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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 line appears to base this decision on his believed predestination as the killer of the king, no matter what he may do. The potential allusion to predestinarian theology is even stronger in the first published version of Hamlet, Quarto 1, where this same line reads: "There's a predestinate providence in the fall of a sparrow." Scholars have ...
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:
The Hamlet of the supposed earlier play also uses his perceived madness as a guise to escape suspicion. Eliot believes that in Shakespeare's version, however, Hamlet is driven by a motive greater than revenge, his delay in exacting revenge is left unexplained, and that Hamlet's madness is meant to arouse the king's suspicion rather than avoid it.
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:
In it, Hamlet offers directions and advice to a group of actors whom he has enlisted to play for the court of Denmark. The speech itself has played two important roles independent of the play. It has been analyzed as a historical document for clues about the nature of early modern acting practices and it has also been used as a contemporary ...
"Mortal coil"—along with "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", "to sleep, perchance to dream" and "ay, there’s the rub"—is part of Hamlet’s famous "To be, or not to be" speech. Schopenhauer's speculation
Under their referencing system, 3.1.55 means act 3, scene 1, line 55. References to the First Quarto and First Folio are marked Hamlet "Q1" and Hamlet "F1", respectively, and are taken from the Arden Shakespeare "Hamlet: the texts of 1603 and 1623" (Thompson and Taylor, 2006b). Their referencing system for "Q1" has no act breaks, so 7.115 means ...