Comprehension

1-4)Hamlet describes life as a continuous suffering fight, in Hamlet opinion’s life is to bear:

whips and scorns of time, oppressors' wrongs, proud man contumely, pains of despised love,  scorn of time, delay in applying the laws, insolence of powerful people towards subjects, disdain of unworthy people towards the merits of patient people.

2)Hamlet describes death as a long and infinite sleep and a moment of peace and quiet from life’s suffering; but sleeping means also dreaming, so people don’t know what they may dream.

3) Fear of what may happens when everyone dies stop Hamlet to commit suicide.

5)Everyone doesn’t know suffering in afterlife and so he couldn’t go back if he wanted.

6) The choice to go on living is due to fear of The undiscover’d country, indeed we don’t know what may happen to us when we die, we can note this from line 24^th :

 But that the dread of something after death, 
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

so we haven’t courage enough and we don’t act and from line 28^th we can note this:

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,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

7) As a result everyone’s conscience and thoughts take man to inaction, so the tragedy presents the theme of procrastination; Hamlet don’t commit suicide and he don’t avenge his father because he is not able to take decision and to face life’s obstacles.

Interpretation

1)Hamlet is thinking about himself, and debating whether or not he should commit suicide.  He wonders whether it is nobler to suffer all life’s hardship or fight against them. He sees death as sleep, and he is apprehensive of what may happen after death. This is what stops people from committing suicide.

Hamlet hasn’t only fear of afterlife, but if he commit suicide he is sure not to go to paradise, indeed suicide is considered like a sin; so he is stopped by fear of unknown death and fear of God’s punishment. As a result he is unable to act and he prefers to go on living. So Hamlet knows if he does a sin, he won’t go to paradise.     

2)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis 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; 
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; 
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, 
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, 
The pangs of dispriz’d 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
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 undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
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,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Shakespeare uses more times the words to be, to die, to live, to sleep, to dreams, death, life, to bear; the first repetition of to be presents the antitheses to be or not to be, Hamlet’s monologue is a continuous searching of answers about to be and not to be, to live and to die.

The repetitions gives a sense of not conclusion, Hamlet isn’t able to find answers about life, but also about death, he is evaluating pros and cons of to go on living or to put an end to his life but he seems to more doubts than before. The antitheses underlines the evident opposition of death and life, between to bear suffering or to put an end to pain, between known life and unknown death.

3) Polonius and Claudius organized Hamlet and Ophelia’s meeting, when they heard Hamlet is coming they hide behind him and Ophelia. In my opinion Hamlet is aware to be spied indeed he had already asked to Guildstern and Rosenctratz if they was called from  his relatives to understand his behavior. In the next scene he will show his madness, he will refuse Ophelia’s love.