Jayson asked:

What does, "To be, or not to be" mean?

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I disagree with Rachel Browne's answer (Answers 18).

The phrase, "To be or not to be," from Shakespeare's Hamletis the first line of Hamlet's "Soliloquy".
Alone, and by itself, this phrase has taken on a life of its own, and many people infer that this has
something to do with a sense of "being" or "non being", possibly in an existentialist sense; yet that is
not the case at all.

The phrase is followed by the question that Shakespeare is posing, concerning nobility. Shakespeare
is asking if it is nobler to suffer abuse at the hands of others, or is it nobler to take a "bodkin," a
dagger, and kill them to end the abuse. It is a timeless moral question.

Succinctly stated, Shakespeare's proposition is this: If someone offends me, can't I just take up a
knife and kill them? Is this nobler than suffering abuse?

His answer to this is a question; "Who knows what dreams may come?" Shakespeare implies that
there may be an afterlife wherein we suffer consequences for actions committed upon the earth.

Bruce