Enjoy a journey through four centuries of Shakespeare in the English language, led by Professor David Crystal and Ben Crystal's Passion in Practice Players.
To be, or not to be
Hamlet:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troublesAnd by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummationDevoutly 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 respectThat makes calamity of so long life.For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,The insolence of office, and the spurnsThat patient merit of th'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 undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,And makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pitch and momentWith this regard their currents turn awryAnd lose the name of action.
