In this scene, Gertrude remains as the Ghost had described her the loving mother caught in Claudius' web. She asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern whether they've tried to amuse her melancholy son, and she tells Ophelia she truly hopes the young woman's virtues can bring Hamlet back to his senses. Ophelia doesn't answer the Queen, and the audience can only surmise that Gertrude has added fuel to the fire of the young girl's consternation.
Hamlet enters, brooding "To be or not to be." In The Story of English, Robert MacNeil writes, "When Hamlet says 'To be or not to be: that is the question,' he has summarized in one sentence all that follows." Many scholars consider this speech to be one of several existential manifestos in Hamlet. (Existentialism professes that the past and future are intangible; the present is all that humans can be sure of. For humans, being — what IS — is the only truth; everything else is nothing.)
In this soliloquy, Hamlet explores the ideas of being and nothingness by asserting a basic premise: We are born, we live, and we die. Because no one has returned from death to report, we remain ignorant of what death portends. Hence, Hamlet's dilemma encapsulates several universal human questions: Do we try to affect our fate? Do we take action in the face of great sorrow, or do we merely wallow in the suffering? Can we end our troubles by opposing them? How do we know? What is the nature of death? Do we sleep in death, or do we cease to sleep, thereby finding no rest at all?
