Hamlet's Aside

Hamlet's Aside by William Shakespeare is a speech within his play Hamlet, and is thought by some to be the best work ever written. It deals with the life and death of man, and how he fights with his feelings towards their unfairness.

An overbringing of Hamlet's Aside
To be, or not to be – that is the asking: Whether ‘tis worthier in the mind to bear The slings and arrows of unbound mishap Or to take fight against a sea of worries And by gainstanding end them. To die, to sleep – No more – and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand worldly blows That flesh is born to. ‘Tis an ending Dearly to be wished. To die, to sleep – To sleep – maybe to dream: ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shed our living body, Must make us stop. There’s the thought That makes wretchedness of so long life. For who would bear the whips and slights of time, Th’ overlord’s wrong, the strutter’s cockiness The wrench of unanswered love, the law’s sloth, The brazenness of might, and the spurns That forbearing goodness of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his settling make With a bare bradawl? Who would burdens bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that dread of something after death, The shrouded land, from whose bosom No wayfarer comes home, upsets the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than to fly to others we know not of? Thus awareness does make chickens of us all, And thus the inborn hue of a strong will Is sicklied o’er with the wan cast of thought, And undertakings of great worth and weight Upon this heed their flood eddies and ebbs And lose the name of doing. – Soft thee now, The fair Ophelia! – Nymph, in thy beseeching Bear all my sins in mind.