1710 Hemings (The Jewes Tragedy, before 1662, apud Ingleby et al. 1932, 2:121): “[Eleazer enters in 3.2:] To be, or not to be, I there’s the doubt.”

1710 Theobald (1726, pp. 82-83): <p. 82> “A late Eminent Author, I think, took the beginning of this noble Speech to Task, for employing too great a Diversity of Metaphors, that have no Agreement with one another, nor any Propriety and Connexion in the Ideas. To take Arms against a Sea, literally speaking, would be as unfeasible a Project, as the Attempt (mentioned in a Speech of the Lord Haversham, in a late Reign;) to stop the Tide at Gravesend with a Man’s Thumb. Mr. Pope subjoins a Note, that instead of a Sea of Troubles, it might have been ––– perhaps, siege; which continues the Metaphor of slings, arrows, taking Arms; and represents the being encompassed on all Sides with Troubles. The Editor is not the first who has had the same Suspicion: And I may say, because I am able to prove it by Witnesses, it was a Guess of mine, before he had enter’d upon publishing Shakespeare. But, perhaps, the Correction may be, at best, but a Guess; considering the great Liberties that this Poet is observed to take, elsewhere, in his Diction, and Connexion of Metaphors: And considering too, that a Sea (amongst the antient Writers, sacred and prophane, in the Oriental, as well as the Greek and Latin, Tongues;) is used to signify not only the great, collected, Body of Waters which make the Ocean, but likewise a vast Quantity or Multitude, of any thing else. The Prophet Jeremiah, particularly, in one Passage, calls a prodigious Army coming </p. 82><p. 83> up against a City, a Sea. Chap. 51. 42. The Sea is come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the Multitude of the Waves thereof. So here, I conceive, to take Arms against a Sea of Troubles, is, figuratively, to bear up against the Troubles of human Life, which flow in upon us, and encompass us round, like a Sea.

1710 Dodd (1752, p. 237): "For a particular instance of the difference betwixt the poet and the genius, let us go to two speeches upon the very same subject by those two authors; I mean the two famous soliloquies of Cato and Hamlet. The speech of the first is that of a scholar, a philosopher, and a man of virtue - all the sentiments of such a speech are to be acquired by instruction, by reading, by conversation; Cato talks the language of the porch and academy. Hamlet, on the other hand, speaks that of the human heart, ready to enter upon a deep, a dreadful, a decisive act. His is the real language of mankind of its highest to its lowest order; from the king to the cottager; from the philosopher to the peasant. It is a language which a man may speak without learning; yet no learning can improve, nor philosophy mend it. This cannot be said of Cato’s speech. It is dictated from the head rather than the heart; by courage rather than nature. It is the speech of pre-determined resolution, and not of human infirmity; it is the language of uncertainty, not of perturbation; it is the language of doubting; but of such doubts, as the speaker is prepared to cut asunder if he cannot resolve them. The words of Cato are not like those of Hamlet, the emanations of the soul; they are therefore improper for a soliloquy, where the discourse is supposed to be held with the heart, that fountain of truth. Cato seems instructed as to all he doubts: while irresolute, he appears determined; and bespeaks his quarters, while he questions whether there is lodging. How different from this is the conduct of Shakespear on the same occasion!" See Guthrie’s Essay on Tragedy, p. 25, 26. & p. 97. Vol. II.”

1710-42 To be . . . name of action] Goldsmith (1765, apud Williamson pp. 10-13) finds nothing admirable in this admired soliloquy. Nothing has happened to Hamlet to occasion these thoughts. He considers taking action but then reverts to suicide. And so he continues in contradictions and false ideas, for example, "conscience doth make cowards of us all," which is true only of a bad conscience, not a good. And there is nothing to indicate that Hamlet’s conscience is bad, so nothing to stop him.

“His whole chain of reasoning, therefore, seems inconsistent and incongruous.” Conclusions are not warranted by the premises. . . .

“If the metaphors were reduced to painting, we should find it a very difficult task, if not altogether impracticable, to represent, with any propriety, outrageous fortune using her slings and arrows, between which, indeed, there is no analogy in nature. Neither can any figure be more ridiculously absurd than that of a man taking arms against a sea, exclusive of he incongruous medley of slings, arrows, and seas, jostled within the compass of one reflection. What follows is a strange rhapsody of broken images of sleeping, dreaming and shifting off a coil, which last conveys no idea that can be represented on canvas.”

Ed. note: But must a verbal metaphor be reducible to a picture?

1710-42 Johnson (ed. 1765): “Of this celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contrariety of desires, and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker’s mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and to shew how one sentiment produces another.Hamlet, knowing himself injured in the most enormous and atrocious degree, and seeing no means of redress, but such as must expose him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his situation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether ’tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life. If to die, were to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to end the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were devoutly to be wished; but if to sleep in death, be to dream, to retain our powers of sensibility, we must pause to consider, in that sleep of death what dreams may come. This consideration makes calamity so long endured; for who would bear the vexations of life which might be ended by a bare bodkin, but that he is afraid of something in unknown futurity? Thus fear it is that gives efficacy to conscience, which, by turning the mind upon this regard, chills the ardour of resolution, checks the vigour of enterprise, and makes the current of desire stagnate in inactivity. We may suppose that he would have applied these general observations to his own case, but that he discovered Ophelia.”

1710-42 Johnson (apud ed. 1773): “Of the celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contriety of desires, and is overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker’s mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and shew how one sentiment produces another. Hamlet, knowing himself injured in the most enormous and atrocious degree, and seeing no means of redress, but such as must expose him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his situation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be, or not to be. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether ‘tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life. If to die, were to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to end the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were devoutly to be wished; but if to sleep in death, be to dream, to retain our powers of sensibility, we must pause to consider, in that sleep of death what dreams may come. This consideration makes calamity so long endured; for who would bear the vexations of life, which might be ended by a bare bodkin, but that he is afraid of something in unknown futurity? This fear it is that gives efficacy to conscience, which, by turning the mind upon this regard, chills the ardor of resolution, checks the vigor of enterprise, and makes the current of desire stagnate in inactivity.

We may suppose that he would have applied these general observations to his own case, but that he discovered Ophelia.”

1710-42 Gentleman (ed. 1773): “There never was so much philosphical reasoning expressed so nervously, in so narror a compass, by any author, as in this excellent, we may say unparalleled, soliloquy, which gives a good orator great latitude for the exertion of his abilities--the thought of death being a desirable consummation; the doubts arising from that transition; the picture of life, which our uncertainty forces us to bear, are admirably conveived and expressed.”

