To Be or Not to Be

✍ Scribed by Douglas Bruster

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 125
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy is quoted more often than any other passage in Shakespeare. It is arguably the most famous speech in the Western world – though few of us can remember much about it. This book carefully unpacks the individual words, phrases and sentences of Hamlet’s soliloquy in order to reveal how and why it has achieved its remarkable hold on our culture. Hamlet’s speech asks us to ask some of the most serious questions there are regarding knowledge and existence. In it, Shakespeare also expands the limits of the English language. Douglas Bruster therefore reads Hamlet’s famous speech in “slow motion” to highlight its material, philosophical and cultural meaning and its resonance for generations of actors, playgoers and readers.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
General Editors' Preface
1 In the Shakespeare Museum
2 What are the Questions?
3 There's the Rub
4 How Does it Mean? (The Speech as Poem)
5 The Name of Action (The Speech in Context)
6 Not One Speech but Three, or There's the Point'
7 Consummation (Some Conclusions)
8 Acknowledgments and Further Reading
Index