Hesitating

Yes, the famous known soliloquy by Hamlet “to be or not to be”. I have asked myself ever since we started reading Hamlet, why is this so famous? And I came to the conclusion that everybody has once asked themselves this question. Every human being has felt, or will feel, the way Hamlet feels in this scene, in different intensities of curse. Yet, Shakespeare is the only one to write it down. Not only write it down but magnified it almost like celebrating this hesitation of human’s minds when it is in trouble.

David Tennant is in profound desperation and he seems as if he had given up any kind of hope. He leans on the wall like in need of a support because his body (as his mind) cannot take it anymore. He hesitates while speaking, exactly what Hamlet is doing in the soliloquy, vacillating. What more accurate interpretation than hesitation every time a word is pronounced? He takes 11 seconds to go from “To be, or not to be: that is the question:” to “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer”. He is debating between life or death. If one is in such situation, it may take more than 11 seconds to decide. Do I want to die and end my suffering or keep on living in misery? He is in misery, that’s a fact. If you are happy and satisfied with your life you would probably not ask yourself the question, it’s redundant. What a coward! It embarrasses him his fear and indecisiveness, his lack of braveness to embrace suffering. He is certain that it is not noble to be afraid, but he asks himself as an excuse to justify his thoughts and emotions.

Tennant closes his eyes, like trying to find the answers within him. He is frowning, his expression is of anguish, he searching for a way out to this entanglement that he finds himself into. But fails. And opens his eyes (1:21) to find the same room, the same self, which is not dreaming as he might wish to (it is in this exact lines that he opens his eyes, “coincidently”):
“To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come”
But awake. He’s afraid as well. Hamlet is afraid. Afraid of living, and afraid of dying. He is scared that death, like sleeping, can bring nightmares, and his living misery will continue on in death. This “rub”, this mischance, prevents him from committing suicide.