Concept
To be, or not to be
Overview
soliloquy in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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But perhaps at the end of life, if a man is sincere and in full possession of his faculties, he will never wish to have it to live over again, but rather than this, he will much prefer absolute annihilation. The essential content of the famous soliloquy in “Hamlet” is briefly this: Our state is so wretched that absolute annihilation would be decidedly preferable. If suicide really offered us this, so that the…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
Close in meaning to To be, or not to be; the term itself is not named.
The division between the second and third acts is by common consent placed here. The third act occupies the afternoon, evening, and night of the same day with the second. This soliloquy is Hamlet's first, and perhaps we may find it correct to say _only_ outbreak of self-accusation. He charges himself with lack of feeling, spirit, and courage, in that he has not yet taken vengeance on his uncle.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Close in meaning to To be, or not to be; the term itself is not named.
POLONIUS. I hear him coming. Let’s withdraw, my lord. [_Exeunt King and Polonius._] 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 heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh…
William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Names To be, or not to be.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Existentialism.