Hamlet: To Be or Not to Be
The most famous soliloquy ever written, broken into beats for memorization practice.
Good for: monologue practice, classical monologue, dramatic monologue
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1 (public domain, lightly abridged)
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Elsinore. HAMLET, alone - or believing himself alone - weighs existence itself. Broken into short beats so you can memorize and run it section by section. Speak each beat; the app follows along as you go.
Characters
- HAMLET - Prince of Denmark. Thinking the unthinkable, out loud.
Voiced by Iapetus · Premium voice
The Scene
HAMLET
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 wished.
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.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office?
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 undiscovered 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.
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How to play this scene
The beats
- It opens as a real question, not a speech: "To be, or not to be, that is the question" is a genuine weighing, quiet and interior.
- Death briefly turns attractive as rest and sleep, peaking on "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."
- The turn arrives on "to sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub," where the comfort collapses and the unknown opens underneath.
- It resolves as self-diagnosis, not despair: "conscience does make cowards of us all" names why he keeps failing to act.
Playing it
Your objective is to decide, not to perform sadness. Hamlet is genuinely trying to reason himself toward or away from ending his life, and every argument is a real attempt to settle it. The unknown of death is the opposing force: each time he leans toward the exit, "the dread of something after death" pushes back and turns the thought around. Keep it private, because he believes he is alone, and let the conclusion be exhaustion rather than a decision.
Common mistakes
- Playing generalized melancholy from the first word instead of a live question being asked for the first time.
- Reciting the famous phrases as a greatest-hits performance rather than following one continuous thought.
- Landing on suicide as the point, when the speech is really about why he cannot bring himself to act.
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