1710 Malone (apud ed. 1778): “I cannot but think that Dr. Johnson’s explication of this passage, though excellent on the whole, is wrong in the outset.--He explains the words --To be, or not to be--’Whether after our present state, we are to be, or not;’ whereas the obvious sense of them--To live, or to put an end to my life, seems clearly to be pointed out by the following words, which are manifestly a paraphrase on the foregoing--Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer, &. or to take arms--The train of Hamlet’s reasoning, which Dr. Johnson has so well explained, is sufficiently clear, which ever way the words are understood.”

1710-42 Davies (1784, p. 73): “This celebrated soliloquy will be admired, got by rote, and constantly repeated, by all persons of taste, as long as the existence of our language. Some lines of this speech bear such a strong resemblance to an argument, relating to the future existence of the soul, in Plato’s Apology of Socrates before the Areopagus, that, if that part of the great philosopher’s works had been translated into English in our author’s life-time, I should have imagined he had thence borrowed several sentiments in the soliloquy. But, in Mr. Malone’s accurate list, of ancient authors translated into English in the rigns of Elizabeth and James, the Dialogue of Axiochus is the only part of Plato then published in English.

The passage, in this author, I refer to, is in the 32nd section of the Apologia, as follows in the Greek. Foster’s edit.[Greek lines entered here].

"Mors enim necesse est fit alterum de duobus: ut aut in nihilum redeat, et omnes omnino sensus amittat mortuus; aut, quemadmodum dicitur, in alium quendam locum ex his locis morte migretur. Et five sensus extinguitur, morsque ei somno similis est qui nonnunquam sine visis somniorum placatissimam quietem assert, immensum sane lucrum est emori."

The [Greek phrase] of the original seems to answer fully to our author’s ‘consummation devoutly to be wished for.’ The rest of the section, though admirable, is different in argument from the remaining part of the soliloquy. But Dr. Young has, in his Revenge, taken advantage of a noble sentiment of Socrates, who pleases himself with the idea of meeting, in the other world, the shades of Minos, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, Triptolemus, &c.--So Alonzo, in the fourth act of the Revenge, ’Death joins us to the great majority! / ’Tis to be born to Platos and to Caesars: ’Tis to be great for ever!’”

1710-42 To be... action] Henley (1787, p. 81): <p. 81> “This interpretation of Mr. Malone is indisputably right, as the very notion of a ghost, implies the certainty of an after-existence.” </p. 81>

1710-15 Malone (ed. 1790): “Dr. Johnson’s explication of the first five lines of this passage is surely wrong. Hamlet is not deliberating whether after our present state we are to exist or not, but whether he should continue to live or put an end tohis life: as is pointed out by the second and the three following lines, which are manifestly a paraphrase on the first;’whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer, &c. or to take arms.’ The question concerning our existence in a future state is not considered till the tenth line:—’to sleep! perchance, to dream,’ &c. The train of Hamlet’s reasoning from the middle of the fifth line, ‘If to die, were to sleep,’ &c. Dr. Johnson has marked out with his usual accuracy. In our poet’s Rape of Lucrece we find the same question stated, which is proposed in the beginning of the present soliloquy: ‘—with herself she is in mutiny, To live or die, which of the twain were better.’”

1710 To be, or not to be] Wesley (ms. notes 1790, p.45): “Dr. Johnson’s explanation is preferable in my mind. ‘To be or not to be’ seems not to mean to live in this world or not to live, but to live in another world or not to live. This will be found more congruous to the remainder of the soliloquy. (M. says Johnson has ‘well explained’ this speech.) ‘Explained’ is the wrong word. Johnson has paraphrased the speech well, tho’, I think, unnecessarily, but it explains itself to every reader of a common capacity.”

1710 To be, or not to be] Rann (ed. 1791-): “—Whether to live on, or to put an instant end to my life.”

1710 Caldecott (ed 1819): “We insist, on the contrary, that in its connexion it is beautifully perspicuous: neither can any thing disclose itself more naturally. It is not the train of thought, which is obvious enough, it can only be the grammatical thread, that want of regular deduction of this sort (the quick transitions and abruptness of the speech, which constitute its real merits) that technically may call for some unwinding of explanation; and here, as far as Johnson appears to us to have correctly given the sense, we shall transcribe it. Neither, as has by the same writer been alleged (he says, the question is whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be), is any doubt here raised by Hamlet respecting a future state of existence; but solely what the condition of such existence is to be: a consideration, which, he argues, operates to check the free course and bent of the mind; and entangles it, when discussing, whether it is more noble for a man, who is unfortunate in life, to kill himself, or endure misery? A desire to be out of the world is one of the most strongly marked features of Hamlet’s character. It is the first wish he utters when alone. ‘O that this too, too solid flesh would melt!’ I. 2. But he is then restrained from any thing beyond a wish for suicide by religious scruples, by the sense that the law of God is against it. The inclination now returns upon him more forcibly (having more cause for such an impulse), and the prohibition of heaven does not enter into this question, does not make any part of his present consideration. It is here only, what he shall change this life for. This is the language and subject of a man’s mind who is nearer to death, than he who only wishes that it were lawful to kill himself.”

1710-42 Ham. To . . . . action] Coleridge (ms. notes 1819 in Ayscough, ed. 1807; rpt. Coleridge, 1998, 12.4:850): “Of such universal interest, and yet in to which of all Shakespear’s other characters could it have appropriately given but to Hamlet? For Jaques it would have been too deep: for Iago too habitual a communion with the heart, that belongs or ought to belong, to all mankind.”

1710-42 To be . . . action] "Gunthio" (1825, p. 340): “Can any one for a moment believe that Shakspeare penned this unconnected, unintelligible jargon . . . ?”

Ed. note: On the other hand, Gunthio praises the placement of Q1 "To be": see his note in 1204.

1710-1742] Farren (1829, pp. 647-652): <p. 647> “This celebrated soliloquy has been so highly extolled as a fine specimen of right reasoning proceeding from a vigorous and virtuous mind, that any attempt to treat it as an incongruous assemblage of intruding thoughts, springing from a morbid sensibility, will probably alarm the prejudices of those who have held it in veneration; but as a great outrage against popular opinion has already been committed in speaking of Hamlet as a man suffering mental aberrations, possibly the minor offence, of contrasting a former soliloquy in the same play with that which is the subject of present remark, and pointing attention to the unsoundness of Hamlet’s arguments in the latter, as evidence of the progress of his disease, may be considered as adding but little to the original transgression.

