To be, or not to be

• 1. Introduction

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  'To be, or not to be, that is the question': these words open the most widely quoted speech in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Prince Hamlet delivers it in what scholars call the nunnery scene, Act 3, Scene 1. The speech weighs the pain and unfairness of life against the unknown alternative of death. It asks whether enduring suffering is nobler than acting against it. The question of what Hamlet was truly doing when he spoke these words has preoccupied scholars and theater directors for centuries. Whether he was voicing his own predicament, conducting a philosophical exercise, or performing for an audience he only half-acknowledged is not entirely settled. That uncertainty begins with where Hamlet stood when he spoke, and who else was present.

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• 2. Watched from the Wings

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  Ophelia is on stage when Hamlet begins his speech, waiting for him to notice her. Claudius and Polonius have concealed themselves nearby to hear what he says. Yet Hamlet speaks as though he is entirely alone, and the text gives no clear sign that he is aware of any of them. The speech is written in an abstract, somewhat academic register. Scholars connect that register to his status as a recent student at Wittenberg University. A man in the grip of crisis might speak very differently.

  'Nymph, in thy Orisons / Be all my sins remember'd': with these words, Hamlet turns from philosophy and addresses Ophelia directly. That turn comes at the close of the speech, as its final gesture. Before it, there is no definite indication in the text that Claudius or Polonius can hear him. The speech is almost universally regarded as a sincere soliloquy, even though Hamlet is never technically alone. The phrase 'Soft you now' appears just before his address to Ophelia. It suggests that Hamlet has not yet seen her, or is feigning not to have.

  Where in the play this scene occurs depends on which copy of Hamlet you read. The three main texts of the play do not agree.

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• 3. Three Copies

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  Three main copies of Hamlet preserve the speech. The First Quarto, Q1, was published in 1603. The Second Quarto, Q2, came out in 1604 and is considered the earliest authoritative version of the play. The First Folio, F1, was published in 1623 by Isaac Jaggard and Ed Blount. The Folio text is largely similar to Q2. In the 'To be' speech, the differences between Q2 and F1 are mostly typographic, with increased punctuation and capitalization.

  The First Quarto holds an unusual place in this history. Published in 1603, it was lost or unknown to scholars until a copy was discovered in 1823. When scholars first examined it, they assumed Q1 might represent an earlier draft than Q2. Later investigation reversed that conclusion. Q1 is now considered derivative, most likely a pirated text reconstructed from memory rather than from any authentic manuscript. Q1's version of the speech opens with 'Ay there's the point' rather than the familiar 'that is the question.' The speech in Q1 is shorter and lacks the layered rhetorical structure of the later versions.

  Three further early texts exist: Q3, Q4, and Q5, published by John Smethwick between 1611 and 1637. These are regarded as reprints of Q2 with some alterations. In Q2, the nunnery scene occurs later in the play than in Q1. In Q1, the scene follows immediately after Claudius and Polonius have arranged their eavesdropping.

  The speech's best-known phrases, 'the undiscovered country' and 'what dreams may come,' would each travel far beyond Shakespeare's play.

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• 4. Beyond the Stage

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  A plot point in the 1942 film comedy 'To Be or Not to Be' turns on the first line of the monologue. The title alone served as a reference clear to audiences without further context. In 1957, Charlie Chaplin recited the speech in the film 'A King in New York,' playing the ambiguous King Shahdov.

  Kurt Vonnegut made the opening of the speech the basis for his 1962 short story '2 B R 0 2 B.' The zero is pronounced 'nought.' The story imagines a dystopian United States where the government has achieved a cure for both aging and overpopulation. The alphabetical and numerical reformulation of Shakespeare serves as the phone number for the Federal Bureau of Termination's assisted suicide request line.

  In 1963, at an Oxford debate, Malcolm X quoted the opening lines of the speech. He used them to make a point about extremism in defense of liberty. In 1993, 'Last Action Hero' featured Arnold Schwarzenegger's character Jack Slater parodying the line: 'To be, or not to be? Not to be.' The sixth Star Trek film, 'The Undiscovered Country,' released in 1991, took its name from the speech. In that film, the Klingon phrase used is 'taH pagh, taHbe',' meaning roughly 'whether to continue, or not to continue existence.' Klingon translations of Shakespeare appear during the film as well. The film reads the 'undiscovered country' as a reference to the future rather than to death.

  Richard Matheson's 1978 novel 'What Dreams May Come' took its title from a line in the speech. The 1998 film adaptation kept the same title. The New Zealand television series 'Outrageous Fortune' drew its name from the third line of the soliloquy. Shahid Kapoor recited a shorter Hindi version of the speech in the 2014 Bollywood film 'Haider.' Stargate Atlantis named two Season 4 episodes after the speech. Episode 10 was 'This Mortal Coil' and Episode 11 was 'Be All My Sins Remember'd,' both from 2008. Both episodes involved learning about and fighting an artificial intelligence species called the Replicator.

  'Ack du min moder' is the virtuoso soliloquy in Carl Michael Bellman's 'Fredman's Epistles.' The poet and literary historian Oscar Levertin described it as 'the to-be-or-not-to-be of Swedish literature.' That comparison treated Hamlet's meditation as the natural measure of another culture's great moment of existential verse. In 2016, for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, Royal Shakespeare Company patrons and alumni analyzed the speech's opening line for humorous effect. The 'To be' speech and the image of Hamlet contemplating the skull of Yorick tend to arrive together in memory. The skull scene, however, belongs to Act 5, Scene 1, two full acts after the speech. When the play is remembered, the two moments are often linked, even though the text places them two acts apart.

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