What is the matter in these lines?? act 3 sc.1

Good Evening
I want to know :
what is the matter in this speech ??
What are these lines refer to??
what is the meaning of these lines ??
\
please answer me and tell me

http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/hamlet/9/

Enter HAMLET

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 wish'd. 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: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
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 and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
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 undiscover'd 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
thank you very much

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These thoughts from Hamlet is one of the main points in the play that show the emotional turmoil going on inside Hamlet. It shows a person strong in mind but having trouble with the trials before him. It shows a man who because of the situations arising around him is falling into depression and looking for an easy solution. This is a very simple translation of what he is thinking of to himself. It's basic, no opinion here. You make your opinion about it afterwards. ------The question I ask myself is should I live or not live? Is it better to suffer just in my mind all the toils, tribulations and hardships of life or should I do something outwardly to oppose them. Hoping that if I take outward action it would stop these problems. To die; to sleep; no to live. When I die does that mean that it ends these hardships? Do I live in peace afterwards? Do I think about dying because I hope there will be a better life afterwards? What people fear about death is that there will be nothing afterwards, no better life just nothing. (no chance to dream.) This is why people don't commit suicide easily. If we knew for a fact that a better life would come after death the majority would kill themselves easily. Make peace come for ourselves. "when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin" If we knew this who would want to bear the troubles of life if it was simple to kill yourself and know you'd be at peace? Why do we go on living this tough life with all these ups and downs? Because we are scared of what comes after death because we see nobody coming back from it. It is unknown to us what happens after death so we decide to live this life with all of it's faults rather than to chance dying and life afterwards being worse than this life or worse yet no life, disintegration of the soul. We know not of anything after death so we do not chance it. Therefore because of these wonderings we become cowards, our thoughts override our decisions. We fear oblivion after life so much that we don't kill ourselves and instead live this hard, unrelenting life. -----Hamlet is basically wondering if he should commit suicide. The main difference I see here is that to any regular person wondering about life after death is that most believe it is cowardice to end your life because there are too many problems that you can't handle yourself. Hamlet on the other hand wonders if it makes him a coward if he doesn't do it. Wondering at the fear of disappearing into nothing that takes over him scaring him into not doing it. All he's looking for is a better, more peaceful life. He's looking for a solution. Something that can help him find his sanity and peace again. You can make your own opinion on this idea but this speech basically opens your eyes to how Hamlet is trying to cope and because it shows how he's thinking it gives insight into his charachter. Hope this helps.

thats a very good explanation.

"To be or not to be..." "...so like the king that was and is the question of these wars"

Hamlet ... And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered...

What is the necessary question of Hamlet? When the “clowns speak”, it is “then to be considered.”

First Clown
Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
Second Clown
But is this law?
First Clown
Ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law.

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?

If Hamlet took arms against the king (a sea of troubles), he would very likely lose his own life in the attempt. Such an action might be considered suicide, which would cost Hamlet his soul. However if he waits for the king to initiate the attack (if the water come to him), then he is not guilty of his own death. The king didn’t try to kill Hamlet until after Hamlet tried to kill the king (but killed Polonius by mistake). In the end, Hamlet killed the king only after the King had indirectly killed Hamlet (via Laertes’ poisoned sword).

Before we leave the clowns, let’s dig a little deeper.

Hamlet
How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
First Clown
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
Hamlet.
How long is that since?
First Clown
Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born

Was this then Hamlet's "inheritance" - a graveyard?

Hamlet (standing over a grave)
The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

To be or not to be -- what? That is the question. After Horatio had explained that the impending war was caused by a duel over land fought by Hamlet's father, whose ghost they had just seen, Bernardo replied:

I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.

To be or not to be... so like the king that was and is the question of these wars - that is Hamlet’s dilemma.
- Ray

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

These lines mean that thinking kills initiative, and thus pithy and momentous undertakings are turned aside, or otherwise slowed and ruined, losing their resolve and will to continue.

Whether he would consider suicide a momentous undertaking is uncertain. His words might be a commentary on the state of things, in general. An underlying current of decay permeates the entire drama, moral decay, physical decay, political decay.

Jagtig

I was delighted to find this discussion of Hamlet’s soliloquy – and I am very impressed with the interpretation put forward here, which is mainly a reading of the soliloquy from the viewpoint that Hamlet is considering suicide.

