My Featured Poem

To Be Or Not To Be

- A soliloquy from William Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet'

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 wished.

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 pangs of disprized 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 undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And make 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 Is sicklied o'er

With the pale cast of thought

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn away,

And lose the name of action.

I. About the Poem

"To Be Or Not To Be" is the most famous lines in Hamlet.
"Hamlet" is a drama that can be variously interpreted by the person's point of view.
"Hamlet" was written by William Shakespeare around 1600.

Works Cited （参考文献）

"To Be Or Not To Be" Wikipedia. 19 Oct. 2016. 

<https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%8F%E3%83%A0%E3%83%AC%E3%83%83%E3%83%88>

II. About the Author

William Shakespeare(26 April 1564 - 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
He wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth", considered some of the finest works in the English language. 

Works Cited （参考文献）

"William Shakespeare" Wikipedia. 19 Oct. 2016. 

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare>

IV. My Reaction

A. Reaction Point - Symbolism(象徴性)

In this poem, Shakespeare uses symbolism.
Symbolism is used when something represents more than itself.
"To die, to sleep" is used several times. It expresses a symbol.

B. Reaction Point - Form(形式)

In this poem, Shakespeare uses form.
For example,there are "And by~" and "And make~", "And is~", "And enterprises" in this poem.
He uses some "AND" at the beginning of a line.
You become easy to read by it.

C. Reaction Point - Appeal(魅力)

In this poem, There is appeal point.
Appeal is attractiveness that interests or pleases or stimulates.
Appeal point is "To be, or not to be". We get it in various meanings. For example, this means is "You should live, or should I die?" or "You should achieve revenge of father, or is it not so?" It is appeal not to be bound by one interpretation.

D. My General Opinion
I like this poem very much because this poem is thoughtful and interesting. And this poem is very famous poem. I thought that he had unique power of expression to attract the person who read. I thought that he expressed human psychology by various words. It will be unforgettable once if people read this poetry.