• 1 There is currently no critical consensus on whether ‘To be or not to be’ is a soliloquy (the actor (...)
• 2 Thompson goes so far as writing that ‘it could be said to epitomize the play as a whole, and the qu (...)
• 3 Among the flow of books and articles devoted to Hamlet, one fairly recent short monograph offers so (...)

1The rather facetious title of this article is meant to draw attention to the convoluted and sometimes contradictory ways this speech was handed down to us through two decisive centuries.1 By the early 1800s, its story is not over, but at the end of that period, I argue it is possible to determine with some clarity the literary and theatrical reception of the ‘To be or not to be’ speech, or scene. One difficulty is that the speech is so famous today that it has become an epitome of the play itself.2 Modern actors playing the part are regularly challenged because a fraction of their audience may know the speech by heart and recite it with them. Moreover, much ink has been spent by early critics and editors, as well as contemporary academics, in writing about the speech.3

• 4 K. Irace notes indeed that ‘the first quarto has had its own surprisingly rich modern performance h (...)

3Modern editors of Hamlet have three source texts of the play to work with. The First Quarto version of 1603 (Q1) and the First Folio of 1623 (F1), which varies slightly from the Second Quarto of 1604/5 (Q2). In Q1, the ‘To be or not to be’ speech is 23 verse lines long, as opposed to the F1’s 35 lines. However imperfect the Q1 version might be (it has been referred to in the past as a ‘bad quarto’), it nevertheless keeps some kind of coherence. It is thus tempting for directors to make use of it.4

• 5 This is Kathleen O. Irace’s position, who suggests that ‘the position of the “To be or not to be” s (...)
• 6 Thompson, ‘Hamlet 3.1: “To be or not to be”’, p. 1145.
• 7 A reader of a copy of Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare’s works (Folger Shakespeare Libr (...)

4Yet the more pressing question is: what if the speech was misplaced? In Q1, it appears much earlier in the play, when Hamlet is still debating on whether to take action. Some theatre directors and academics argue that placing it in act 3 scene 1, actually undercuts the process and dynamics of the play, as Hamlet is supposed to be closer to making up his mind at this point – an argument we have already touched upon.5 So, is the speech in truth a ‘detachable’ or ‘portable scene’, ‘easily moved to one scene (some 500 lines) earlier if the director finds its traditional position in the two ‘good texts’ [i.e., Q2 and F1] ‘uncomfortable’. ‘Most people in most audiences would probably not notice any difference’, Ann Thompson surmises.6 For that matter, some eighteenth-century readers had already pointed out, more radically, that the speech was ‘a perfectly detached piece’, as the last section of this essay will make clear.7

• 8 Edwards and Hirschfeld, ‘Introduction’, Hamlet: Prince of Denmark (2019), p. 15.

5These questions indicate that with Shakespeare, no text is actually sacred or fixed. There were substantial differences between the various source texts of Hamlet from the start. Nonetheless, modern directors – often blamed for tampering with the ‘holy text’ – have every reason to make the most of the fundamental flexibility of the Shakespearean material in order to serve their vision of the play. If we want to go further, we could argue with Heather Hirschfeld that ‘the complexity of the play’s textual situation reverberates in the complexity, even ineffability, of its central character’.8 This is a statement to ponder.

• 9 ‘Commonplacing’ was a widespread practice among early modern readers. The activity consisted in ent (...)

7It is well known that a number of passages in Shakespeare’s early editions were demarcated for their readers. These highlighted parts usually took the shape of marginal single or double quotation marks placed to the left of the lines. It is easy for our modern eye to miss them, but their use was primarily to enable early readers to extract these passages and make a note of them in their commonplace books or miscellanies. One could argue that they pointed to what was to be retained of a text and perhaps that they encouraged reuse in another context. One can also see them as providing the commonplacing9 ‘gist’ of the play.

• 10 See Peter Stallybrass and Zachary Lesser, ‘The First Literary Hamlet and the Commonplacing of Profe (...)

8In recent years, scholars have been drawn to them and have found that (poetry aside) F1 contains some such marks, as well as earlier editions, such as Q1 and Q2.10 No explanation as to their presence is given. They could be the work of publishers, or stationers and printers, as they were called at the time. Authorial intervention is unlikely (especially for F1 published after Shakespeare’s death in 1616), but not to be totally excluded for the quartos. They were most probably another marketing ploy aimed to please commonplacing readers.