“When Hamlet is first left alone, and before he is informed of his father’s murder, he displays a disrelish of life, but controls his feelings by the pious reflection that, ‘the Everlasting had fixed his canon ‘gainst self slaughter.’ ‘O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter—God! o God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fye on’t! O fye! ‘tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.’

It may be observed, that Shakspeare has seized the first opportunity to represent Hamlet as a man impressed with the truths of revealed religion. At the time Hamlet thus moralized, the theory, which he afterwards cherished, and which ultimately produced mental alienation, had not entered his mind; consequently his opinions on a future state proceeded from a full and free exercise of his intellectual faculties; and as his train of reasoning was sound, so his conclusions are justified by religion and philosophy. How far the same praise can with justice be given to his second soliloquy on the same subject, after he had received the awful communication of his father’s murder, remains to be considered. On the first visitation Hamlet promises that the Ghost’s commandment ‘all alone shall live within the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter;’ and so anxious is he to take full revenge on the murderer, that when it is in his power to ‘do it pat,’ he rejects the opportunity, lest by killing the king when at prayer he should send him to heaven instead of to hell. (TLN 2360-2370, and...goes)

Those, who are of opinion that Hamlet is in the full enjoyment of a vigorous and virtuous mind throughout the whole play, must needs admit his religious creed to have been a very singular one, since it made the Amighty fix his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, but not against murder, and murder too in malice of the deepest dye, seeking not only to kill the body of the victim, but his soul also. Indeed, the only canon against self-slaughter is that which says ‘Thou shalt do no murder.’ This, Hamlet, when he was of sound mind, properly construed to mean,— Thou shalt not take the life of any human being— and not merely— one man shall not kill another. This was a wholesome construction of the commandment— all men being creatures of the same Maker, who holds the lives of all— and the continuance or extinction of any, is not a question between mortal and mortal, or affecting the right of either, but be-</p. 647><p. 648>tween the man and his God, to whom all are due. The canon in terms expressing a commandment against murder, and that commandment having been construed by Hamlet himself in the first soliloquy to extend to self-slaughter, it would be difficult to believe that the same man, if he were in the same state of mind, could subsequently infer that the canon applied to self-slaughter only, and not to murder, in the ordinary acceptation of the word— yet Hamlet comes to this conclusion, and thinks it ‘perfect conscience’ to kill his uncle, and that it is ‘to be damn’d,’ to let him live any longer: ‘This is more strange than such a murder is.’

Having promised to take vengeance on his uncle, he determines to assume madness, the better to gratify his revenge and to provide for his own safety, of which he is thenceforth remarkably careful, having a strong motive for which to live. Indeed there is no circumstance affecting Hamlet that should prompt him to entertain a thought of self destruction; on the contrary, revenge towards his father’s murderer and the usurper of his throne— love for the fair Ophelia, and the ambition of reigning, all concurred to render life desirable. On each of these points Hamlet is very explicit in the course of the play. That he sought revenge, and loved Ophelia, will not be questioned; and that he was anxious to reign, is made perfectly clear by his urging ‘the stepping between him and his hopes,’ as one of the causes for which he hated his uncle.

(TLN 3568-3574)

Thus, so far from wishing to die after he had received the Ghost’s commandment, Hamlet was anxious to preserve his own life, and to take the life of the king.

As evidence of Hamlet’s wish for life, it has been observed that, when he had an opportunity of dying without being accessary to his own death, when he had nothing to do but, in obedience to his uncle’s command, to allow himself to be quietly conveyed to England, where he was sure of suffering death, instead of amusing himself with meditations on mortality, he very wisely consulted the means of self-preservation, turned the tables upon his attendants, and returned to Denmark.

(TLN 3512-3525, 3530-3533, 3537-3540, 3546-3549*, 3552-3558)

Hamlet having every motive to wish for life, and being extremely

* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who were his school-fellows and friends, who, for anything that appears in the play, were perfectly ignorant of the king’s design.— This was either the cunning of madness, or a most cold-blooded murder. </p. 648>

<p. 649> anxious for its preservation, is nevertheless found debating on suicide in the third act of the play, as if his condition were so desperate, that he saw no possibility of repose but in the uncertain harbour of death.

Will it be believed, that the studious and virtuous prince, who in the first scene considered this world as an unweeded garden, and looked to other realms for a more blissful state of being, but was deterred from seeking those realms by his steady belief in the revelation which awards punishments for those who shall be guilty of self-slaughter, could be so entirely divested of his religious impressions, and, indeed, of his philosophy, as to utter in the third act a soliloquy in which his very existence in a future state is made a subject of doubt? Will it find belief, that in two acts such a change in the mind of man could be wrought without supervening malady to effect the change! Nay, that the same man could talk of ‘salvation’ through ‘prayer,’ of ‘heaven,’ and ‘hell,’ ‘no shriving-time allowed,’ and afterwards speak of his mother’s offence as a deed which from the sacred ceremony of ‘—contraction plucks The very soul: and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words.’

If the images in the soliloquy were connected, and the train of reasoning consistent, still the mere debating of such a question by a scholar, who believed in a ‘canon ‘gainst self-slaughter,’ and salvation through prayer, would induce an opinion that disease alone could have strained his mind to such a consideration; but when the soliloquy itself shall be found to be false in metaphor, incongruous in reasoning, and impotent in conclusion; when ‘sweet religion’ is indeed ‘made a rhapsody of words,’ it must force a belief, that the poet intended to mark the growth of Hamlet’s mental disorder, by contrasting the present with the former state of his thoughts in the two soliloquies. It may not be unimportant to call to recollection the period at which Shakspeare wrote the play of Hamlet. Is it probable that an author, in the reign of Elizabeth, when England was straightlaced in religious bands, should draw a scholar and a prince confessing that the Everlasting had fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, but doubting the truth of revelation, and the existence of a future state? Would Shakspeare, considering for whom he wrote, have put such arguments into the mouth of a man whom he meant to represent as in his right senses; and, that too after he had deviated from the historical fact, by making him a Christian instead of a Pagan? It is confidently contended that he would not, but, on the contrary, that he has designedly given an unconnected train of reasoning to Hamlet, in the following soliloquy, on purpose to display the unsoundness of his intellect.

(TLN 1710-1742)

The question is to be, that is, to </p. 649><p. 650> exist— or, not to be, that is, to cease to exist, which Hamlet in a paraphrase thus explains: ‘Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing, end them?’

