To be or not to be. What is the question?

[Ray Eston Smith]

http://www.thyorisons.com/#To_be - To Be Or Not To Be

To be or not to be WHAT? THAT is the question.

Hamlet is not agonizing over whether to live or die - he is agonizing over how to avoid damnation.

Hamlet feels bound by filial duty to try to kill King Claudius. To kill a king is a dangerous thing - he is likely to die in the attempt, but Hamlet does not fear death:

HAMLET (Act 1, Scene 4, lines 70-73)
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life in a pin's fee;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?

However, he does fear damnation:

HAMLET (Act 2, Scene 2, lines 609-614)
The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me:

Trying to kill a king might be considered a suicide mission and suicide is a mortal sin. Attempting to kill a king would be like taking "arms against a SEA of troubles."

First Clown (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 15-20)
. . . .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

But suppose Hamlet succeeds in killing the king. Would that also be a sin? It would depend on his motives. Was he killing to defend the Danish people against a murderous tyrant?

HAMLET (Act 5, Scene 2, lines 73-75)
. . . . is't not to be damn'd,
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?

Or is "this canker of our nature" Hamlet's own ambition?

HAMLET (Act 3, Scene 1, line 73-74)
To sleep: perchance to DREAM: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what DREAMS may come

HAMLET (Act 2, Scene 2, lines 268-271)
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have BAD DREAMS.
GUILDENSTERN
Which DREAMS indeed ARE AMBITION.

If Hamlet kills Claudius out of ambition, he will inherit the same blood-soaked ground that doomed both his uncle and his father to damnation.

A gravedigger was hired on the very day that Hamlet emerged from his mother's womb, which was the same day his father put old Fortinbras into the "womb of earth" (his grave), thus acquiring land "THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars" and which was Hamlet's inheritance, figuratively a graveyard, not big enough to cover the dead from the impending war.

BERNARDO (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 121-124)
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.

That was Hamlet's dilemma - whether "TO BE OR NOT TO BE," like the Ghost, "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars."

[Cunninglinguist]

You have hit on something here, but I think it's deeper than that. Hamlet is doing both, and, methinks, what state of being the word "be" refers to is purposefully ambiguous so that both interpretations are sound.

Ultimately, he's trying to measure the value of damnation itself to determine what course of action he should take. Whether he should "be" dead or alive, and whether he should "be" a ghost like his father. And, from this readers perspective, the ambivalent meanings echo Hamlet's ambivalent attitude towards value (his most defining characteristic) throughout the play.

[Gladys]

Hamlet is not agonizing over whether to live or die - he is agonizing over how to avoid damnation...

That was Hamlet's dilemma - whether "TO BE OR NOT TO BE," like the Ghost, "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars."

Is Hamlet's question: To be or not to be like his warrior father or instead to be (to live) or, as a ghost like his father, not to be? If so what are we to make of:

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...

Avenging the murder of his father scarcely makes Hamlet either a warrior king or his father's son, although it may make him a damned ghost, in as much as "Vengeance is mine; I will repay," saith the Lord.

But why connect not to be with an infernal ghost rather than a heavenly being and a positive outcome for Hamlet?