• 11 William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke (London: printed for N. L. (...)
• 12 NCS: New Cambridge Shakespeare, that is, William Shakespeare, Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, ed. Philip (...)

9Let us have a brief look at them, starting with Q1 (only discovered in 1823).11 Reading just the demarcated lines in Q1 and not knowing the play, one could get a sense that Hamlet is really an advice book meant for parents who need to educate a son and a daughter. Indeed, only two passages in the whole play are marked out in print. The verse lines are both spoken by Corambis (called Polonius in Q2 and F1). Corambis addresses his son Laertes and the marked lines begin with ‘Be thou familiar, but by no meanes vulgare;’ down to ‘For the apparell oft proclaimes the man’ (sig. C2^r in the original; 1.3.61–72 in NCS)12. A single line on the same page, which is part of Corambis’s same speech, is delimited in a similar fashion ‘This above all, to thy owne selfe be true’.

• 13 Let me add that in Q1, the ‘To be or not to be’ speech is not demarcated. How indeed could it fit i (...)

10As for the education a father could give his daughter, it is not only brief but also opposes written communication between lovers, which, in the opinion of Corambis, fosters desire and threatens chastity. The marked-up lines, even more than in the case of Laertes, are generalisations that are equally easy to extract by readers for their purposes: ‘For lovers lines are snares to intrap the heart; / Refuse his tokens, both of them are keyes’ (sig. C2^v; not in NCS ).13

• 14 William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke (London: Printed by I. R. (...)

11Yet, in Q2 and the ensuing quartos, the demarcated lines do not involve Polonius directly.14 In fact, the marked-up passages in Q2 offer readers a kind of female diptych – one in which the young Ophelia is seen as a potential victim of sin and another, spoken by Gertrude, in which she describes the personal consequences of sin.

• 15 Those passages are the only ones demarcated in Q1 and Q2 and might have struck some readers and att (...)

14Although the Folio does contain demarcated lines, there are none in Hamlet. Was this a conscious decision on the part of the Folio publishing syndicate? If so, Hamlet and its now celebrated speech might have been considered less significant than other marked-up plays. Moreover, are we to conclude that early modern readers of Q1 and Q2 were to follow suit and copy the same marked-up lines? Not necessarily, as we shall see. The intent of whoever chose to demarcate those passages had an overall limited influence on what early readers really sought in Hamlet. However, they remain of interest in that they show what could well be a possibly unfinished15 attempt at responding to literary readers’ commonplacing needs on the part of the publisher, or someone who had access to the text.

• 16 On Pudsey, see David Kathman, ‘Pudsey, Edward (bap. 1573, d. 1612/13)’, in ODNB, ed. H. C. G. Matth (...)
• 17 For a definition of what a commonplace book is and of the activity of commonplacing, see note 9 abo (...)
• 18 The Hamlet extracts appear on both sides of one of four leaves now detached from a miscellany compi (...)
• 19 See Andrew Hiscock’s article in this issue.
• 20 Some of Pudsey’s lines resemble the demarcated Polonius passages in Q1 we have studied. Yet the sit (...)
• 21 Similarly, a recently discovered tiny anonymous notebook, which dates back to the first half of the (...)

15Early allusions to Hamlet, and certainly references to its now famous speech, are in fact few and far between. A commoner by the name of Edward Pudsey (bap. 1573, d. 1612/13)16 compiled a commonplace book,17 transcribing extracts from many works, including seven Shakespearean playbooks, one of which was Hamlet Q2.18 Yet Pudsey, who had undoubtedly been trained in his school years to recognise commonplaces and sententiae,19 focused primarily on Polonius’s sayings. Taking them seemingly at face value, he copied in his commonplace book some of Polonius’s lines almost word for word,20 often simply by transforming the verse into prose and deleting speech prefixes and oral structures, thus completely decontextualising the verse lines. Nothing is said about the appreciation of the play, nor on Hamlet’s speech.21 Pudsey had a noticeable interest in rhetorical tropes and lines that he could extract and perhaps reuse in another context. Despite his curiosity for Hamlet, one cannot deduce the consideration he had for the play, other than by the few passages he lifted from it.

