Ironically, the title character in what many consider to be Shakespeare’s central dramatic work is most famous for his long speeches. One speech in particular stands out as almost interchangeable with Shakespeare and perhaps even the theatre as a whole. The soliloquy manages to sum up, in just thirteen letters, the fundamental question of existence itself. Once we agree to tackle that question, then the rest of the speeches, well, they may as well just be anagrams of the big one…<\/p>\n
From Hamlet<\/em>:<\/p>\n To be, or not to be: that is the question: Shift around the letters, and it becomes:<\/p>\n O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, You can compare it to the original speech here<\/a> (starting at line 133).<\/p>\n Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:<\/p>\n I have of late, – but wherefore do not seek, – lost all my cheer, ashamed that the oddest mood upsets me so seethingly that our lush frame, at the earth, soon seems to me a detested sterile promontory; this aesthetic roof toasted by stoked mythical golden fire truthfully appears to me therefore as such a both foul and pestilent congregation of bath vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! in theme, how impressive and truthful! in action as an angel! and apprehension as a god! the beauty of the world! the crest of beasts! But, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can compare it to the original speech here<\/a> (around line 250).<\/p>\n Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:<\/p>\n O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I: You can compare it to the original speech here<\/a> (starting at line 382).<\/p>\n Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:<\/p>\n How all occasions do inform against me,
\nWhether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
\nThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
\nOr to take arms against a sea of troubles,
\nAnd by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
\nNo more; and, by a sleep to say we end
\nThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
\nThat flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
\nDevoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
\nTo sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
\nFor in that sleep of death what dreams may come
\nWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
\nMust give us pause. There’s the respect
\nThat makes calamity of so long life…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThaw and resolve itself into a dew;
\nOr that the Everlasting had not set
\nHis precept ‘gainst self-slaughter! Rebuke! Rebuke!
\nHow weary, foul, puffed, and abominable
\nSeem to me the questions of this place.
\nFie on ‘t! O fie! ’tis a once heeded garden,
\nThat’s left to pot; the rank and weed in nature
\nPossess it merely. But he should come to this!
\nNot four months dead: nay, half as much, but two:
\nAs superior a man; so as, to this step,
\nHyperion to a satyr; so caring to my mother
\nPermit he not beteem the beams of stars
\nAccess her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nIs’t not monstrous that this player here,
\nCould force his soul so to the best esteem
\nThat from her working feebled all his looks,
\nHave tears in eyes, add a tempest of bombasts,
\nA broken voice, and his whole function suiting
\nWith forms to top esteem? and all for nothing!
\nFrets Hecuba to him for he to tear
\nThat he so pretty sobs? What would he do
\nHad he not the uttermost cue for passion
\nAs by me? He could drown the stage in tears,
\nAtone the guilty and appal the free,
\nConfound the temperate, and to quite impress
\nThe seemly faculties of eyes and ears.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nAnd spur my dull revenge! What’s a man,
\nIf his chief hope and market of his time
\nBe but to sleep and feed? a helpless beast, thou.
\nSure he that made us with much large esteem,
\nHe looked from before to after, gave unto us not
\nThat potential and smoothest reason
\nTo fust in us effetely. Whe’r it be
\nBestial petty sloth, or some softer scruple
\nTo foresee too precisely on a theme,
\nA knot, which, quarter’d, hath but one part hero,
\nAnd also three parts coward, I see not
\nWhy yet I be to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
\nSith I have cause and lots of strength and means
\nTo do ‘t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n