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

DREAD: terror or apprehension about the future

FEAR: a feeling of distress, apprehension, or alarm caused by impending danger, pain, etc

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 events/fortune (the whole structure of the soliloquy follows a binary-structure: to be/not to be..).

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’; both underline the centrality/importance of the matter that is something that join together all human beings: existence.

Since Hamlet is the son of the dead king, he become emblem of the Country.. so his dilemma regards, not only the personal level, but also the public one (both private level and public level are characterized by instability).

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 is getting 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.

Maybe now the reader is convinced of the positive consequences of death, but from line 9 the poet himself doubt about the conclusions he has made: ‘to die, to sleep / to sleep- perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub’. If to die is the same as to sleep, when you die you dream, but what will you dream if you ‘have shuffled off this mortal coil’? For Shakespeare, this enigma is what stops human beings when they have to take a decision. In front of a choice to take, human beings are afraid of consequences (if you don’t know the consequences, you may think you will not be able to handle the situation rationally). So even if ‘to be’ is to bear ‘the whips and scorns of time, th’ oppressor’s wrong..’ and death will mark the end of suffer and pain, human beings will always be afraid of it.