Here the inquiry is, whether it is nobler to continue to be and endure the ills of life, or cease to be and get rid of them?— the consideration goes no further than to ascertain whether ‘tis nobler to suffer ills than to end them by an act of violence. Now it is a very curious fact, that Hamlet, instead of debating the question which he has taken so much pains to explain, drops it altogether, and proceeds to consider a perfectly distinct question— not whether it is nobler to suffer than to end the ills, but whether it is possible to end them,— a problem which could only be solved by Hamlet’s belief, but of which that belief would furnish an immediate solution. If Hamlet did not believe in a future state, he could not doubt that death would terminate the ills of life, for if there were no future state, there could be no future ills; and, putting religion out of the argument, there could be no question on the propriety of terminating evils rather than enduring them.

If Hamlet did believe in the truth of revealed religion, and that ‘The Everlasting had fix’d his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter,’ he must have felt assured that he could not terminate his sufferings by an act of suicide. In neither event, therefore, could any advantage be derived from reasoning; as the want of a belief in a future state would have prevented a doubt in the one case, and the revelation would have satisfied doubt in the other. Thus the only point on which Hamlet seems to have debated, namely, whether in death he should rest from his misery? could not be settled or explained by reasoning or discussion; and the question originally proposed stands altogether unanswered, and unconsidered. But, to endeavour to make a chain of reasoning in Hamlet’s own way,— ‘To die’ is ‘no more’ than ‘to sleep,’ ‘and by a sleep to say we end the heartache,— a consummation devoutly to be wished.’ Now Hamlet knew well enough that sleep would not always end the heartache, as we frequently dream in our sleep of that which oppresses us when we are awake. This, afterwards, occurs to Hamlet, and he accordingly says, ‘aye, there’s the rub;’ for what dreams may come in that sleep of death must give us pause.

‘There’s the respect,’ he adds, ‘that makes calamity of so long life.’ For who, he asks, would bear the whips and scorns of time, if it were so easy to get rid of them that even a bare bodkin would effect the object? who would bear the burdens of life, if it were not for the dread of something after death— if ignorance of the future— the undiscovered country, did not puzzle the will? Thus, so far from weighing whether it was nobler to suffer or to take arms against calamities, he asks who would be so silly as to endure them if it were possible to oppose them successfully?

All religion is quite kicked out of doors in the debate, but philosophy rejects his conclusion as unsound, when he declares that ‘it is better to suffer the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.’ To pursue Hamlet’s own metaphor,— suppose a man suffering under extreme pain, on being advised to go to sleep, should say, ‘No, although it is probable that sleep would give me ease, yet, as it is possible that I might dream of other pains, I think it is better by remaining awake, to make certain of torments that are almost insupportable, than take the chance of dreaming in sleep of other torments of which I have at present no conception. I admit that in coming to this determination, I am unswayed by any belief that I shall ever dream at all, and am altogether ignorant whether dreams would cause me pain or pleasure.’ Would a man in his senses argue thus? or would his hearers believe in his sanity if he should add, ‘Thus conscience makes cowards of us all,’ and ‘thus the natural colour of my courage (a singular instance of courage certainly to be frightened with the fear of a dream) is sicklied o’er by the pale cast of my thought,’ and thus ‘enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard (that is, with this contemplation of the fear of a dream) </p. 650><p. 651> their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.’ It certainly would be extremely difficult to paint as a metaphor on canvass— Enterprises of pith, taking regard of the fear of a dream, and turning their currents awry. This is merely trying the force of Hamlet’s reasoning by ordinary rules; for as he turns religion out of doors, it would be unfair to try the merits of his soliloquy by Christian tenets. Christians do not doubt as to their existence in a future state (nay philosophers, since the days of Plato, have not doubted). Christians have a higher motive than the fear of other evils to make them suffer their afflictions with patience. They do not consider the future as an undiscovered country, nor talk of conscience making cowards of us all; on the contrary, they believe that a good conscience will make a man brave. Indeed it is difficult to find out what conscience has to do with the matter. Sane Christians do not use such arguments, nor did Hamlet himself when he was sane, as is clearly shown by his first soliloquy.

It would be tedious to pursue this consideration further, ‘Thus it remains and the remainder thus.’

Hamlet in the first act describes all the uses of this world as ‘stale, flat, and unprofitable;’ and, fancying that he has nothing to do in life, wishes for death, but is fully impressed with a belief in a future state, and in the punishments awarded against self-murderers. At this period he is studious, religious, and virtuous.

The appearance of his father’s spirit unsettles his reason. ‘His dead corse in complete steel,’ makes a communication which ‘shakes his disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul.’ Thenceforth his mind takes ‘a more horrid hent;’ but in the third act he endeavours to recover his original train of thought— and to be, if possible, his former self. This is a very common effort with those who have suffered mental aberrations; and the result is the same in most cases, the sufferer either reasons correctly on false premises, or makes erroneous deductions from correct premises— so it was with Hamlet. Forgetting at the moment the object he had promised to accomplish, he starts for debate a question which, immediately before he was told his father’s spirit was in arms, and when he was in the state of mind he wishes to resume, he had fully considered. Scarcely however has he proposed the question before he loses the connection, is unmindful of all his former impressions and religious persuasions, doubts every thing which he had previously believed, and takes up another and distinct consideration on which his reasoning and his deduction are alike defective. Nay, he even doubts whether there is an hereafter, and whether there may not be some ugly dreams in the undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns,— although the ghost (whose word he admits may be taken ‘for a thousand pounds’) had returned from that bourne on purpose to tell him that there is an hereafter in which he may be ‘doomed for the day to fast in fires,’ and of which a tale could be told— ‘(TLN 700-705, whose...Porpentine).’

Shakspeare has been praised for the correctness of metaphor, closeness of reasoning, and soundness of deduction, displayed in this soliloquy— he is held in the highest veneration by the author of these remarks for a very different reason— for the consummate art with which he has given the appearance of rationality to the impertinence of insanity. He has proved himself a perfect master of the human mind both in its sound and morbid conditions. A less skilful poet would have thrown an extravagance into the soliloquy foreign to the disease under which Hamlet laboured; whereas the great master with pathological correctness and with exquisite judgment, has given to Hamlet ‘a happiness of reply that often madness hits on.’

