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"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 despised 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
traveler 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; and thus the native hue of resolution is
sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of
great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and
lose the name of action." |
