"To be, or not to be" is the opening phrase of a soliloquy given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. In the speech, Hamlet contemplates death and suicide, bemoaning the pain and unfairness of life but acknowledging that the alternative might be worse. The opening line is one of the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English, and the soliloquy has been referenced in innumerable works of theatre, literature, and music.