• 22 For more information on these figures, see Lukas Erne, Shakespeare and the Book Trade (Cambridge: C (...)
• 23 Cited in Virginia F. Stern, Gabriel Harvey, His Life, Marginalia and Library (Oxford: Clarendon Pre (...)
• 24 Gary Taylor and Rory Loughnane differ and claim that ‘Harvey’s Hamlet reference could thus have bee (...)
• 25 These lines are in Harvey’s copy of Guicciardini’s Detti, et Fatti (1571), see Stern, Gabriel Harve (...)

16Quantitative surveys show that readers and book collectors were more attracted to Shakespeare’s English history plays, with 1 Henry IV topping the list. Hamlet is in fifth place only.22 Hamlet in print was not the most absolute bestseller it has later become. What we can infer from some of the early comments on the play is that Hamlet created, at least in the eyes of some, a kind of niche for itself. Thus, famously, scholar and writer Gabriel Harvey (1552/3–1631) noted in his copy of Thomas Speght’s folio edition of Chaucer published in 1598 that ‘The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, & Adonis: but his Lucrece, & his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them, to please the wiser sort’.23 Written after 1603,24 these lines represent an original attempt at looking at Shakespeare’s reception sociologically (the young as opposed to older and no doubt scholarly readers like himself). Hamlet was probably one of his personal favourites, as it also appears (‘the Tragedie of Hamlet’), together with ‘Richard 3’ in marginalia listing his preferred fifteenth- and sixteenth-century works.25

• 26 Abraham Wright cited in Arthur C. Kirsch, ‘A Caroline Commentary on the Drama’, Modern Philology 66 (...)
• 27 William Cartwright, ‘Upon the report of the printing of the Dramaticall Poems of Master John Fletch (...)
• 28 Cited in Kirsch, ‘A Caroline Commentary on the Drama’, p. 258.

17If Hamlet was indeed a niche or elite play for those who saw themselves as lofty scholars, not everyone agreed. Clergyman Abraham Wright (1611–90) compared Othello and Hamlet, concluding, largely against the judgement of centuries to come, that Hamlet was ‘But an indifferent play, the lines but meane: and in nothing like Othello’. Wright did enjoy the gravediggers’ scene in Hamlet (‘a good scene’), but found it ‘better’ in Thomas Randolph’s The Jealous Lovers of 1632.26 New plays were overshadowing Shakespeare’s in the decades after his death. As a matter of fact, around the time when Wright was taking his notes, William Cartwright wrote of Shakespeare’s ‘Old fashion’d wit’ in 1647. This was a mere thirty years after the dramatist’s passing and in the middle of the English Civil War (1642‒1651).27 Nevertheless, the most damning, and no doubt the best remembered lines against the play, are by Wright, who remarked disparagingly: ‘Hamlet is an indifferent part for a madman’.28

• 29 For details see Edwards’ introduction to the play in Shakespeare, Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, ed. Ed (...)

18This vein of ridicule and mockery remained attached to the play and certainly to its main protagonist (seen as a character amusingly out of his mind), especially during the first half of the seventeenth century. Philip Edwards notes in his introduction to the New Cambridge Shakespeare Hamlet that this comical reputation was further fostered, in particular, by two works that contained direct and disparaging allusions to Hamlet’s madness: Anthony Scoloker’s Daiphantus, a verse romance published in 1604, and the city comedy Eastward Hoe by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston (1605). Both included passages that indisputably poked fun at Hamlet.29

• 30 The MR774 Folio is the property of the research library of Meisei University, Tokyo, Japan.
• 31 See, for the latest information on what we know of the author, Akihiro Yamada, ‘William Johnstoune, (...)
• 32 For details, see Akihiro Yamada, ed., The First Folio of Shakespeare: A Transcript of Contemporary (...)
• 33 The digital facsimile is available at http://shakes.meisei-u.ac.jp/search.html (accessed 19 June 20 (...)
• 34 Stephen Orgel, The Reader in the Book, A Study of Spaces and Traces (Oxford: Oxford University Pres (...)

