SOURCE: Jenkins, Harold. “‘To be, or not to be’: Hamlet's Dilemma.” Hamlet Studies 13, nos. 1 and 2 (summer and winter 1991): 8-24.

The following essay is the text of a lecture delivered in Delhi, India, in December 1989. Jenkins offers a close reading of the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy, remarking on the development of its argument and its lack of reference to Hamlet's particular circumstances, and providing a useful summary of commentary on this speech over the centuries. Importantly, he relates the quandary Hamlet expresses—whether one should free oneself from human existence or endure it—to the play's themes of humanity's dual nature, both godlike and bestial, and the equivocal nature of revenge, which can be both righteous and sinful.

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...