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Hamlet Discussion

3.1 "To be or not to be": 1604 Good Quarto

To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether tis nobler in the minde to suffer
The slings and arrowes of outragious fortune,
Or to take Armes against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them, to die to sleepe
No more, and by a sleepe, to say we end
The hart-ake, and the thousand naturall shocks
That flesh is heire to; tis a consumatien
Devoutly to be wisht to die to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to dreame, I there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death what dreames may come
When we have shuffled off this mortall coyle
Must give us pause, there's the respect
That makes calamitie of so long life:
For who would beare the whips and scorenes of time,
Th'oppressors wrong, the proude mans contumely,
The pangs of despiz'd love, the lawes delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurnes
That patient merrit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietas make
With a bare bodkin; who would fardels beare,
To grunt and seat under a wearie life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose borne
No traviler returnes, puzzels the will,
And makes us rather beare those ills we have,
Then flie to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience dooes make cowards,
And thus the native hiew of resolution
Is sickled ore with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard theyr currents turne awry,
And loose the name of action.

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