19Yet, for some readers, Hamlet was no source of ridicule. In what is currently the most annotated First Folio by a single reader, known as MR774, the notes date back to the early decades of the seventeenth century and cover every play, including Hamlet.30 The identity of this serious and even frenzied annotator still remains a mystery.31 Of the thirty-six plays in the First Folio, those he annotated most were Shakespeare’s twelve tragedies.32 Thus, one might wonder if the inscriber had any idea of tragedy as a literary genre. It seems that it was the case. His reading of Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech is that it is really a ‘question whether we ought to overcome our selves and our passions by extreme patience or die seeking desperate wrong’ (sig. Oo5^r [TLN 1651–1716]).33 In the text of Hamlet, the question is whether we ought to live or escape in death. But the annotator introduces revenge here, which, for us, is a misreading of the passage, but actually shows what he, as an early reader, was expecting, as Stephen Orgel has pointed out.34 The inscriber held the view that this speech was supposed to be about vengeance, and no mere arresting abstract reflection impeding the action of play. This was otherwise a common criticism of the dramatic function of the speech, which could be seen as hampering Hamlet’s decision-making process so late in the play. We shall come back to this point. Let us now turn to the next period of the play’s history.

• 35 The Grave-Makers (Hamlet and the grave-diggers) is one such short play, or droll, to have been writ (...)

20Even though a few plays were written and performed in private venues during the Interregnum (1649 to 1660), some of which were inspired by Shakespeare35, it can be said that Hamlet had a very mixed reception during its early years and did not really resurface before the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. At the Restoration, a kind of nostalgia drew dramatists and readers back to works that had been composed before, under the Tudor and Stuart monarchies. Moreover, with the closure of the theatres in 1642, little dramatic work had been created and writers had to turn to Shakespeare and others in order to produce new plays. This led not only to a period of pilfering of preceding playwrights but also to adaptations of Shakespeare, who was in odour of sanctity, because, for many, he still remained closely associated with the Monarchy. On the market and freshly off the press was Shakespeare’s Third Folio printed tellingly four years after the Restoration in 1664.

• 36 The works of Mr. William Shakespear: in six volumes; adorn’d with cuts / revis’d and corrected, wit (...)
• 37 In January 1726, Voltaire was insulted and then beaten on the orders of the Chevalier de Rohan, who (...)
• 38 Voltaire [François-Marie Arouet], ‘Letter xviii: on Tragedy’, Letters concerning the English nation (...)
• 39 The annotator’s notes could not have been made before 1733‒34, precisely because of the Voltaire al (...)
• 40 Voltaire, ‘Letter xviii: on Tragedy’, p. 166.
• 41 Ibid., p. 170.
• 42 Ibid., p. 170.
• 43 Ibid., pp. 173–4.

22In a volume of Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare’s works, a reader wrote the following marginal note next to Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech: ‘Voltaire Vol: 4. p. 275’.36 Indeed, Voltaire had commented on Shakespeare’s speech in ‘Letter xvi “On Tragedy”’ published in English first in 1733, in Letters Concerning the English Nation,37 and a year later in French, in his Lettres philosophiques.38 What reason did this eighteenth-century reader have to bring Hamlet and Voltaire together?39 Perhaps because Voltaire gave parts of Shakespeare’s works some literary cachet. The French man of letters recognised that ‘Shakespear boasted a strong, fruitful Genius’, but, according to him, he ‘had not so much as a single Spark of good Taste’.40 Voltaire believed that translation was the only way to redeem Shakespeare: ‘methinks two Pages which display some of the Beauties of great Genius’s, are of infinitely more Value than all the idle Rhapsodies of those Commentators’.41 And what passage of Shakespeare did he choose? No other than Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech. ‘I have made choice’, wrote Voltaire, ‘of Part of the celebrated Soliloquy in Hamlet, which you may remember is as follows’.42 He then cites the speech in English in full and gives his own version translated into French.43 You will note that ‘celebrated Soliloquy’ and ‘Hamlet, which you may remember’ stand out as phrases of recognition by the Frenchman that, of all Shakespeare’s passages, Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech ought to be best praised. This may have been music to the ears of the annotator of Rowe’s 1709 edition, especially in the context of discord opposing English taste to French taste, which increased during the eighteenth century and was not helped by ensuing military warfare between the two nations.

• 44 Leeds University Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt. 80, I, fos 7^a-b.

