Does anyone know how Hamlet decides it is better to be than not to be? This is the question! - Jinx
He’s scared of not being.
Hamlet does…he tells you in the soliliquy.
I just like saying “Ah, There’s the rub!”
Hamlet’s Monologue, if it were written today:
“Dude… my life fuckin’ sucks… I should jump off this building! But wait… what if there’s no afterlife? Dude, I won’t exist anymore! That’d fuckin’ suck… Oh well, at least I still have pot.”
Richard Armour describes the scene:
Richard Armour describes the scene:
I love the fact that even Admins can double-post. 
This may be a UL, but I read about a film version of Hamlet made in India and filmed in the local language with English subtitles – but for some reason, the filmmakers decided to translate the script back into English rather than just using Shakespeare’s text. The subtitled soliloquy began, “Shall I live, or do myself in? I do not know.”
Well, damn. I thought I was going to get a massage.
Bastards.
Try NoClueBoy. 
Friend and I wrote a parody of Hamlet for a class once. We decided that Hamlet would probably be one of the whiny goth kids that hang around the mall being horribly “depressed”. Or he’d be a pathetic intellectual on far too many drugs.
As it turns out, the whole thing reads much like a slightly less sarcastic episode of Daria, so I guess we ended up going more for the pathetic intellectual druggie interpretation.
There’s a German version of Hamlet made in 1960 starring Maximilian Schell. They translated it into German and then dubbed it back into English. The English version follows the English text, so I don’t know about any glaring errors made in the German translation. It’s really bad though. They took out all references to the war with Norway and cut Fortinbras out of the script entirely. MST3K riffed it in one of their final episodes.
But DOES he really decide? :dubious:
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come,
it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—
the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves,
knows what is it to leave betimes, let be.
Hamlet, HAMLET, V, ii
Well, seems to me that there is where Hamlet decides to leave it in the hands of God - rather than in his own. “Readiness is all” - and he has stuff to finish before he’s really ready.
Oh, Lord. Read the soliloquy, people!
Hamlet hates his life, and would kill himself if could be asssured that death is THE END. But what if it’s not THE END? What if there’s an afterlife–hell. purgatory, reincarnation, or whatever–in which you STILL have to deal with whatever you ran away from? Ick! So he doesn’t off himself, and, as usual, berates himself for being a wuss.
I think that’s it.
Hamlet seems to me to exhibit the classic inner struggle of a depressed Virgo/Libra cusp. Any other suggestions what sign Hamlet acts like?