PAIN: physical suffering

TO SUFFER: to feel pain or great distress

SORROW: distress caused by loss, disappointment, etc. ; grief

ACHE: o have a continuous dull pain

The soliloquy starts with the sentence 'to be or not to be'; going on reading (‘that is the question’), the reader understands that the previous sentence is a question; The question is used by Shakespeare to convey the idea of doubt and, at the same time, the opposition between two different ways of reacting in front of life/fortune. The reader can understand that Hamlet reflection is about existence by considering two devices used by the poet: first of all the use of the verb ‘to be’, and in addition the use of the article ‘the’ (that underlines the centrality/importance of the matter and let the reader know that Hamlet is speaking about something that join together all human beings: existence).

At line 2, the poet goes in depth and presents the two possibilities using another question: Hamlet wonders if it’s nobler to suffer and bare an outrageous fortune or to fight against it. Hamlet’s dilemma gets always more deep and difficult to disentangle, so the tragic hero tries to consider only one of the two reactions: at line 5, the poet starts analyzing the not-to-be reaction. Death is compared to a sleep: the poet explains that when you sleep you don’t feel any ‘heartache’ or ‘natural shock’, as if you are dead. In particular, Shakespeare underlines that both pain and physical suffer end: the union of physical and psychical aspects, recalls the use of the verb ‘to be’ in the first question and the matching of words like ‘mind’ and ‘slings and arrows’ in the second one.