"To be or not to be – that is [definitely] the question." The idea of suicide is an important theme in William Shakespeare's Hamlet: Hamlet says several times that he wishes to kill himself, and Ophelia's death has been interpreted as suicidal by many critics (and, indeed, by one of her own gravediggers). With particular attention to Hamlet's two important statements about suicide (the "O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt" soliloquy in Act I; and the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy in Act III), how does the play treat the idea of suicide, morally and religiously? Why does Hamlet believe that, although capable of suicide, most human beings choose to live, despite the cruelty, pain, and injustice of the world?
             Hamlet's first soliloquy about suicide, "O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt...(page: 15-16; lines 131-161)" ushers in what will be a central idea in the play. Hamlet wishes to kill himself, but God has forbidden it ("the Almight" has "fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter"); the question of the moral validity of suicide in an unbearably painful world will haunt the rest of the play (the question reaches the height of its urgency in the most famous line in all of English literature, "To be, or not to be – that is the question.") In Act III, Hamlet decides that no one would choose to live under the conditions of the world if they were not afraid of what will happen to them after death. Hamlet wants to sleep, but he is afraid of his dreams.
             This first soliloquy, therefore, puts Hamlet at odds with the precepts of religion; if God did not have contrary wishes that made him fear hell, Hamlet could seek the felicity of death. Throughout the play, we watch the gradual crumbling of the human realities on which Hamlet's worldview have been based. His mind is left with little or nothing to cling to. Already, religion has fail...