To Die or To Live With Pain

Marinda Hsu 

Lit & Performance 

Ms. Guarino

2016.9.4                                                                       

To Die or To Live With Pain            

  "To be or not to be" is a question Hamlet asks himself after his father's death and how he have experienced cruelty and reality in a short period of time. This monologue, to be or not to be, became a debatable question Hamlet's audience and reader have over years until today. As what I have seen on internet, some thinks that this is about concernments on suicide, some thinks that it is describing Hamlet's interior struggles on to live with pain or to end pain in life by killing himself, and also how Hamlet is telling the reasons why people choose not to die. Another explanation is how Hamlet was struggling if he should revenge his uncle or not. Moreover, To Be or Not To Be also shows how the meaning, realtionship between death and alive is not purely, clearly oppose, this speech is blurring and making a deeper view on a question choosing to die or not.         

        As Benedict Cumberbatch have said in the interview he had after acting the role Hamlet, Shakespeare made To Be or Not To Be a solo speech so the audience could empathize Hamlet; which, I agree on. A conversation is clearly between one character and another; in comparison, a monologue could be telling the interior thoughts of the character. A monologue also makes the audience focus more, empathize more as if they were the character, whoever that is the only one on stage speaking those words. 

"To die, to sleep--No more--and by a sleep to say we endThe heartache, and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummationDevoutly to be wished."
               This quote shows how living could be painful and difficult. Hamlet describes death like going to sleep, but a sleep where you do not know what kind of dreams you recieve. Another part he mentioned that "No traveller returns", this show another concern and struggle one will have while choosing to live or to die, since death, this sleep is still unkown for a live person. You won't be sure if you'll wake up again from that sleep. Therefore, Hamlet is saying even though life is tough, but people back off while thinking about this unknown choice. 
           "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and momentWith this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action", this quote shows how some became a coward in front of death because the fear of it is bigger comparing to all other pressures one is facing in reality. In my opinion, Hamlet shows his pessimistic strongly in the end of the To Be or Not To Be speech. Saying how all these struggles on suicide and oppression in life makes a person choose to do nothing and important plans were gave up. 
          It is important for the audience to empathize Hamlet during this point so they can understand Hamlet's thought, wisdom and his extraordinary philosophy after what he have experienced in life with betrayal and conspiracy from his mother and uncle in the story. To Be or Not To Be defines the internal pain Hamlet is suffering that it reaches the point where he was considering to suicide.