Page:Hamlet (1917) Yale.djvu/78

66  Ham. 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 dispriz'd 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;

 59 take troubles; cf. n.

65 rub: obstacle

67 shuffled off: sloughed off

mortal coil: turmoil of mortal life

68 give us pause: cause us to hesitate

respect: consideration

72 dispriz’d: held in contempt

73 office: people holding official position

spurns: insults

75 quietus: release from life

76 bare: unsheathed, or, small

bodkin: dagger

fardels: burdens

79 bourn: boundary

83 conscience: sense of right and wrong (?), or, thought of consequences

