Expliactaion: Hamlet Act 3, Scene

Expliactaion: Hamlet Act 3, Scene

The famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy in Hamlet takes its context first from the plot of the play at large. Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, is caught in what is for him a primarily depressing (or melancholic) situation -- his beloved father has died, almost certainly murdered by Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, who quickly married the widowed Queen (and Hamlet's mother) Gertrude, assuming the crown at the same time. Most recently, Hamlet has hatched a plot to prove his suspicions of Claudius, but even this fails to bring him any sense of joy or relief. Nothing that Hamlet does can restore his father to his life and crown, and this seems to be the driving force behind much of Hamlet's actions. The fact that his mother and everyone else in the court seems either willfully blind to or complicit in his father's murder makes the situation that much more tense for Hamlet.

The general content of the speech is a contemplation of suicide. Hamlet ponders both some of the positive and the negative aspects of killing himself, though he never comes out and says so in a fully explicit manner. The debate that takes place in his mind is not actually as complex as the language might imply; on the one hand, Hamlet sees suicide as a means of escaping the vagaries of the world and all of the misfortunes and pain that life brings -- the positive aspect of suicide -- while on the other hand, death leads to an unknown place that might consist of worse pain and terrors. Though Hamlet does not explicitly mention God, Satan, heaven, or hell, there is definitely some thought of these Christian concepts of the afterlife, as evidenced by Hamlet's use of the word "conscience" in describing his fears and uncertainties -- it is not simply fear, but a worry about the moral right of suicide that drives this fear.

One of the running metaphors that Hamlet uses throughout the soliloquy is that of sleep as a symbol for death. This is made explicit when Hamlet mentions the "sleep of death," but it is used prior to this in more symbolic ways. This helps to bring out Hamlet's weariness and desire for simple peace. This desire is central to his character and to the soliloquy itself; it is his desire for peace and rest that drives him to contemplate suicide, but the fact that these things are far from guaranteed in the afterlife -- especially for one who commits suicide -- is enough to make the action unpalatable even in what he perceives as his extreme circumstances. There is also a sense of travel associated with death and the transition to the afterlife that appears in the soliloquy, from "shuffl[ing] off this mortal coil" to the "undiscover'd country" that is used as a stand-in for the afterlife itself. This makes suicide and even simply death more of an active pursuit than it might otherwise be thought, and adds an interesting layer of meaning to the soliloquy. One of Hamlet's major problems throughout the lay is his inability to act, and his indecisiveness. The struggle in this soliloquy is not between giving up or fighting, but between two different courses of action, and Hamlet finds himself yet again stuck in the decision making process.