What Does To Be Or Not To Be Mean

I think
it is entirely possible that Shakespeare wrote the To be or not to beas a separate piece
expressing his own personal feelings about life and death and then put it away in the bottom
drawer, as writers will do, until he found a convenient spot for it when he was writing his play
. What is important in this soliloquy, and what explains its great
popularity, is the truths it tells about human existence, not what it reveals about the
character of the moody Prince. We have all personally experienced some of the slings and
arrowscomplains about, just by being alive and having to deal with people and struggle to keep a
niche in the crowded, competitive world. And we have all felt discouraged and wondered whether
existence was really worth the trouble.

If we havent experienced all the
slings and arrows personally, we have seen others suffering and have wondered why some people
will continue to cling to life when they get nothing out of it but hard work and suffering. If
we live in a city we commonly see people who are totally blind trying to find their way by
feeling the pavement with long white canes. We see men sleeping in doorways on the cold
concrete. We see men rummaging through dumpsters and trash receptacles trying to gather a few
cans and bottles they can sell for enough to live on for one more day. We see all sorts of
ugliness and deformity. We see old people hobbling along, hoping to survive just a little bit
longer, although they have nobody to care whether they live or die.

Shakespeare itemizes some of the negative aspects of human existence in this soliloquy.
They deserve more attention than the worn-out questions of what Hamlet is really thinking about
or whether he is really contemplating suicide. We have all personally experienced the proud
mans contumely, the pangs of despised love, and the insolence of office (if only at the
Department of Motor Vehicles).

Charles Dickenss novels offer excellent
examples of some of the outrageous fortune which Hamlet summarizes in just a few lines. In his
novel Bleak House, Dickens describes the effects of the laws delay in the
interminable case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, during which the lawyers of his day, like a flock of
vultures, picked the estate clean and left nothing but the bare bones. In his novel
Little Dorrit, Dickens illustrates the proud mans contumely and the
insolence of office in hisdealings with the Circumlocution Office. In that great novel, his
character Daniel Doyce, who has been trying for years to patent an invention, is an example of
the spurns that patient merit of th unworthy takes, while both Little Dorrit, who loves Arthur
Clennam, and Arthur Clennam, who loves "Pet" Meagles, offer good examples of the
pangs of despised love.

Shakespeare was probably talking for himself when he
wrote those famous lines beginning with To be, or not to be. He had had a rough life and
knewbetter than any spoiled prince--what it was like to have to struggle for survival in a
brutal city like London of the sixteenth century. How could he have written them
otherwise?