23Yet, for other eighteenth-century transcribers of Hamlet’s speech, there was still the temptation to resort to ‘headings’, or titles, that commonplace books favoured. Thus, ‘Poems and translations by Hugh Wormington’44 has a transcription of Hamlet’s speech headed ‘Futurity’. The OED defines ‘Futurity’ as a ‘State or condition in the future. Also, existence after death’, although this precise meaning is not attested before 1741 (OED 3.c.). Wormington probably copied Hamlet’s speech from the First Folio. Written in a single autograph hand, around 1715–23, the reproduction stands out because of its title and its implications; Wormington, unlike many ensuing transcribers or annotators, seems to have contemplated what the future held for him, suicide or death, like Hamlet himself.

• 45 See James Sambrook, ‘Harte, Walter (1708/9-74)’, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), www. (...)

24No doubt more concerned with establishing the Hamlet speech as a set piece, our next reader steers clear of any mention of suicide evoked in the speech’s course. An avowed friend and admirer of Pope, writer and classicist Walter Harte (1708/9–1774),45 assiduously assembled one of the most extensive eighteenth-century dramatic commonplace books. Entitled ‘Miscellanea tragica: Theatrical index of Sentiments & descriptions’ (Folger Shakespeare Library, MS M.a.47) and composed ca. 1730, the manuscript is 231 leaves long and contains a wealth of passages by Shakespeare, as well as a comparatively extended section of extracts from Hamlet.

• 46 William Shakespeare, The works of Shakespear. In six volumes. Collated and corrected by the former (...)

25For his notetaking, Harte used Pope’s 1725 edition, and Harte’s record of the speech, which he entitled ‘Death’ significantly differs from Pope’s text.46

• 47 Letter by Elizabeth Montagu (Robinson) to Sarah (Robinson) Scott, 16 January 1755, Huntington Libra (...)

27During the eighteenth century, it is obvious that Shakespeare’s ‘To be or not to be’, was no longer overlooked as easily as before. In truth, it was not only regarded as noteworthy, but also appropriated and adapted by the literati. As Britain was taking its place among the strongest nations in Europe, it naturally turned to the best in its vernacular literature – and Shakespeare who had served both Elizabeth I and James I in what began to be seen as an age to be admired – provided just that. So much so that what was later to become the epitome of English vernacular literature, Hamlet and the lines of its ‘To be or not to be’ speech, circulated quite casually in literary and nationalist circles, like those, for instance, of eighteenth-century patron of the arts Elizabeth Montagu (1718‒1800). Narrating the events of her existence, she regularly looked at everyday life around her through the prism of Shakespearean references. Thus, in a private letter to her sister, she writes about Lord Monfort’s estate and his loss of revenue and suddenly comes up with this phrase: ‘To retrench or to dye was the question, he reasoned like Hamlet, but left out the great argument of a future state’.47

• 48 William Shakespeare, The tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. As it is now acted at his highness th (...)

29Such was the 1676, so-called Hamlet ‘players’ Quarto’.48 The edition had been slightly rewritten and amended by the poet, playwright, and theatre manager, William D’Avenant (1606‒1668). One specificity has to be noted: instead of demarcating passages to be remembered by the use of quotation marks, the publishers retained inverted commas, but this time to indicate parts to be cut on stage. Looking at the performance cuts, it is easy to see that the play, although relatively faithful to the original, was heavily downsized.

• 49 Hazleton Spencer, cited in Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakesp (...)
• 50 Murphy, Shakespeare in Print, p. 34.

30Hazelton Spencer remarked that ‘In general the cutting is done with a view to retaining what is dramatic, and lopping off the lyric and sententious passages which have now become elocutionary arias for Hamlet’.49 Hamlet’s speech, nonetheless, is left untouched. The 1676 Hamlet was quite a success, as its reprint dates seem to indicate: 1683, 1695 and 1703. Other such promptbooks of Hamlet followed, published by various stationers.50

• 51 Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Ham. 55 (1676).

31Interestingly, the Folger Shakespeare Library holds a 1676 quarto that was undoubtedly used for performance.51 In this rehearsal copy, there are no stage directions but just checks and cuts, which – ironically but tellingly – do not follow the printed cuts for performance delineated by quotations marks. In fact, the hand-written erasures are often completely different. Again, despite the numerous cancellations, ‘To be or not to be’ escapes unscathed, which implies that it was increasingly regarded as a set piece for many performances of Hamlet.

