of "conscience" both for rich expression and loose communication: knowledge (scientia) with respect to (con) whom or what? So understood, the word can refer to consciousness, without any specifically ethical reference, but as its usage developed, the ethical sense predominated and the word applied to a means (or faculty, or standard, or judgement, or dictate) of ethical conduct. But still, ethical knowledge with what basis? Is it ethical knowledge with respect to God, or the Word of God, or the Natural Law, or the positive law and accepted morality of a culture, or is it the act and process of inner reflection by an individual who takes several or all of these criteria into consideration? All of these possibilities exist in Hamlet. (Mary's note--this is Hamlet's problem; he considers all of these possibilities and doesn't know what conscience to listen to.)
For Catholic and Protestant alike, conscience was not autonomous, being subject to the judgment and will of God, whether conveyed through church tradition or scripture or both. But when one had conscientiously reached a firm judgment, one should hold to it, even if it were wrong, so long as one was convinced. Suppose that consscience directed a person to commit an evil act, then as one Catholic scholar summarizes the choices, "a man is placed in the peculiar situation of sinning whether he obeys or disobeys; he sins by obeying his conscience, since he acts contrary to God's law; and he sins by disobeying the same conscience, for though the act he does contrary to conscience is a good act, he believes the act to be evil, and thus acts with a wrong intention." Protestantism offered no less awesome prospects. Writing at about the same time that Shakespeare was engaged in producing Hamlet, William Perkins summed up the problem in three propositions: "(1) Whatsoever is done with a doubting conscience, is a sin...(2) Whatsoever thing is done in or with an erroneous conscience, it is a sin...(3) What is against conscience though it err and be deceived, it is a sin in the doer." In view of such conceptions of conscience, we should not be surprised by Hamlet's conclusion that "conscience does make cowards of us all" (3.1.83).
Line 67 Hamlet begins with a posing of existence against non-existence, and immediately shifts to a weighing of action against inaction. He later recurs to the desirability of death, which he still later repudiates because of "the dread of something after death" as a punishment for willful suicide. But throughout he shifts back and forth between considerations of whether existence or non-existence is to be preferred, and whether action or inaction is better. In terms of Hamlet's analysis, the two issues are closely related, perhaps indissolubly so.
His first extensive analysis in this soliloquy weighs action against inaction. This question could not have been raised in 1600 as though in some hermetically sealed philosophical isolation, because it was fundamental and divisive throughout western Europe in the latter third of the sixteenth century. As we have already seen, prominent Jesuits recommended violent action when necessary to achieve virtuous ends, and prominent Calvinists in France, Holland, and Scotland not only advocated but actually did "take arms against a sea of troubles," and by opposing did in some sense end them, overturning regimes and replacing monarchs by their own combination of activism and faith. On the other hand there was the opposite position, represented by the Eliazbethan Homilies and by many Anglican spokesmen, that it was "nobler in mind to suffer" than to "take arms." The official Tudor view had held, at least until the appearance of Bishop Bilson's True Difference in 1585, that any taking arms to change "the law's delay,/ The insolence of office" and all the other abuses, real or imagined, would merely lead to other and far worse ills, both in this world and in the hereafter. The diliberation or weighing of these alternative views had to be handled with some tact on the London stage in 1600, but Shakespeare has managed it in a generalized context which the authorities would not find seditious, but which intelligent theatergoers would find exciting. Hamlet unequivocally poses the question, equivocally appraises the major responses, and reaches no conclusion. We have here what is surely the greatest aporia (in the sense of a debate about an issue and weighing of its sides) in Shakespeare. The terms of its proposal would have intrigued Elizabethan audiences, and its inconclusiveness increases the suspense of the play.
Line 92 After first debating the issue of passivity and action, Hamlet's mind returns to the underlying issue of life and death. Suicide would release one from having to decide upon whether and how to act, because death would end all possibility of action and of suffering through action--but not the eventual possibility of passive suffering. Because the Everlasting has "fixed/ His canon 'gainst self-slaughter," as Hamlet recognized in his first soliloquy, there is still the fear of bad dreams, so that suicide offers no sure and attractive release. Recognizing that retribution may be expected by those who commit murder upon themselves, Hamlet deduces that "conscience does make cowards of us all." Immediately thereafter, however, the Prince's focus shifts from the life/death alternative back to the active/passive alternative, or perhaps the two merge into a single question again. At all events, the conscience which forestalls the particular action of suicide broadens out to forestall unspecified "enterprises of great pitch and moment" and so all "lose the name of action."
The immense popularity of this soliloquy lies in the brilliance of its poetic argument and counterarguments, but theatrically its ambiguity is equally significant. Here the Latin meanings of certain root words are pertinent: ambigo means not only to be uncertain, but also to argue or debate about something, to consider arguments for and against; ambiguitas means a double sense or equivocalness; ambiguus means not only uncertain and doubtful but a "going about," showing equal predilections to all sides. All these senses are applicable to the "to be or not to be" soliloquy. But its ultimate importance to the tragedy arises just as much from the exciting clash of ideas stunningly expressed as from the increase of an audience's suspense and uncertainty. Act two had closed with signals pointing forward to the play-within-a-play as a catalyst for resolving uncertainty about the alleged murder of Hamlet's father. In this first soliloquy of act three, the audience sees that the Prince is undecided about even more basic matters than his uncle's guilt.