It is difficult to imagine how the poet’s intention could ever have been mistaken; as, from the first scene of the play to the last, he seizes every </p. 651><p. 652> occasion to prepare his audience for a display of insanity by Hamlet, and when the mental eclipse has commenced, loses no opportunity in which he can fix their belief in the nature of the malady. He makes him melancholy in the first scene for the loss of his father, brings a ghost six times from the grave to goad him to a murder, and actually makes Horatio, prophet-like, warn Hamlet not to follow the ghost, lest he should— ‘(TLN 661-663, assume...madnes).’

Lord Ogleby would say ‘If this be not plain the devil’s in it.’” </p. 652>

1710-42 To be...action.] Hunter (-1845, n. 21): <f. 225> “These meditations upon suicide do not seem to rise naturally out of the course of action in the play. Hamlet does not appear to have contemplated self destruction, & certainly not at that time when he had just planned a scheme for trying the King’s conscience.*

“His curiosity to hear how such a scheme would succeed, would for that time have kept such thought out of his mind.— On the whole I think this must have been a speech written Shakespeare, which he took the first tolerable opportunity of ushering to the world.</f. 225>

<f. 225v> *In the play as it was first printed, this soliloquy is much more appositely introduced. It occurs there in the very beginning of the exhibition of Hamlet after the ghost scene. He is described by Ophelia, & his first introduction is accompanied with these meditations. This is much the more appropriate & much do the admiriss of this play owe to the discovery of the old drama for this.

“The debate with himself upon suicide comes in well here. He has formed so fulam he is disgusted with the ericludm of around him. The awful apparition has perhaps a little touched his reason.

“See on this the 46 Remark & 103.

“The reading of the soliloquy differs remarkably from the later copy.”</f. 225v>

1710-42 To be...action.] Hunter (-1845, f. 244v-245r): <f. 244v>“Meditations such as these are scarcely suitable to the situation in which the poet has placed his character:— having formed a depth by which in his opinion ashast, the [true] character of the hifen human visitation was to be determined & the point of time nearly arrived at which it was to be executed.— He could not then, when his auriority was awake & his mind deeply in trusted, then coolly deliberate—concerning suicide— Again the notion of Inconsistency will be applied.

Nor is this a suitable time for the scene which follows where he has the interview with Ophelia. Both seem to me better placed in the original quarto early in the scene & cut. The soliloquy on his first appearance after the Ghost scene when the [margins--particular?] state of his mind was to be exhibited, and the interview with Ophelia among the [margins] scenes in which the state of his mind & thoughts was to be made visible to the audience.

I shall give the arrangement of the quarto & of the later Editions.

Later Editions First Quarto.

Ophelia’s description of Hamlet in his distracted state & conversation with her father upon it. —The same.

Conversation of the King & Queen upon it. —The same.

Determination to send Rosencrantz & Guildenstern to him. —The same.

Polonius assures them he has found out the cause of the lunacy. —The same.

Embassador arrives from Norway. —The same.

Polonius shews the letter. —The same.

He proposes that Ophelia & Hamlet shall meet & he behind the arras. —The same.

Hamlet enters reading. Hamlet enters reading* & then speaks to her.[margins]

Interview with Ophelia.

The King is of opinion that Hamlet is not distracted through love & Polonius engages to search [margins] him deeper.

Polonius enters into conversation with him. —Interview of Hamlet & Polonius.

Next Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. —Next with Rosencrantz & G.

They announce the appearance of the Players. —The same.

Polonius also announces the Players. —The same.

The Players enter. —The same.

Hamlet engages them to play The Murder of Gonzago. —The same.

Hamlet’s comparison of the Players Salary & his own supineness. —The same.

</f. 244v><f, 245r>

[in margins] of Polonius, Rosencrantz & Guildnstern to the King. —The same.

The King & Queen assent to see the play. —The same.

The design of Hamlet meeting Ophelia & the King & Polonius behind the arras again mentioned.

Hamlet enters while quizing on Suicide.

Interview with Ophelia.

Discourse of the King & Polonius on what they heard & propose of a few Luecan from his view with him & of sending him to England. Polonius proposes that the Queen shall send for Hamlet to her alone, & be behind the arras.2

Advice to the Players. Advice to the Players.

On the whole, the variation in the order of the scenes is not great, & it consistently in [in margin]ing back the soliloquy & discourse with Ophelia, to what I cannot but consider a better point in the drama. It was the Poet’s intention to let the spectators in to a view [of?--in margin] the moody state of his hero’s mind immediately after the visitation, as it really was; and next the assumed state in strong contrast. This was the more necessary as the state of his mind when alone & when in company had not been lucidly distinguished in the preceding scene: He appears to me [of?--in margins] a powerful mind working on a great purpose in deef. & rattled energy in reality— sporting & jocose in the eye of others— except Horatio with whom he practiced confidence.

In I.5. I take all to be serious to ‘I have sworn it.’ He then sports with Horatio and then at random, Marcellus being present.

But though the original quarto presents us with a very interesting view of what may have been & doubtless was, the original arrangement of the scenes— it extends us no [in margin] respect of the internal structure of the speech itself. Iwholling can be scene corrupt the [in margin] state in which it appears in that impression.

1. This is worthy of observation. The reflection he next makes might arise out of the matter of [off in margin]. As the play now stands he comes in to say the speech.

2. “She they shake not meet.” This clause oddly introduced.— It shows his wanto hadly the old fit; was [in margin]. It seems to point at the meeting of Hamlet & Ophelia.”</f. 245r>

1710-42 To be...action.] Hunter (1845, p. 236-44): <p. 236>“I have already observed that in the copy of 1603 this celebrated soliloquy is placed near the beginning of what according to the present distribution is the second act. It </p. 236><p. 237>stands there most appropriately, and most beautifully. We have seen at the close of the first act the state of Hamlet’s mind immediately on having received the dread information and the solemn command of the Ghost; we are next presented with what was the state of his mind after a few days’ reflection. He enters solus, in a meditative mood, and the subjects of his meditations are among the most awful which can engage mortal thoughts. This is to shew his natural mind. Then follows the dialogue with Ophelia, which is intended to shew us his artificial mind—that idle wandering folly which he assumed, the better to accomplish his object. I can conceive nothing more dramatically proper than this. It prepares for all the succeeding action in which the natural and the artificial Hamlet are so wildly combined.

