It always is fascinating to hear what others' perspectives are on various typing systems. I have tendency to get stuck or just have a very black and black "it's this or wrong" mentally, so I love it when I get hit over the head with hammer basically, be it directly/intentionally or not.
Is it nobler to suffer through all the terrible things
fate throws at you, or to fight off your troubles,
and, in doing so, end them completely?
To die, to sleep—because that’s all dying is—
and by a sleep I mean an end to all the heartache
and the thousand injuries that we are vulnerable to—
that’s an end to be wished for!
To die, to sleep. To sleep, perhaps to dream—yes,
but there’s there’s the catch. Because the kinds of
dreams that might come in that sleep of death—
after you have left behind your mortal body—
are something to make you anxious.
That’s the consideration that makes us suffer
the calamities of life for so long.
Because who would bear all the trials and tribulations of time—
the oppression of the powerful, the insults from arrogant men,
the pangs of unrequited love, the slowness of justice,
the disrespect of people in office,
and the general abuse of good people by bad—
when you could just settle all your debts
using nothing more than an unsheathed dagger?
Who would bear his burdens, and grunt
and sweat through a tiring life, if they weren’t frightened
of what might happen after death—
that undiscovered country from which no visitor returns,
which we wonder about and which makes us
prefer the troubles we know rather than fly off
to face the ones we don’t? Thus, the fear of
death makes us all cowards, and our natural
willingness to act is made weak by too much thinking.
Actions of great urgency and importance
get thrown off course because of this sort of thinking,
and they cease to be actions at all.
But wait, here is the beautiful Ophelia!
[To OPHELIA] Beauty, may you forgive all my sins in your prayers
Hamlet's soliloquy contains some of the best-known words that Shakespeare ever wrote: 'to be or not to be.' Here are some features of Hamlet
the meaning in a nutshell:
The “To be or not to be” soliloquy appears in the third act of Hamlet. In this scene, Hamlet thinks about life, death and suicide, more specifically, he wonders whether it might be preferable to commit suicide to end one's suffering and to leave behind the pain and agony associated with living.
In the first line, he wonders whether “to be, or not to be”, but in reality he is wondering whether to live or die. Hamlet poses this as a question for all of humanity rather than for only himself. He begins by asking whether it is better to passively put up with life’s pains or commit suicide.
Hamlet initially argues that death would indeed be preferable: he compares the act of dying to a peaceful sleep. In fact, from his point of view, if death is but a sleep, and dying is just like falling asleep, then perhaps we will dream after death.
He thinks it is better to die because a man has to bear many miseries an injustices, such as the passage of time, abuse, discrimination, the outrage of the proud man, the pain of unreturned love, the inefficiency of the legal system, the arrogance of people in power and the mistreatment of evil people.
Hamlet views death and the afterlife as a peaceful liberation from the never-ending agony of our life, but, deep down, Hamlet does not believe in a true “afterlife”. After seeing the sins of man, he has a hard time believing that we deserve such a fate and seems to almost hope that all that awaits is peaceful nothingness.
However, he quickly changes his mind when he considers that nobody knows for sure what happens after death, or whether there is an afterlife and whether this afterlife might be even worse than life. This realization is the reason why Hamlet delays things.
In the end, the whole meaning is that humans are so fearful of what comes after death and the possibility that it might be more miserable than our life. If life means suffering, it is better to die, but it is not easy because conscience makes us cowards.
The function of the soliloquy is for the audience to develop a further understanding of a character’s thoughts and reflect about life and death. Hamlet appears darkfull, tormented and wants to analyze the complexity of life and death.
the 4 temperaments/humours:
The play can be read as a study of “melancholia”, a term used in the Renaissance to say a form of depression. This term was based on the theory of the 4 temperaments or humours.
For centuries, starting in ancient Greece, doctors believed that the body contained 4 fluids or “humours” and that good health and temperament depended on their balance. An imbalance of “black bile” was believed to cause sadness, in fact the term “melancholia” comes from “melaina kole”, which means black bile. There is also a long tradition of studies devoted to understanding the value of sadness: in The Anatomy of Melancholic, from 1621, Robert Burton analysed the causes and manifestations of sadness. He saw sadness, not only as an inevitable part of life, but an essential part of being human and he also believed that wise people feel more sorrow and that melancholy is necessary to achieve wisdom.
Hamlet:
Hamlet has to avenge the murder of his father, but he fails to keep his promises to him until the final act, but he does impulsively because of his anger.
Most critics have drawn the conclusion that is caused by Hamlet’s habit of delaying things. He says he is afflicted by a form of depression, which was called “melancholy” in Shakespeare’s day and is caused by a series of shocking events (such as his father’s death and his mother’s remarriage). His constant doubt about his role as avenger also expresses his rejection of a barbaric way of life because after all he finds injustice, corruption and inhumanity intolerable.
A preliminary attempt at systematizing this with all the odd variations that have cropped up over the years.
Nominally for eventual writing purposes or to share, but probably just another “oh crap that was several hours spent just organizing purely theoretical mental constructs, the local 548 trifix person lives up to the ‘Useless Beast’ nickname once again!” Trying to be more conscious of this is probably going to be fucking embarassing long before it gets to a point of stopping unproductivity before it happens