![]() ![]() As a result of killing Claudius, Hamlet might well die himself. to take up arms, to fight, and possibly, within the context of the plot, to kill Claudius. He means that there are two options for him: these options are: in lines 2-3, to put up with random unpleasantness from Claudius and others in lines 4-5, to actually do something, viz. Hamlet tells us what the speech is about in lines 2-5, where he explains what he means by “To be or not to be”. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. The role of Hamlet is one of the most intellectually and emotionally demanding for an actor: as Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor mention in their detailed introduction to Hamlet: Revised Edition (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series), the Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis even withdrew from the role in 1989, mid-run, after he allegedly began ‘seeing’ the ghost of his father, the former Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, who had died in 1972.īut despite – or, perhaps, because of – this emotional intensity and complexity, actors down the ages have been keen to put their own stamp on the role, including David Garrick (who had a special wig that made Hamlet’s hair stand on end when the ghost of his father appeared), Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Mel Gibson, Sarah Bernhardt (one of many women to portray the Prince of Denmark: see the image below), Ethan Hawke, Keanu Reeves, Kenneth Branagh, Maxine Peake, and even John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. With this regard their currents turn awry Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,Īnd enterprises of great pitch and moment Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, The undiscover’d country, from whose bournĪnd makes us rather bear those ills we have With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,īut that the dread of something after death, The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay, Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,įor who would bear the whips and scorns of time, To sleep, perchance to dream-ay, there’s the rub:įor in that sleep of death what dreams may come, ![]() That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks Or to take arms against a sea of troublesĪnd by opposing end them. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer To be, or not to be, that is the question: First, here’s a reminder of Hamlet’s words: ![]()
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