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"To be, or not to be" is a speech given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1). The speech is named for the opening phrase, itself among the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English literature, and has been referenced in many works of theatre, literature and music.
William Shakespeare's play Hamlet has contributed many phrases to common English, from the famous "To be, or not to be" to a few less known, but still in everyday English. Some also occur elsewhere (e.g. in the Bible) or are proverbial. All quotations are second quarto except as noted:
In 1774, William Richardson sounded the key notes of this analysis: Hamlet was a sensitive and accomplished prince with an unusually refined moral sense; he is nearly incapacitated by the horror of the truth about his mother and uncle, and he struggles against that horror to fulfill his task.
Examples are found in Ophelia's speech at the end of the nunnery scene: "Th'expectancy and rose of the fair state" [104] and "And I, of ladies most deject and wretched". [105] Many scholars have found it odd that Shakespeare would, seemingly arbitrarily, use this rhetorical form throughout the play.
Hamlet is walking alone in the hall as the King and Polonius await Ophelia's entrance, musing whether "to be or not to be". When Ophelia enters and tries to return Hamlet's things, Hamlet accuses her of immodesty and cries "get thee to a nunnery", though it is unclear whether this, too, is a show of madness or genuine distress.
Polonius" is Latin for "Polish" or "a/the Polish man." The English translation of the book refers to its author as a statesman of the "polonian empyre". In the first quarto of Hamlet, Polonius is named "Corambis". It has been suggested that this derives from "crambe" or "crambo", derived from a Latin phrase meaning "reheated cabbage", implying ...
The character Claudius is both the major antagonist of the piece and a complex individual. He is the villain of the piece, as he admits to himself: "O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven" (Act III, Scene 3, Line 40), yet his remarkable self-awareness and remorse complicates Claudius's villain status, much like Macbeth.
Richard Burton's Hamlet is a common name for both the Broadway production of William Shakespeare's tragedy that played from April 9 to August 8, 1964 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, and for the filmed record of it that has been released theatrically and on home video.