To Be Or Not To Be

In this post, I will copy Hamlet's famous soliloquy. Subsequently, I will show how, in different ways, it is relevant both to the sixth Star Trek film and to Poul Anderson's third Man-Kzin Wars story, "Pele."

The phrases, "to be or not to be," "what dreams may come," and "the undiscovered country" have become film titles. Anderson's kzinti character, Ghrul-Captain, accuses human beings of "...contumely..." in "Pele," 10, p. 60.

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 wish'd. 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,

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'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 undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes 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 thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

-copied from here. (William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act 3, Scene 1, lines 58-90) (To find the line numbers, I had to look in a mere book!)