What is the meaning of Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "To be or not to be"?

After having planned how to prove the guilt of Claudius during a play performed at Elsinore, Hamlet reflects and expresses his thoughts with his famous soliloquy.

" To be or not to be, that is the question."

The prince is depressed. His life seems to be useless and painful. He can't find a reason for living as his whole existence is similar to "a sea of troubles". His father is dead and his mother has married his unworthy uncle. The situation is hopeless and Hamlet thinks that he won't be able to carry on living without taking action. He can't stand the pain. The only solution to solve all his troubles seems death.

Committing suicide and dying, he will finally find peace, but there are still some matters that need to be solved:

1-     Is it nobler suffering and resisting to all the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", or to end our painful existence by ourselves and finally find rest?

2-     Are we sure that death will bring us peace? If it is similar to a sleep, will we dream when we are death? And what kind of dreams are we supposed to have when we are no more existing?

Hamlet pose these questions but he doesn't seem to know the answers. He tries to figure out what he shall do, if he should act and end all his sufferings, or bear them. He is not sure it would be a noble action, but he seems to be willing to commit suicide, as death will be like a sleep without pain. If you are not existing, you won't neither be able to suffer. But here comes the second question. Are we sure about that? Hamlet points out that we actually don't know what will happen after life. Everything is possible, and since we are not sure that we will find something better than out present troubles, how can we tranquilly commit suicide? There is chance of worsening the whole state of affairs.

This is the main problem. If people knew for sure that death could bring us peace, miserables wouldn't bear all the "heartache and the thousand natural shocks, that flesh is heir to", but they will probably rely on death to solve all their troubles. Actually, nobody knows what will happen after death, and so we neither know if killing ourselves would be an improvement and a resolution for us.

This seem to be a great dilemma, and it can be seen as a universal question, for, as Hamlet himself says, "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 away and lose the name of action". The uncertainty of future, and the lack of knowledge about the results of all our actions is something that is always part of our lives, even when we are taking the most trivial decision, and not only when we are facing death.

If we look at it from this point of view, the soliloquy becomes more than a simple reflection of the character upon his doubts and troubles. The monologue is a general consideration about the contrast between action and inaction. It draws the attention on the frequency with whom we avoid doing something only because we are not sure about the possible consequences. Prudence stops us, preventing us to perform actions that could have positive effects, if we only had strength and will enough to try doing them.