SHAKESPEARE

1. To be, or not to be: that is the question (Is it better to live or to die?)

 

MEANING

Is it better to live or to die?

 

ORIGIN

To be or not to be is probably the best-known line from all drama or literature. Certainly, if anyone is asked to quote a line of Shakespeare this is the one that first comes to mind for most people. It is, of course, from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, 1602 (Shakespeare's actual title is - The tragedie of Hamlet, prince of Denmarke):

 

What Hamlet is musing on is the comparison between the pain of life, which he sees as inevitable (the sea of troubles - the slings and arrows - the heart-ache - the thousand natural shocks) and the fear of the uncertainty of death and of possible damnation of suicide.

Hamlet's dilemma is that although he is dissatisfied with life and lists its many torments, he is unsure what death may bring (the dread of something after death). He can't be sure what death has in store; it may be sleep but in perchance to dream he is speculating that it is perhaps an experience worse than life. Death is called the undiscover'd country from which no traveller returns. In saying that Hamlet is acknowledging that, not only does each living person discover death for themselves, as no one can return from it to describe it, but also that suicide is a one-way ticket. If you get the judgment call wrong, there's no way back.

 

* MUSE ON: To be absorbed in one's thoughts; engage in thought.