“Why there was a change in the arrangement, or by whom it was made, I can no more explain than I can account for many other things connected with the publication of these dramas. But that the play is greatly injured by the change I feel a confident conviction; for not only is this soliloquy wanting in the place most appropriate to it, but it is now found in a place not suitable to it. Such meditations as these are not such as were likely to arise in the mind of one who had just conceived a design by which he hoped to settle a doubt of a very serious kind, and which must have been full of curiosity about the issue of his plot. If this speech is to indicate deliberation concerning suicide, or is even allied to suicide, such deliberation is surely out of place when curiosity was awake, and his mind deeply intent on something that he must do. To be sure the hypothesis of Inconsistency will explain all; but then it will explain anything.

“Another very material effect is produced by the change in the point at which this solus speech is introduced. The line ‘But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading,’ </p. 237><p. 238>immediately precedes his entry, when, supposing himself to be unobserved, he gives utterance to the musings of his mind. In the quarto of 1603 it is, ‘See where he comes poring upon a book.’ It is thus manifest that the Poet’s intention was that these should be meditations of Hamlet on something which he found written in a book which he holds in his hand, bringing it much more nearly to the similar scene in the Cato of Addison. Addison has named the author whom he has put into the hands of his hero, but Shakespeare has left his author unnamed, unfortunately I think; but it is clear his intention was that Hamlet should be represented as reading in a book which spoke of the evils of life, of death their cure, of futurity, of the question of being or not being when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, and that what he says arises out of the argument in the book before him, and is not to be regarded as from the beginning thoughts springing up in his own mind. ‘To be, or not to be: aye, there’s the point’ as it is in the quarto, is equivalent to, ‘You, the author, are discussing the question of what shall be hereafter; you have a great and mighty subject in hand.’ And the words as we now have them, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question,’ are much the same, if we regard, as we may, ‘question’ as equivalent to theme, argument, or subject.

“To me it appears that something is lost by disjoining these meditations from the action of reading, and making them to arise wholly, as now they appear to do, from a well-spring of thought in his own mind.

“The difference between the original and the present arrangement consists in this; that originally Hamlet entered reading, as he does now, immediately after Polonius had proposed that Ophelia should meet him as if by accident, and that he, the wily politician, should be concealed behind the arras, but that when he begins to speak, he delivers the soliloquy before </p. 238><p. 239>us, after which Ophelia meets him and the wild dialogue takes place. The King expresses his opinion that Hamlet is not distracted through love for Ophelia; and Polonius engages to search him deeper. Then follows the interview with Polonius, in the course of which Hamlet refers to the book he still held in his hand, talking wildly of its contents to Polonius. In the later editions, this dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius follows immediately on his entering with a book in his hand. The two arrangements then correspond till the King and Queen assent to see the Play; when next in the original quarto Polonius proposes that the Queen shall send for Hamlet to her closet and that he shall be again behind the arras. But in the later editions, between these two events are interposed the Soliloquy and the interview with Ophelia.

“But though the first quarto presents us with this exceedingly interesting view of what was the Poet’s first conception, and possibly even his last, yet it affords us little assistance in either settling the text of the Soliloquy itself, or in explaining difficult clauses in it; for nothing can be more corrupt than the state in which it is represented: e.g. ‘For in that dream of death, when we awake, And borne before an everlasting judge, From whence no passenger ever returned. The undiscover’d country at whose sight The happy smile, and the accursed damn’d.’

“I have several not wholly unimportant remarks to make upon particular clauses.”</p. 239>

1710 Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): "It has been said that this soliloquy was suggested to Shakespeare by a book of Jerome Cardan De Consolatione, which was translated into English by Thomad Bedingfeld in 1576, but the resemblances quoted are not very striking."

1710-42 Rose (1877, pp. 5-6) <p. 5> discusses the benefits of ending act 2 with 3.1. Along with other benefits to the structure of the play, </p. 5> <p. 6> it would bring “vividly before us the short duration of the temporary energy into which he lashed himself in the preceding soliloquy, and the reaction which makes him hopeless, half-resolved to cut the knot of his difficulties by self-murder.” It also seems better to have a pause before Ham. comes in in good spirits, lecturing about acting. Also, that advice makes a nice light beginning for the 3rd act. The change improves both acts. Act 3 is too long, add with the first two scenes of 4,1 and 4.2 it would be longer still.

1710 Dowden (ed. 1899): “Explained by Johnson as a future life, or non-existence after death; by Malone, to live, or to commit suicide. G. Macdonald regards the words as the close of a preceding train of thought, not to be connected with what follows. Hunter, who would place the soliloquy, with Q 1, in Act II. sc. ii, supposes it is suggested by the book which Hamlet is there represented as reading. Perhaps, the explanation lying in what immediately follows, it means, Is my present project of active resistance against wrong to be, or not to be? Hamlet anticipates his own death as a probable consequence.”

1710 Wilson (ed. 1934): “Johnson, Dowden and others contend that Ham. is meditating upon his task, the fulfilment of which will prob. involve his own death; but I think [(1729-30)] rule this out, and show that he is thinking of suicide, as in the First Soliloquy [(313-6)], and as Malone, Bradley and most critics assume.”

1710-42 To be . . . action] Craig (1960 p. 6) explains To Be as an expression of the doubt that Hamlet still feels: He “is uncertain whether the plan is worth trying or not and whether he can accomplish anything at all . . . . In this [soliloquy] he marks for all mankind what Carlyle called the Center of Indifference.”

1710-42 To be . . . action] Frye (1980, p. 99): “The ’To be or not to be’ soliloquy, hackneyed as it is, is still the kernel of the play. It’s organized largely on a stream of infinitives, that mysterious part of speech that’s neither a verb nor a non, neither action nor thing, and it’s a vision that sees consciousness as a kind of vacuum, a nothingness, at the centre of being. Sooner or later we have to commit ourselves to nothingness, and why should so much merit be attached to dying voluntarily? The Ghost insist he mustn’t die before he’s killed Claudius, and the one thing that prevents Hamlet from voluntary death is the fear that he might become just anther such ghost. Until the death of Ophelia releases him, he sees no form of detachment that achieve the kind of death he wants: freedom from the world.”