• 52 G. Blakemore Evans, Shakespearean prompt-books of the seventeenth century, 8 vols (Charlottesville: (...)

33Once more the ‘To be or not to be’ speech escapes cutting. One characteristic, which is found generally in many Hamlet promptbooks, is that there are very significant erasures before the speech, as if to showcase it better. Consequently, Polonius’s advice to his daughter and after that the King’s admission of guilt are crossed out.52

• 53 Charles Gildon, The laws of poetry, As laid down by the Duke of Buckinghamshire in his Essay on Poe (...)
• 54 Ibid., p. 205.
• 55 Ibid., p. 206.

35The annotator was not an eccentric reader, but one who had been influenced by the writer Charles Gildon (c. 1665‒1724) and his Laws of Poetry published in 1721, which was really a compilation of other treatises on poetry.53 The passage in question is actually from The Essay on Poetry, a work published in 1682 by the deceased John Sheffield, first duke of Buckingham (1647‒1721), which Gildon reprints with a few comments. The duke was no lover of soliloquies and regarded Shakespeare’s and his contemporaries’ soliloquies ‘equally unnatural and absurd in all, none but madmen talking aloud to themselves’.54 Just before tearing down Hamlet’s speech to pieces and suggesting it should be cut entirely, he notes that ‘Shakespear has frequently soliloquies of threescore [i.e. sixty] lines, and those very often, if not always, calm, without any emotions of the passions, or indeed conducive to the business of the play’.55

• 56 See note 6 of G. Blakemore Evans’s Shakespearean Prompt-Books, online at: https://bsuva.org/bsuva/p (...)

36Few followed that radical track in the history of Shakespearean productions. G. Blakemore Evans records only a couple of promptbooks (that is, early editions of Hamlet, especially annotated for the theatre) that omitted Hamlet’s speech entirely. These are two Q6 editions now in the Shakespeare Folger Library and published in 1703 and 1766.56 While we are completely entitled to disagree with Buckingham’s writing and the decisions of those two Q6-based productions, they do take us back to the idea of madness attached to Hamlet – both the play and the character. This did much to mar the play’s early reputation. Some hundred years later, the accusation was still there, even if it revolved around the nature of soliloquies, like Hamlet’s, which were allegedly fit for ‘madmen talking aloud to themselves’. So, by the 1750s, there was some kind of general critical agreement about the value of Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech, but that consensus was not complete.

• 57 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. A tragedy, by Shakespeare. As performed at the Thea (...)

37Be that as it may, a late eighteenth-century promptbook of Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library PROMPT Ham. 82; 1773), appears to confirm that opinions about the famous speech had definitely changed. The main character comes in from the left of the stage, as a handwritten inscription in ink indicates. The text of this performance edition57 has an asterisk, leading to a footnote, just before Hamlet is about to deliver ‘To be or not to be’ (sig. R2^r-v; pp. 39‒40). The note reads thus:

• 58 First printed the 1623 First Folio, but first performed in 1603.
• 59 William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, ed. Brian Gibbons, updated ed., The New Cambridge Shakesp (...)
• 60 This statement is supported by my own experience of looking at hundreds of early miscellanies and c (...)

40As a matter of fact, ‘To be or not to be’ had a very appealing ‘competitor’, which was much more popular among readers and annotators than Hamlet’s ‘lofty’ speech: Claudio’s speech in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (3.1.118–32),58 which begins with the catchy ‘Ay, but to die and go we know not where, / To lie in cold obstruction and to rot […]’.59 Claudio’s speech, which is neither a soliloquy, nor a monologue, but is directly spoken to his sister Isabella addressed the fear of death in more pressing, more concrete and horrifying terms. Quotations of Claudio’s lines appear far more frequently in miscellanies and commonplace books than Hamlet’s speech.60 Still, what happened on early stages was rather different. When Hamlet was performed the speech was never, or extremely rarely cut, as theatre managers, or directors, sought to stir genuine emotions in their audiences – sentiments that readers seemingly could not wrestle with completely on their own. By hardly ever cutting it, the stage gradually gave the ‘To be or not to be’ speech a special aura. Often repeated, it began to disclose the pains of the ebbs and flows of existence. In sum, the speech was undeniably invaluable and unavoidable in British theatre by the late 1770s and – if well performed – it was a definite ‘hit’ on stage.