“To Be or Not To Be” Soliloquy incl. “What Dreams May Come” Read & Discuss Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

This is a dramatic reading of Shakespeare’s five act masterpiece epic tragedy 🎭:

“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”

Specifically, I begin by performin a dramatic reading of the famous “To Be or Not To Be” soliloquy which comes from Act IIIc Scene 1 and in my version specifically Lines 64-77 but might differ in a full-sized text—and this reading of the soliloquy includes the second most famous line from Hamlet which is actually what we are studying, namely, “What Dreams May Come” by Richard Matheson—and once we briefly discuss the major parts of the soliloquyI read the remaining part and follow with a critical literary & senantic textual analysis and philosophical discussion of this soliloquy—linking philosophy & art—and then I dramatically reread the whole soliloquy and focus on the particular poetic meter is not only intentionally constructed as iambic pentameter but “why” Shakespeare chose the Homeric Epic poetic meter to write this blank verse soliloquy—as a doublet since it’s simultaneously & epic poem.

There is also a discussion, deciphering, disambiguation of many of the soliloquy’s metaphors, allusions, & analogies Hamlet makes in his soliloquy which both serve as foreshadowing Ophelia‘s death and all coalesce to teach the reader something profound about life, death, and how we all live out our lives hamstrung by out fear of the unknown realm beyond the grave—connecting all of this back to the Richard Matheson book “What Dreams May Come”, which was turned into a movie starring Robin Williams; finally, I close by tying the soliloquy to the prompt—the epistemological question we are investigating:

“How do you know you are alive?”

The dramatic reading, the analysis, discussion, interpretation, and other commentary are copyright 2023, Eppie Madeleine, Inc., a nonprofit free private school in Texas which flips entirely on its head, every normal model of instruction seen in public education where the student gets to be in charge and there is always a one on one Socratic dialogue and no other work, no grades, no mandatory attendance, the student picks the time or times each week or each day as it may be and it’s in total control of what we learn and everything is free for the student and the parent or parents and Eppie Madeleine is my vehicle as a private tutor, serving to teach the student who is a student of the parent or parents “private [home]school” because in Texas a home school is defined as a type of private school.

All the funding for Eppie Madeleine, and all the tuition, grants and scholarships comes from a nonprofit private foundation, called MEC, headquartered in Texas, serving as an educational nonprofit corporation, and organized as a private foundation with one donor—me. Learn more at https://MEC.fund or if you wish to become an Eppie Prep student please email Mike at [email protected] or call or (preferably) text +1 (903) 480-0086.