1710-44 Jenkins (ed. 1982): "To be, or not to be, that is the question—This celebrated speech is, I suppose, the most discussed in Shakespeare, and the most misinterpreted. It is impossible to review the literature on it here. Earlier criticism is excerpted in Furness; a subsequent article useful for its abundant citation, though its own interpretation is quite unacceptable , is Irving T. Richards, ’The Meaning of Hamlet’s Soliloquy’, PMLA, XLVIII, 741-66; and some recent views are conveniently summarized by V.F. Petronella in SP, LXXI (1974), 72-88. There have been two fundamental disagreements. First, from Warburton, who thought of this as a speech about ’self-murder’, a continuous tradition passes through Malone, Bradley, and Dover Wilson to the recent editor (Ribner) who pronounces quite simply that ’Hamlet is thinking of suicide’ (cf. Petronella, p. 79; ’Suicide is Hamlet’s concern in the great soliloquy of III. i.’); and yet against this prevalent (but to my mind misguided) view are some who deny that the soliloquy is primarily concerned with suicide, or even that it refers to suicide at all. (For the view that the ’bare bodkin’, l. 76, is meant not for the speaker but his opponent, see esp. I.T. Richards, loc. cit.). Secondly, opinion is divided on whether Hamlet is discussing his individual dilemma or whether, as Kittredge insists, ’the whole course of his argument is general, not personal’. Ranging from the general to the particular the main views may be categorized as follows: (1) The ’question’ of ’To be or not to be’ concerns the advantages and disadvantages of human existence, the discussion of which includes the recognition of man’s ability to end his existence by suicide. (2) The ’question’ concerns the choice between life and death and hence focuses on suicide throughout. (3) The ’question’ is whether Hamlet shall end his own life. (4) It is whether Hamlet shall kill not himself but the King. (As between ’the proposed killing of Claudius’ and ’the killing of himself’, Wilson Knight ultimately decides in favor of both - The Wheel of Fire, rev. 1949, p. 304.) (5) Still more particularly, the ’question’ is not simply whether Hamlet shall pursue revenge against the King but whether he shall proceed with the actual scheme (for the performance of a play) which he has already set in motion. (For this see esp. Alex Newell, ’The Dramatic Context and Meaning of Hamlet’s "To be or not to be" Soliloquy’, PMLA, LXXX, 38-50.) The argument (as in Newell) that dramatic effect demands the interpretation of the speech in relation to its immediate context is specious. The dramatic force of the speech comes rather from its enabling us to see Hamlet’s situation in its most universal aspect. Any strict reading - one, that is, which adheres to the text without adding to it - must come close to 91).

“Most difficulties have arisen through the temptation to supply what Hamlet himself does not. Johnson’s famous observation that the speech ’is connected rather in the speaker’s mind than on his tongue’ has given too ready a license to subjective ingenuity. The lack of coherence can easily be exaggerated, as in the desperate and wholly unjustifiable assumption that vaguely defined thoughts are carried on ’a current of feeling which is the main determinant of meaning’ (Knights, An Approach to ’Hamlet’, pp. 74-80). Most commentators, Johnson among them, have found it perfectly possible to trace out a train of thought. That their results have diverged widely is due in large part to the different additions they have made to what Hamlet actually says. When Johnson begins his paraphrase, ’Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide whether, after our present state, we are to be, or not to be’, it is easy to see that the words ’after our present state’ are an addition which transforms ’the question’ altogether. Yet Johnson’s other addition - ’Before I can form any rational scheme of action’ - has been less frequently remarked on. Indeed Malone, who castigated Johnson’s ’wrong’ beginning, appears to have accepted and even shared the error of applying the speech to the speaker’s personal problems. Hamlet, he retorts , ’is not deliberating whether after our present state we are to exist or not, but whether he should continue to live, or put an end to his life’. Yet nothing anywhere in the speech relates it to Hamlet’s individual case. He uses the pronouns ’we’ and ’us’, the indefinite ’who’, the impersonal infinitive. He speaks explicitly of ’us all’ (l. 83), of what ’flash’ is heir to (63), of what ’we’ suffer at the hands of ’time’ (70) or ’fortune’ (58) - which serves incidentally to indicate what for Hamlet is meant by ’to be’. The numerous interpretations which depend on equating ’To be or not to be’ with "To act or not to act’ take a wrong direction from the start. (Apart from Richards and Newell, loc. cit., see Prosser, pp. 160-71 (162-73) and for an extreme example Middleton Murry, Things to Come, p. 231, ’What is "to be or not to be" is not Hamlet, but Hamlet’s attempt upon the King’s life’.) Far from seeking to determine his own course, Hamlet is debating a ’question’ and a question which in various aspects (e.g. that it is better to be unhappy than not to be at all) was traditionally debated in the schools (cf. Augustine, De Libro Arbitrio, III, chs. 6-8). The word ’question’ itself is a customary one to denote the subject posed for argument in academic disputations or, it is interesting to note, at the moots of the Inns of Court (see D. Legge in Studies in Honour of Margaret Schlauch, pp. 213-17). And though ’the questions’ invites a verdict, this is not a matter for enactment but (as is clear when we go on ’Whether ’tis nobler . . . ’) of evaluation.

“At the same time as we reject interpretations which give the speech a particularity it does not claim, we must equally resist those which distort the general proposition by irrelevant metaphysics. Thus, while one may accept a distinction between being and mere existence - Hamlet himself can recognize that human life is more than ’to sleep and feed’ (IV. iv. 35) - we need not include in being all Max Plowman would associate with ’consciousness’ (The Right to Live, pp. 156. ff.); still less should we read into ’To be or not to be’ the Boethian identification of being with goodness and evil with not-being (Knights, pp. 76-7) or the metaphysical problems of identify, self-fulfilment, or essence (Prosser, pp. 159-54 (161-6)). All such attempts to refine on Hamlet’s question are doomed to founder as soon as the speech develops.

