To be, or not to be: that is the question.

The soliloquy opens in Act III, scene 1 of Hamlet. The King and Polonius have set a trap: Ophelia will walk alone with a book of devotions, while they hide to watch Hamlet meet her and judge whether love is the cause of his madness. In an aside, the King admits that his conscience is lashed by a hidden deed. Then Hamlet enters.

He weighs whether it is nobler to suffer “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” or to end one’s troubles. Death would be a sleep, “a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d”, but “ay, there’s the rub”: what dreams may come in that sleep? The dread of something after death makes us bear our ills. Then he sees Ophelia, and the bitter “nunnery” scene follows.

Hamlet was written around 1600. In the first printed edition, of 1603, the line reads “To be, or not to be, ay, there’s the point”; the familiar wording comes from the 1604 quarto and the 1623 Folio.

Hamlet, Act III, scene 1 (Hamlet), 1600

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work