Wofford, Susan, ed. Hamlet: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford, 1994.
Huhner, Max. Shakespeare's Hamlet. Farrar, Strauss, 1950.
Line 66 Huhner's paraphrased soliloquy, "To live or to die, which shall it be?"
Is it better to bear our troubles or oppose them by suicide,
If death meant a state of sleep or unconsciousness, with no troubles or responsibilities, it would be an ideal to look forward to;
But it is possible that the future state of sleep may be disturbed by horrible dreams,
This is what makes us bear all our troubles.
Who would put up with all the annoyances of this life, when he could easily commit suicide and get out of it?
Who would put up with all these troubles, were it not that he is afraid of the punishment which may be meted out to him in that future life, for doing away with himself, as well as for all the other sins which he may have committed and not atoned for.
67-70 Hamlet has a special dislike of strife and trouble. He deplores that he should be singled out to avenge a wrong, as in "O cursed spite / That e'er I was born to set it right." Hamlet was a man that was disgusted with the world, who did not care if he was killed or not, as long as he committed no crime and did not do the killing himself. Hamlet was a man full of inertia. (p. 71)
Hamlet does not accuse himself of any fault or sin. He argues that if he were to commit suicide, it would be in no sense a punishment for any crime (p. 78).
74 devoutly to be wish'd - a state of sleep, a state of inactivity, free from all woes and all responsibility (p. 78).
88 the dread of something after death - cannot refer to the uncertainties of life after death, but must refer to the unknown punishment which is in store for suicides, a punishment wich may be more wever than "those ills we have" that are cast off by suicide (p. 84).
94 conscience - see scene 4.5, Laertes: "conscience and grace to the profound pit." Laertes, as opposed to Hamlet, has no problem with being too thoughtful and being a man of action.
94 coward - We believe that a person who refrains from doing a wrong because it is contrary to the law of God, as interpreted by his religion, is not a coward (81).
Barnet, Sylvan, ed. The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark: With New and Updated Critical Essays and a Revised Bibliography. New York: Signet, Penguin, 1998.
Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition. New York: Norton, 1997.
To be...action. One thing can be siad with some confidence about this much discussed and debated soliloquy: it is cast in general tems. Hamlet speaks of we,us,who, and he, without using I or Me once.
67 Nobler in the mind. It is not evident whether in the mind is meant to go with to suffer or with nobler. The latter possibility seems more likely, for nobler in the mind can signify 'more magnanimous': and magnanimity had two different but related senses, corresponding to the two courses Hamlet goes on to consider: 'fortitude in endurance' and 'courage in resistance'.
68 slings. Shakespeare uses this word at one other place in his writings, Henry V 4.7.57, 'the old Assyrian slings', an allusion 'to Judith, 9:7, "The Assyrians...trust in shield, spear, and bow, and sling'" (Taylor). The linking of bow and sling there may have suggested the linging of slings and arrows here.
75 rub. obstacle, difficulty--a metaphor derived from the game of bowls, in which a rub is 'an obstacle or impediment by wich a bowl is hindered in, or diverted from, its proper course'(OED). Shakespeares use of it here seems to have made 'Ay, there's the rub' proverbial (Tilley R196).
77 this mortal coil. (1) this turmoil and trouble of living (2) this mortal flesh, the 'too too solid flesh' of 1.2.129, which encloses within its coils or folds our essential being and has to be shuffled off at death as a snake sloughs its old skin. An extended gloss on this second sense is provided by Chapman in his The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois 5.5.168-75.
85 his quietus make. secure his release from life. Quietus est written on an account signified 'paid'. The debt in question here is man's debt to God, who lent him life, which he pays by dying. Compare 1 Henry IV 5.1.126, 'thou owest God a death', and Tilley Q16.
89-90 the undiscovered country...returns. These words seem to owe something to Mortimer's farewell to Queen Isabella and the world in Marlowe's Edward II: 'Farewell, fair queen: weep not for Mortimer, /That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, / Goes to discover countries yet unknown' (5.6.6406). It has frequently been objected that this statement is inconsistent with Hamlet's own experience, since he has seen a returned traveller--the Ghost. Coleridge's answer to this point deserves quotation: 'If it be necessary to remove the apparent contradiction--if it be not rather a great beauty--surely, it were easy to say, that no traveller returns to this world, as to his home, or abiding place' (Coleridge's Essays and Lectures on Shakespeare [Everyman ed.] p. 150). In fact, Hamlet is stating one of the great commonplaces about death: that the road leading to it is a one-way street, or, as Horace puts it, onmes una manet nox / Et calcanda semel via leti (Odes 1.28.15-16).
89 bourne. frontier. See OED bourne sb.2, where it is pointed out that the word first appears in Lord Berners' Froissart (1523), reappears in Shkespeare, who uses it seven times, and then disappears once more until the 18th century, 'the modern use being due to Shakespeare, and in a large number of cases alluding to [this] passage in Hamlet.'
96 pith and moment. gravity and importance. The Cambridge editors, while preferring Q2's 'pitch' to F's 'pith', point out that the Players' Quartos of 1676, 1683, 1695, and 1703, 'have, contrary to their custom, followed the Folios, which may possibly indicate that 'pith' was the reading according to the stage tradition' (Note XVI).
Landow, George. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.