← All monologuesFull work: Hamlet
Hamlet · William Shakespeare · c. 1600
HAMLET
A prince who has proven he can think his way around anything now tests whether thought is worth the trouble of living. He reasons toward suicide and talks himself out of it by accident.
The speech118 words · 4 beats
0:00 / 1:18
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
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.
To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.turn
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
- Speaking to
- Himself, aloud, believing he is unobserved.
- What just happened
- He has just arranged to catch the king's conscience with a play, and the plan gives him no comfort. He drifts into the lobby, still holding a book, and stops.
- Objective
- To argue himself into knowing whether death is a door or a trap.
- The turn
- 'To die, to sleep— / To sleep, perchance to dream' — the seductive case for death snags on the one thing he can't rule out.
- Watch out for
- The trap is playing it as a decision already made, mournful and slow. It is live reasoning; each 'to sleep' is a fresh temptation he interrupts. Keep the antitheses moving, not intoned.