Enter HAMLET.

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 heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished…       (3.1.55-63)

This is it, in many senses: how to come to this fresh, really to read and hear it? Slowly.

There can be a kind of bitter glee, or wonderment, or stark precision, in that opening clause. To be, or not to be. Emphasis on the not. It might seem even starker to a brain that imagines such a proposition in Latin, because this is a proposition, a question, the quaestio of debate and grammar school disputation. Existence or non-existence? Being or not-being. To be, nor not to be.

And then he elaborates. He’s been thinking about this for a while, perhaps, walking, walking, pacing, muttering; now he’s trying to find the words, trying to make some sense of it. For all the concision and precision, what it is isn’t always clear, the question he’s putting: is this question general or particular, does it (in this moment) pertain to him alone? Whether ’tis nobler in the mind—nobler? more honourable? the framework here is classical, Stoic—but nobler in the mind, a kind of intellectual honour, a coherent, settled position, even—to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Just to put up with—everything? Just to sit back, lie back and take it, everything that life is throwing at one—at me—the insults, the trials, the pains of being human, of being me? the sheer bloody caprice of life. Or is it better to take arms against a sea of troubles—try to do something, offer some resistance (and the sea is vast, inchoate; the possibility of pushing back and fighting is immediately bathetic, ridiculous: are you going to yell at the clouds too, while you’re at it?) Yet perhaps, one could, by opposing, end them? it could be a way out, going down in a kind of glory—and it could even work, maybe?

But, yeah, let’s say it out loud. To die. Said it. And then he (sort of) rows back, but it’s perhaps an even more intense yearning: to sleep. No more. A kind of wondering again: maybe that’s all it’d be? to die would just be to sleep, maybe? what’s the difference, when it comes down to it? and I am so, so tired. So tired. He likes this idea, develops it: and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Just falling asleep: it’d stop—all this. The pain of it all, messing things up, hurting the people we love, being hurt by them, being rejected—and then just the ordinary incidental day to day onslaught of petty, nasty, boring, painful things. Being human is all about suffering, really, isn’t it? Wave after wave of it. A sea of troubles, not waving but drowning. Putting an end to all that, it’s a consummation devoutly to be wished. Yes, that’s the sort of ending that one might really, really pray for. Consummation here is latently sexual, perhaps, suggested by the heartache, by the waves. One climax, then that’s it, life, over and done with. Sleep.

(The punctuation here is quite fussy; there are other possibilities and in fact in the edition I’m using the speech continues, with a semi-colon after wished—but the Folio text has a full stop and so I’m breaking here.)