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From “Hamlet,” Act III. Sc. 1.
HAMLET.—To be, or not to be,—that is the question:— | |
| Whether ’t is nobler in the mind to suffer | |
| The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, | |
| Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, | |
| And, by opposing, end them?—To die, to sleep;— | 5 |
| No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end | |
| The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks | |
| That flesh is heir to,—’t is a consummation | |
| Devoutly to be wished. To die,—to sleep;— | |
| To sleep! perchance to dream:—ay, there ’s the rub; | 10 |
| For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, | |
| When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, | |
| Must give us pause: there ’s the respect | |
| That makes calamity of so long life; | |
| For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, | 15 |
| The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, | |
| The pains of despised love, the law’s delay, | |
| The insolence of office, and the spurns | |
| That patient merit of the unworthy takes, | |
| When he himself might his quietus make | 20 |
| With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, | |
| To grunt and sweat under a weary life, | |
| But that the dread of something after death,— | |
| The undiscovered country, from whose bourn | |
| No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, | 25 |
| And makes us rather bear those ills we have, | |
| Than fly to others that we know not of? | |
| Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; | |
| And thus the native hue of resolution | |
| Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; | 30 |
| And enterprises of great pith and moment, | |
| With this regard, their currents turn awry, | |
| And lose the name of action. | |
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