38 Days / 38 Plays Challenge: HAMLET

The Play of the Day is HAMLET! #ASC38plays

Did you know that the first quarto of Hamlet, printed in 1603, is significantly shorter and contains many variations from the Hamlet that appears in the First Folio of 1623?

One of the variations occurs with Hamlet’s famous speech during Act 3, scene 1. The Folio version reads:

To be, or not to be, that is the Question:

Whether ’tis Nobler in the minde to suffer

The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,

Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe

No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end

The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes

That Flesh is heyre too? ‘Tis a consummation

Deuoutly to be wish’d. To dye to sleepe,

To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there’s the rub,

For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,

When we haue shufflel’d off this mortall coile,

Must giue vs pawse. There’s the respect

That makes Calamity of so long life:

For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,

The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d Loue, the Lawes delay,

The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes

That patient merit of the vnworthy takes,

When he himselfe might his Quietus make

With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare

To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne

No Traueller returnes, Puzels the will,

And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue,

Then flye to others that we know not of.

Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all,

And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution

Is sicklied o’re, with the pale cast of Thought,

And enterprizes of great pith and moment,

With this regard their Currants turne away,

And loose the name of Action. Soft you now,

The faire Ophelia? Nimph, in thy Orizons

Be all my sinnes remembred.

The First Quarto (Q1) offers a remarkably different version of Hamlet’s rumination on life and death:

To be, or not to be, I there’s the point,

To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:

No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,

For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,

And borne before an euerlasting Iudge,

From whence no passenger euer retur’nd,

The vndiscouered country, at whose sight

The happy smile, and the accursed damn’d.

But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,

Whol’d beare the scornes and flattery of the world,

Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?

The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong’d,

The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne,

And thousand more calamities besides,

To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life,

When that he may his full Quietus make,

With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,

But for a hope of something after death?

Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence,

Which makes vs rather beare those euilles we haue,

Than flie to others that we know not of.

I that, O this conscience makes cowardes of vs all,

Lady in thy orizons, be all my sinnes remembred.

What do you think of the differences between these two speeches? In which speech does Hamlet seem more concerned with his own mortality? Does Hamlet seem more or less decisive in one version over the other?   Share your thoughts and tag your own posts with #ASC38plays to join the conversation.