I am very interested in presenting this view of suicide and supporting it in response to other theories/readings of the soliloquy which present alternative interpretations of it.
For example, consider these points against the view that Hamlet is contemplating suicide. How would you debate them? How would you oppose the view that the line ‘To be or not to be…’ is:
• about revenge,
• or about a metaphysical question
• or that Hamlet as an intellectual is simply pondering upon the notion of suicide and not actually considering carrying it out
• or that he is just being a ‘wuss’ and is just saying what we all tend to say when we get fed up with things, i.e. ‘Oh, I wish it would all just go away, if only I didn’t have to face it, wouldn’t it be great if I could just escape all this, etc…
• he is just being philosophical, etc.


Also, what would you say in response to this quote?

‘Is it any nobler, Hamlet asks, to endure evil passively, as all the voices of Church and State and society have insisted, or does the true nobility of that which is man demand that he actively fight and conquer evil that beset him? Can it really be virtue to sit back and leave it to Heaven? On one level, we are debating the morality of private revenge, but on another we are thrown headlong into the metaphysical dilemma of the Renaissance…’ (see full extract at bottom of page).

How would you re-assert the suicide theory/reading of the soliloquy in response to the above opposition?

I would really appreciate your views –anything at all is welcome. I am researching for a discussion of the soliloquy and although my role is to present a reading of the soliloquy from the suicide theory, I need to consider the opposition and then counter-argue. The presentation is on Wednesday, so I have very little time, and although I have carried out other research, I feel that discussion here would be valuable in indicating other counter-argument approaches. So any response at all is welcome. Thanks.




"To be or not to be..."

This page looks at Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be or not to be...". (Source Unknown)

"The major question in 'To be or not to be' cannot be suicide. If it were, as many have noted, it would be dramatically irrelevant. Hamlet is no longer sunk in the depths of melancholy, as he was in his first soliloquy. He has been roused to action and has just discovered how to test the Ghost's words. When we last saw him, only five minutes before, he was anticipating the night's performance, and in only a few moments we shall see him eagerly instructing the players and excitedly telling Horatio of his plan. To have him enter at this point debating whether or not to kill himself would indeed be wholly inconsistent with both the character and the movement of the plot. The metaphors all suggest that Hamlet's choice is between suffering the ills of this world and taking resolute action against them, not between enduring evil and evading it.
A further objection to the suicide theory, one that may be even more significant in its implications, is the form of the question Hamlet puts to himself. He states his dilemma as "to be or not to be"- not as "to live or not to live." the issue, as he sees it is not between mere temporal existence and non-existence, but between "being" and "non-being." In other words, he is struggling with a metaphysical issue: not the narrow personal question of whether he, an individual man, should kill himself, but the wider philosophical question of man's essence.
Hamlet is facing the moral question that has too long been thought irrelevant to the play: whether or not he should effect private revenge..
"To be"- what? To be a man , in the full metaphysical sense of "being" as it was understood by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. "Being" is what a thing is, its essence, that which defines it. "Or not to be." There is no middle position. A thing is or it is not. The first line of the soliloquy, so often droned in a tone of meditative musing, should be spoken as an insistent, emphatic, even passionate demand. The whole moral question is focused in this challenge.
Is it any nobler, Hamlet asks, to endure evil passively, as all the voices of Church and State and society have insisted, or does the true nobility of that which is man demand that he actively fight and conquer evil that beset him? Can it really be virtue to sit back and leave it to Heaven? On one level, we are debating the morality of private revenge, but on another we are thrown headlong into the metaphysical dilemma of the Renaissance.
Hamlet is trapped between two worlds. The moral code from which he cannot escape is basically medieval, but his instincts are with the Renaissance. Shocked from his unthinking acceptance of the commandments of Church and State, he is forced to find a new orientation. Can God have created man a thinking creature and yet have ordered him not to use the very faculty that raises him above the animals? What is it "to be"?''

To be or not to be means to decided whether you
should love someone or not.that is the question.
This is a matter of someone looking for love to
liturally save them as of course life is to hard to
live for ones self. So to quickly answer your question
Hamlet is in a lose lose situation unless he concours the
enemy within himself, it is then he can move on and
truly love someone.