Good evening and welcome once again to brush up your Shakespeare where we make Shakespeare fun and easy the way it was always meant to be this is episode 12 and today we will be covering the most famous soliloquy in the English language to be or not to be from Hamlet Act 3, scene 1.

In the soliloquy, Hamlet takes up the sensitive subject of suicide. But he does so as a mental exercise,

examining whether he should kill himself as a question to be answered by balancing the

pros and cons of the proposition. Hamlet considers the proposition not so much from the

heart, though obviously it is his suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous

fortune that brings him to this point, but he is clear that his main focus has to do with intellectual aspects of the issue, or as

Hamlet puts it, in the mind.

We have all heard the old saying, look before you leap leap and it is just as likely we have heard

the opposite advice given in another saying he who hesitates is lost we certainly

should consider our actions before we take them, but on the other hand,

if we consider too long, the opportunity may have fled.

Leaving the question of what is the golden mean between these two sayings, Hamlet clearly

falls heavily on the side of looking before you leap. He considers every angle and every possible permutation of many deep issues

central to the human condition. And for this, we are grateful as an audience. But when it comes to fulfilling his vow to avenge his father's

murder, remember, that's what this play is about. He is something less than Johnny on the

spot. We will now go to the soliloquy itself and work our way through it with a few clarifications of terms and then after that I'll have a go at performing it for you.

So here we have Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1, the To Be or Not To Be,

Soliloquy.

So of course, Hamlet is speaking and it begins to be or not to be who doesn't know those

lines to be or not to be it's as famous as the opening notes of Beethoven's fifth

symphony done done done but for Shakespeare, it's

to be or not to be, to exist or not to exist.

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