hello! I was wondering, do you know why so many hamlets seem to recite “to be or not to be” as a bit... detached? I don’t mean they don’t do it with emotion or that I don’t like those; simply that they don’t portray it in a way that convinces me that hamlet is, at that very moment, considering his own death/suicide and it’s possible consequences (the only actor I’ve seen do it that way is Benedict Cumberbatch). maybe it’s just how it came off to me as I read it, but now I’m rather confused :/
I understand your confusion. It's really an issue of how you interpret that speech. And being one of the most famous monologues in the English language, it’s not surprising there are so many ways of looking at it.
The first thing is that, while the idea that Hamlet is considering his own death or suicide is a valid interpretation, it’s not the only way of looking at it. The Cambridge Shakespeare editor Philip Edwards’ note for this passage agrees with you: ‘there are many opinions on what the question really is. I assume that Hamlet is debating whether to take his own life or not’. The Arden editors (Anne Thompson and Neil Taylor) are a little more objective and sums up the main approaches well: ‘Perhaps surprisingly after so much debate, editors and critics still disagree as to whether the question for Hamlet is a) whether life in general is worth living, b) whether he should take his own life, c) whether he should act against the King’. There’s one more slightly less popular one to add to this: some critics argue that Hamlet knows he is being observed and is therefore putting on a show of his ‘antic disposition’, so that a morbid debate is a sign of his madness.
From a textual point of view, I think it’s incredibly important to note the fact that Hamlet never uses the first person pronoun in this speech. As G. R. Hibbard (the Oxford Shakespeare editor ) writes, ‘One thing can be said with some confidence about this … soliloquy: it is cast in general terms. Hamlet speaks of we, us, who and he, without using I or me once’. Actors, who study their speeches extremely hard and in detail, study this monologue especially hard because they know people will judge their Hamlet according to the way they do this speech (as this RSC sketch parodied perfectly). It’s very likely they notice this little detail, and hence it’s often played as a detached philosophical pondering about the futility of life, rather than as a tormented and emotional consideration of suicide.
