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"To be, or not to be" is a speech given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1). The speech is named for the opening phrase, itself among the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English literature, and has been referenced in many works of theatre, literature and music.
The monologue, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2, follows in its entirety. Rather than appearing in blank verse, the typical mode of composition of Shakespeare's plays, the speech appears in straight prose:
Even in the famous 3.1 soliloquy, Hamlet gives voice to the conflict. When he asks if it is "nobler in the mind to suffer", [80] Cantor believes that Shakespeare is alluding to the Christian sense of suffering. When he presents the alternative, "to take arms against a sea of troubles", [81] Cantor takes this as an ancient formulation of goodness.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting from the Court's decision in King v.Burwell, upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, repeatedly used the construction to criticize the Court's majority opinion, stating: "Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!"; "Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!"; and ...
Yorick is an unseen character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.He is the dead court jester whose skull is exhumed by the First Gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of the play. . The sight of Yorick's skull evokes a reminiscence by Prince Hamlet of the man, who apparently played a role during Hamlet's upbringin
[3] The king is not without redeeming virtues, though. He is seen to be an able monarch (notwithstanding the unfavourable comparison to his murdered predecessor in Hamlet's first soliloquy) as well as a smart thinker and smooth talker, who in Act IV, Scene 5 converts Laertes from rebel to accomplice. [4]
William Shakespeare's play Hamlet has contributed many phrases to common English, from the famous "To be, or not to be" to a few less known, but still in everyday English. Some also occur elsewhere (e.g. in the Bible) or are proverbial. All quotations are second quarto except as noted:
"This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our youth". [77] One might say, he observes, that Hamlet is just a character in a play: "Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain." [78] Yet Shakespeare gives those sayings a reality in the mind of the reader, making them "as real as our own thoughts." [78]