Hamlet

This past week in Mrs. Clinch’s, we were assigned to write a rough draft of the play Hamlet. I chose to write about the word phrase “to be.” One aspect I spoke about was a version of the word ‘to be,’ to seem.
To seem – to appear to be, feel, or do. This word is used many times within the play as well, but only in specific areas. For example, Horatio uses the word ‘seem’ when he sees the ghost. The ghost “seemed” to look like the king. Shakespeare very cleverly did not use ‘be,’ because the definition of ‘to be’ is to live and exist. Since the ghost is dead, he cannot ‘be.’ Furthermore, ‘seem’ is a very passive, unconfident word. It very much like the word ‘may.’ “May I leave?” instead of “I will leave.” Similarly, the word ‘seem’ is used during questions or moments that are unsure or times that do not relate to life. “To be” is story of Hamlet.
Returning to the “To be or not to be” speech, Hamlet's dilemma is that although he is dissatisfied with life and lists its many torments, he is unsure what death may bring. He can't be sure what death has in store; it may be sleep but in perchance to dream he is speculating that it is perhaps an experience worse than life. Death is called the undiscovered country from which no traveler returns. In saying that Hamlet is acknowledging that, not only does each living person discover death for themselves, as no one can return from it to describe it, but also that suicide as a one-way ticket. If you get the judgment call wrong, there's no way back.
The whole speech is tinged with the Christian prohibition of suicide, although it isn't mentioned explicitly. The dread of something after death would have been well understood by a Tudor audience to mean the fires of Hell. The speech is a subtle and profound examining of what is more crudely expressed in the phrase ‘out of the frying pan into the fire.’
If you follow Hamlet's speech carefully, you'll notice that his notions of "being" and "not being" are pretty complex. He doesn't simply ask whether life or death is preferable; it's hard to clearly distinguish the two—"being" comes to look a lot like "not being," and vice versa. To be, in Hamlet's eyes, is a passive state, to "suffer" outrageous fortune's blows, while not being is the action of opposing those blows. Living is, in effect, a kind of slow death, a submission to fortune's power. On the other hand, death is initiated by a life of action, rushing armed against a sea of troubles.