To be, or not to be? That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mindto 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! To die, to sleep.
Must give us pause. There’s
the respect
When we have shuffled off
this mortal coil,
For in that sleep of death
what dreams may come
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,
That makes calamity of so
long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the
proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love,
the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and
the spurns
That patient merit of th’
unworthy takes,
When he himself might his
quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who
would fardels bear,
to grunt and sweat under a
weary life,
But that the dread of
something after death,
The undiscovered country
from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles
the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of
resolution
is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. —
Soft you now,
the fair Ophelia! —Nymph, in thy
orisons
Be all my sins remembered.