Occasionally, I’ve changed Shakespeare’s words to suit my purpose. (Have you noticed?) During the night, wide awake, musing over a recently published blog message, I wondered what the original words meant. “To be or not to be.” Before six o’clock, before daylight, I did a Google search and found one man’s analysis, followed (below) with a brief quote from a larger explanation.
To be or not to be, that is the question’ is the most famous soliloquy in the works of Shakespeare – quite possibly the most famous soliloquy in literature. Read Hamlet’s famous speech below with a modern translation and full explanation of the meaning of ‘To be or not to be’. We’ve also pulled together a bunch of facts and commonly asked questions about Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, and have a couple of top performances of the soliloquy to watch.
