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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.
Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. Hamlet is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless ...
Comparison of the 'To be, or not to be' soliloquy in the first three editions of Hamlet, showing the varying quality of the text in the Bad Quarto (Q1), the Good Quarto (Q2) and the First Folio. The earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall ...
The production took place because of a lighthearted agreement between Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole while they were filming Becket.O’Toole decreed that they should each play Hamlet afterwards under the direction of John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier in either London or New York City, with a coin toss deciding who would be assigned which director and which city.
The monologue, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2, follows in its entirety. Rather than appearing in blank verse, the typical mode of composition of Shakespeare's plays, the speech appears in straight prose:
The disintegration of values, morals, and order is a theme discussed at length in "Hamlet". The colloquial tone of the Gravediggers brings this philosophy into the focus of the audience's world. The synthesis of all perspectives used ends in a greater comprehension of the play as a whole.
Cantor places the episode within the framework of a tradition of Hamlet parodies that dates back to the nineteenth century. [7] Yet Michael D. Bristol interprets these parodies, including the Gilligan's Island episode, as reflective of "a distinctively modern experience of subjectivity" in Shakespeare's version of the character.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, dissenting from the Court's decision in King v.Burwell, upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, repeatedly used the construction to criticize the Court's majority opinion, stating: "Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!"; "Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!"; and ...