Mｙ Poetry Page

To Be Or Not To Be

- A soliloquy from William Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet'

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 wished.

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.

There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin?

Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And make us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And Is sicklied o'er

With the pale cast of thought

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn away,

And lose the name of action.

I. About the Poem

    
   This is a quote from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet". The protagonist, Hamlet, speaks this line when he is contemplating committing suicide--basically, the question was "Do I want to live or die?". The rest of the monologue from which this quote is taken involves Hamlet deciding the possibility of life and punishment after death make suicide an unattractive option, despite the known hardships of remaining alive.

Works Cited （参考文献）

 N.p., n.d. Web.<http://www.answers.com/Q/What_does_to_be_or_not_to_be_mean>.           

II. About the Poet

   We know that Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564 and it is assumed that he was born on April 23, 1564. We also know that in 1582 at age eighteen, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, an older women who was twenty six at the time. Shakespeare left Stratford for London to make his fortune roughly fours years later.

Works Cited （参考文献）

 "William Shakespeare." William Shakespeare the Greatest English Playwright. Copyright, 2000-2005. Web. 27 Apr. 2016. <http://absoluteshakespeare.com/william_shakespeare.htm>.  

          

III. My Reaction

A. Reaction Point structure

　　　Sometimes, the word "who" and "what" is used during  this poem. This isn't relative pronoun or relative adverb. This mean that this blog is    written as asking reader. So this poem is more easy to read and understand for reader. 

 

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

 

 

B. Reaction Point theme
        
       Poet of this poem express what we shoud do by using the phrase "To Be Or Not To Be".
Shakespeare use many metaphor or compare in this poem. So it is easy for us to guess both "to be" and "not to be".

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?

 

C. Reaction Point connotation
       
         There is the word "ay" in this poem. "Ay" is exclamation and the same meaning as "aye". "Aye" is exclamation 『archaic』 or 『dialect』 said to express assent "yes".
        

To sleep perchance to dream, ay, there's the rub

D. My General Opinion

    However I thought this poem is very easy to read ,it is difficult for me to understand the meaning of this poem.  I heard the title of this poem "to be or not to be" and about Shakespeare. His quotation impress the heart of many peaple. So, I think that I want to read many poem of Shakespeare.