Hamlet’s monologue (act III, scene I) starts with a question: “To be or not to be” and with this internal speech the protagonist wants to show his intimate feelings.

Hamlet is thinking about existence and with the initial question he asks himself what is better to do: to live or to die. But the verb to live implies the existence and so, not only survive, but understand the meanings of life and have consciousness of what it provides. On the other hand Shakespeare compares death to a long sleep where people have no thoughts in the mind and they cannot perceive the world around them.

By using the infinitive form of the verb, Hamlet makes us understand that this is an universal theme and that everybody in the world, still nowadays, is posing this question.

Going on with the monologue Hamlet expresses his doubts, he does not know what is the best to do for himself, if it is better to suffer in the mind and bear consequences of a negative fortune, or to fight problems and try to end them. Expressing these doubts Hamlet uses repetitions of some sounds as “r” and “s” that express the difficulty of living and he also uses some words taken from the semantic area of war, this means that life is a sort of war, but he compares life also to a sea of troubles, a tempest in the ocean.