In Act III, scene I, there is the most famous soliloquy in all Shakespeare's works: to be or not to be. First of all, a soliloquy is a tool used by the playwright in order to make the audience listen to the character's most inner thoughts. In the scene, before Hamlet enters, Claudius and Polonius decide to spy on him in order to discover the real cause of Hamlet's madness.

Analysing the monologue into depth, the protagonist starts posing a question: "to be, or not to be". Interesting is to notice that Shakespeare did not use the word "problem" but "question", focusing the reader's attention on what Hamlet has to do. The use of the sentence " to be, or not to be", instead of "to live or die", makes us understand that Hamlet's doubt goes beyond the physical meaning of living and dying, because he takes into consideration the human beings' existence on the world. In addition to this, you can notice that Shakespeare underlines the great difference between living or dying by associating them in an antitheses. Such rhetorical device is creating by the conjunction "or".

Then, he analyses what going on living means, and he finds out that there are two choices of life, that is " to suffer the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune" or "take arms against a sea of troubles". However, it comes clearly to surface that Hamlet has a negative judgment of life. Indeed it is described as " a sea of troubles"( hyperbole) and a never-ending fight against the fate. Such interpretation is highlighted by words belonging to the semantic field of war, like "slings", "arrows", "take arms", "troubles" and by the harsh discordant sound of "r" in words like "arrows", "arms", "suffer", "outrageous". Interesting is to notice that the choices of living constitute another antitheses, again obtained by using the conjunction "or".

After that, Hamlet takes into consideration what dying may mean: death is seen as a long sleep "to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to". So he thinks that it is the only way to put an end to all humans troubles. This is underlines by the association "to die, to sleep" and by the long vowel sounds in word like "sleep", "heart", "say", "by", "die", which convey to the reader a sense of eternal peace. But suddenly, the positive vision of the death is quickly broken( "ay, there's the rub"). Indeed the protagonist says that sleeping may imply dreaming. And in dreaming you cannot know if you will face a beautiful dream or a nightmare. So, according to Hamlet, this is the only thing that makes people think very well, "must give us pause", before committing suicide. At the same time, however, he considers again the effort of living. In particular, such interpretation is given by the sentence "that makes calamity of so long life",whose final words "life" rhymes with the word "time", in order to affirm that time is the strongest enemy human beings has to face, which is also underlined by the expression "mortal coil"( periphrasis that states for "body"). Troubles are also seen as something with more power than human beings, and Shakespeare put it into a better focus by quoting examples by all-day life: "th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man' contumely, the pangs of despis'd love,...".

Summing up, I think that Hamlet is not referring only to his personal existence, so he becomes the paradigm of the human being who has to make a choice, one with his or her fears, that may prevent him or her to take the right decision.