What is the subject of Hamlet's famous To be or not to be soliloquy?

Answer 1

Hamlet wants to revenge his father's death, and feels that it his duty as a son to kill Claudius. The dilemma in this soliloquy is, if he follows through then he has committed the sin of murder and would go to purgatory.

Answer 2

Shakespeare rarely has to "try" to say anything he intends to say. Revenge is one of the major themes in many of his plays, though never does Shakespeare make revenge a simple question of good or ill, do or don't.

Malvolio at the end of 12th Night? The death of Falstaff? The glorious (?) conquest of France by Henry V? Joan of Arc? Achilles as Shakespeare presents him? Ophelia, to become more abstruse? Cleopatra?

Othello, obviously. But what of Hamlet? --- the Ghost is from hell, is it not? it urges Hamlet to revenge murder with murder . . . but is not the question in Hamlet, in Shakespeare's view, not "why does he hesitate?" but rather why does he seek revenge? Hamlet has only to rebel openly against Claudius, and the people are virtually 100% with him. He, after all, is the rightful king.

Titus Andronicus is bravado revenge tragedy to bring in the customers: anything Marlowe or Kyd or Webster can do, I can make worse. But what of Timon of Athens? Look at the complexities of "revenge" when money, power, flattery, pretense, hatred, betrayal become the instruments for orchestration. Who is revenged on whom in Julius Caesar? What about Cinna the Poet?

Lear is as deep a study of revenge, both lethal and pathetic, as Shakespeare ever wrote. But then The Tempest is the most sublime, in which the entire thrust of the play and Prospero's great revenge comes down to one exchange with Ariel: "Dost thou think so, spirit?" (spoken furiously) "Mine would, sir, were I human." (spoken feelingly). Find that passage, that Greatest Abyss which the Magus or Christos has to cross, and marvel at the fathomless depth of silence between the lines - the Completion of the Great Work, the Magnum Opus, of which Shakespeare never ceases to write.

Take any play, any character, and you will find revenge a primary color in the motivation and justification of every action. "To hurt you." Read the Sonnets, and realize that these poems are mythic and timeless revenge upon two forgotten unworthy overly passionate creatures (the beautiful boy lover, the lady, their individual relationships with Shakespeare, their cosmically absurd betrayal of him with each other. Take suffering - "that which no just God would allow in His Creation" goes the saying. Then take "reaction" to suffering, if anything ever can be reactive. Is it not through suffering and sorrow that the mortal is transmuted (or returned) into the immortal?

With Shakespeare, this theme goes on, goes deeper and higher, than we can possibly imagine.

Answer 3

Hamlet's soliloquy is about deciding whether to live or die, to prevail or to quit. He discusses the last-frontier nature of death, especially by suicide, in this speech, which has led to many scholars' questioning his sanity (paralleling the play itself). However, because the audience knows that the King and Polonius are nearby, and can assume that the characters can hear Hamlet, there is also a possibility that Hamlet is instead perpetuating his "antic disposition," or act of insanity, near the King and his chamberlain.

Answer 4

The speech is about living in a world where living is intolerable. Hamlet ponders why people bother staying alive when life is so miserable and decides that it is because they don't know whether the option of death is any better and would rather "bear those ills they have than fly to others they know not of."

Hamlet himself knows perfectly well what awaits him after death; his father has made this clear. Hamlet had rejected suicide for this reason even before meeting the ghost ("or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter"). In this speech he is wondering why every other person does not commit suicide.

Answer 5

He is contemplating suicide. If life is worth living. He is torn between escaping from his troubles or to stay and cope with them.

Answer 6

He is contemplating whether to live or to die. 'To be' is to live whilst 'not to be' is to die.

Answer 7

Hamlet is contemplating suicide and is trying to convince himself to do it. He says that life is unfair, but that death might be worse.

Answer 8

Hamlet is trying to decide whether or not to commit suicide. In the end he decides that what may exist in the afterlife is too frightening, and he may as well continue to be.

Answer 9

Basically suicide and life after death.