“To be or not to be?” – the main issue of the play “Hamlet” by V. Shakespeare


“To be or not to be?” – a question that has always stood in front of people: to resist evil or to reconcile with it? try to change the world in which injustice triumphs, or live peacefully in it? But for the first time it was so clearly and definitely formulated by the great Shakespeare in the tragedy Hamlet. This question is put in the mouth of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark:

To be or not to be is the question;
What noble spirit is to submit to the
Sling and the arrows of a furious fate?
Or, when they fight against the sea of ​​troubles, fight them with
Confrontation?

Before Hamlet there is a difficult choice, and he does it – “it encounters a sea of ​​trouble.” The prince suffered a lot of grief: his father died, and his mother, Dowager Queen Gertrude, marries Uncle Hamlet Claudius, as they say, without having had time to wear shoes. Hamlet is the ghost of the deceased father and reveals a terrible secret:

the king did not die by his death, but was poisoned by Claudius, who poured into his ear the juice of bleached. Thus, Gertrude married the murderer of her husband. “To be or not to be?” The prince decides to avenge the death of his father, but the desire to repay the murderer properly merge for Hamlet with the duty to remake the world arranged so unfairly. He understands the impossibility of this task, and this discord between the dream and reality torments him. Hamlet pretends to be crazy.

… What does a person mean,
When his cherished desires –
Food and sleep? Animal – that’s all.

Hamlet invites to the castle a troupe of stray actors who must play the scene of the murder of the king. At the presentation there are Claudius and Gertrude. And Claudius himself exposes himself.

Hamlet triumphs – he hit the mark. Now he must bring his personal revenge to the end. Now there are no ways for him to reconcile. The problem of “To be or not to be?” finally solved. “Being” for Hamlet means acting in accordance with one’s

beliefs and faith.

Throughout the tragedy Hamlet suffers, suffers, searches for the truth. It seems to him that everyone has betrayed him – mother, and beloved woman, he suspects of treachery and his friend. Evil is overrun by the castle of Elsinore. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, taking him for King Claudius. Ophelia is going mad and dying. Her brother Laertes summons Hamlet to a duel and pierces him with a poisoned sword. Before his death, Hamlet kills the king; the queen is poisoned. Revenge was accomplished. But both sides are defeated. However, the victory still remained for Hamlet, as he exposed evil.

“The strength of Hamlet is not that he solved the problem, but that he raised the question of the injustice of the world around him,” wrote Belinsky about this Shakespearean hero.


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“To be or not to be?” – the main issue of the play “Hamlet” by V. Shakespeare