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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.
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 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:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that they have brought along a troupe of actors that they met while travelling to Elsinore. Hamlet, after welcoming the actors and dismissing his friends-turned-spies, asks them to deliver a soliloquy about the death of King Priam and Queen Hecuba at the climax of the Trojan War.
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 ...
The Gravediggers (or Clowns) are examples of Shakespearean fools (also known as clowns or jesters), a recurring type of character in Shakespeare's plays. Like most Shakespearean fools, the Gravediggers are peasants or commoners that use their great wit and intellect to get the better of their superiors, other people of higher social status, and each other.
"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
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.