“To Be or Not to Be”: Was That the Question? On My Book Los poemas del ser y el no ser y sus lenguajes en la historia

This article presents my interpretation of Shakespeare’s monologue “To be or not to be” in the framework of my book Los poemas del ser y el no ser y sus lenguajes en la historia (2017). It develops my thesis that “to be or not to be” proves not to be the real question for Hamlet, since he immediately abandons this metaphysical contraposition and proceeds to formulate in moving verses his real problem: the tragic misery of human life and of his own life, and the anguish and uncertainty of what comes beyond it if one takes one’s own life. The difference between sleep and death is that, after the latter, consciousness will lack a body, and nobody can imagine what dreams could look like without it. But the whole monologue is an argument against trying to solve real life problems through rising to the utmost abstractions.

I have tried to summarize the significance of this monologue as a historical step between several ancient poems about being and non-being, and their relation to the real conflict of understanding life and death, and texts of Goethe, Hegel and Machado, which approach the subject from the new awareness elaborated by Shakespeare in his text.