“The ’question’, then (crudely paraphrases as "Is life worth living?’) is essentially whether, in the light of what being comprises (in the condition of human life as the speaker sees it and represents it in what follows), it is preferable to have it or not. There is no reference here to suicide, nor even as yet to death. Nevertheless, since the question can only present itself to one who already has being, the implicit alternatives are those of continuing ’to be’ and ceasing ’to be’, so that the idea of death is already implied and as soon as ’the question’ is amplified at once becomes explicit (end, l. 60). For of course we come to the end of life’s ’troubles’ not when we put an end to them but when they put an end to us (see below, ll. 57-60 LN). Hence the alternatives are to ’suffer’ or to ’end’, to endure or to die; and these are what the body of the speech discusses. From the cessation of troubles, it passes naturally enough to the attractiveness of dying (60-4), expressed in the familiar association of end, consummation, sleep. There is still no hint of suicide; but the idea of death’s attractiveness leads no less naturally to the thought of how easily it may be come by and so to the ’bare bodkin’ (76). Suicide is thus introduced - for the first time - in the question which begins at l. 70. But this is a rhetorical question, which already presupposes its answer, a hypothetical question brought in only to be dismissed - as, when the question is repeated (76 ff.), it quite explicitly is (But that . . ., 78). And its dismissal comes as naturally as naturally as its introduction; for the metaphor of death as sleep has been extended from sleep to dreams (65-6), which bring in the after-life and hence the ’rub’ (65), the ’respect’ (68), which determines the argument’s course. The impulse to suicide is frustrated before it is even formed : before the consideration of it begins at l. 70 it is already preempted by the ’pause’ of l. 68. It is impossible therefore to say that Hamlet ever contemplates suicide for himself or regards it as a likely choice for any man. The alternative meantime is made vivid by allusions throughout the speech to what life causes us to endure : the ’slings and arrows’ of l. 58, the ’shocks that flesh is heir to’ (62-3), the injustices listed in ll. 70-4, the ’fardels’ we ’bear’ (76) and the ’ills we have’ (81). The soliloquy holds in skilful balance the opposites of life and death, we ’rather bear’ (81) the life we have. The ’question’ is apparently decided : the alternative we choose is ’to be’, ’to suffer’, to ’bear’. And the whole is pithily summed up in the aphorism of l. 83 : the conscience which makes us afraid of death because of the after-life causes us to go on living. This conclusion has of course this paradox : we do not so much choose one of the alternatives as passively accept it from fear of embracing the other ; so that the question of which was ’nobler’ (57) ends with the recognition, in the word ’cowards’ (83), of what is the reverse of noble in our attitude to both.

“I do not know why it should be made an objection to this speech that it lacks logical connection with the progress of its ideas is so supremely natural and lucid. The links, however, have sometimes been obscured by local misapprehensions.

“Some difficulty has also arisen at l. 84 from the transition to a new topic which the repeated ’thus’ may disguise. The first thus (83) introduces, I take it, the conclusion which follows on all the preceding discussion : and with this the reflections prompted by the initial ’question’ come to an end. But at the same time they lead, with the second thus (84), to a further reflection on a kindred matter in which the same trait of human nature may be seen. In fact the frustration of the impulse to seek death now offers itself as a particular example of a general tendency in men for any act of initiative to be frustrated by considerations which it raises in the mind. See below, l. 83 LN.

“The failure of resolution to translate itself into action is an important motif which will recur at III. ii. 182-208 and IV. vii. 110-22. The lines which state it here (84-8) are of course among the most famous in the play because of the use to which they have been put in the description of Hamlet himself. It is important to remember that Hamlet himself does not so use them; he still makes no reference to his own case. Yet the drama which contains him permits, even invites us, as readers or spectators, to make the connection, very much as it has used the account of Pyrrhus (II. ii. 448-514), which likewise makes no mention of Hamlet’s situation, to provide another perspective on it. On the present speech Coleridge comments that it is ’of such universal interest’ and yet, among all Shakespeare’s characters, could have been ’appropriately given’ only to Hamlet (i. 26). Others, from Johnson to Kenneth Muir (Hamlet, pp. 34-5), have stressed that the ills it associates with human life do not correspond with Hamlet’s experience in the play. Both views, I think, are right. Unlike all Hamlet’s other soliloquies this one is not concerned with his personal predicament ; yet the view of life it expresses is not an impartial or objective one such as we might ascribe to Shakespeare, but just such a view as one in Hamlet’s dramatic predicament might hold. It is the view of one who began the play with a sense of ’all the uses of this world’ as ’weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable’ (I. ii. 133-4), of one who knows that his virtuous father is dead and his wicked uncle in possession of his father’s queen and realm. It is a man in Hamlet’s predicament who sees the world as ’an unweeded garden’ possessed by ’things rank and gross in nature’ (I. ii. 135-6), who will regard the goodly earth as ’a sterile promontory’ and the majestical firmament above it as a ’pestilent congregation of vapours’ (II. ii. 298-303). The same vision will resent the life of a man as a series of ’troubles’, ’shocks’, ’fardels’, ’ills’ from which death - if it were only the end - would be a welcome release. This is what gives the speech, as it debates the pros and cons of human existence, its justification, and its power, in this place near the centre of the play. And although it looks beyond and never at the particular plans that Hamlet has afoot, it is not perhaps without relevance to the mood in which he now encounters Ophelia. See also Intro., pp. 141, 149.

“For all their brilliant use, the ideas of the speech are for the most part traditional. even the outline of its argument has its anticipation in Augustine (De Libero Arbitrio, III. vi. 19, ’It is not because I would rather be unhappy than not be at all, that I am unwilling to die, but for fear that after death to a sleep (ll. 60-6) (cf. Meas. III. i. 17; Mac. II. iii. 74; 2H4 IV. v. 35) was a Renaissance commonplace descending from such works as Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations but often referred back to Socrates. It is found, among other places, in Carden’s De Consolatione (Comfort, trans. Bedingfield, 1573, D2), sometimes regarded as a direct source; in Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Moralia (1603, p. 516); and in Montaigne’s Essays (III. 12). For its classical origins, see Anders, Shakespeare’s Books, p. 275. It was in the tradition of the ancients that Cardan thought of death as like a sleep in which ’we dream nothing’, and Montaigne, here explicitly recalling Socrates, says, ’If it be a consummation of one’s being, it is also an amendment and entrance into a long and quiet night. We find nothing so sweet in life, as a quiet rest and gentle sleep, and without dreams’ (III. 12, Florio’s trans.). By contrast Shakespeare, characteristically seeing both sides, thinks also of the possibility of dreams. But in adapting the metaphor accordingly he uses what is of course an equally traditional thought. The Homily against the Fear of Death sees ’the chief cause’ of fear in ’the dread of the miserable state of eternal damnation’ (Book of Homilies, 1850 edn, p. 90). Cf. l. 78. For other traditional ideas, see notes on ll. 80, 83, and for a possible anticipation in Belleforest, Intro., p. 95."

1710-42 Lupton & Reinhard (1993, p.28): <p. 28> “Freud’s citation . . . of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy anticipates the definitive conjunction of Hamlet and Oedipus a few pages later [Standard Edition 4: 254ff], here inflected—contrary to the Shakespearean subtext—in the context of maternal loss . . ., [which] returns as the ghostly father and his law of lack. . . . The relation between mother and father and their metonymic signifiers breast and phallus is not one of antithesis or opposition, but rather of retroactive translation, a translation effected by the work of mourning.” </p. 28>