莎士比亚的剧作中，《哈姆雷特》一剧台词最多：约四千行，二万九千多个词。也即是最长的莎翁剧。其中，主角哈姆雷特的台词自然是最多的，约一千五百行。表白的是角色对哲学和人生方面的各种思索（rumination）。

其中最著名的，是第三幕第一场的独白（soliloquy）。最为世人所知。该独白表达了哈姆雷特沉思死亡的意义，考究是坚忍地承受活下去的人生（所伴随的苦）呢，还是了结仇人以及自己的生命。他也担忧那不为人知的死后之国度或许存在固有之超自然恐怖。

To be, or not to be: that is the question: \Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer \The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, \Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, \And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; \No more; and by a sleep to say we end \The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks \That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation \Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; \To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; \For in that sleep of death what dreams may come \When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, \Must give us pause: there’s the respect \That makes calamity of so long life; \For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, \The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, \The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, \The insolence of office and the spurns \That patient merit of the unworthy takes, \When he himself might his quietus make \With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, \To grunt and sweat under a weary life, \But that the dread of something after death, \The undiscover’d country from whose bourn \No traveller returns, puzzles the will \And makes us rather bear those ills we have \Than fly to others that we know not of? \Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; \And thus the native hue of resolution \Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, \And enterprises of great pith and moment \With this regard their currents turn awry, \And lose the name of action.–Soft you now! \The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons \Be all my sins remember’d.

若干年前出演该舞台剧时，一位演员仅使用了23.8秒就讲完了这段独白，速度相当于每分钟六百多词。这当然是为了创纪录而偶一为之的轶事。根据剧本语境，正常来说演员不会抢快道白，更不用说是抒发性的独白了。

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