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Who really said it

To be, or not to be, that is the question

Written by William Shakespeare Baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616 · English playwright, poet & actor
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Hamlet’s soliloquy in Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1 — the so-called “nunnery scene.” This exact wording is the reading of the Second Quarto (published by Nicholas Ling in 1604, with some copies dated 1605) and of the 1623 First Folio, which prints it as “To be, or not to be, that is the Question:” The 1603 First Quarto gives the speech in a different form.

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“To be, or not to be, that is the question” Verified. "To be, or not to be, that is the question" — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1. This wording is the reading of the Second Quarto (1604, some copies dated 1605) and the First Folio (1623); the 1603 First Quarto prints a variant version. — Quotle.info

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Provenance

The passage, and the printings behind it

Work
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Passage
Act 3, scene 1 — the “nunnery scene” soliloquy
Written
Sometime between 1599 and 1601
Printed with this wording
Second Quarto, 1604 (some copies dated 1605); again in the First Folio, 1623

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, Hamlet, 3.1

Modern-spelling text as printed in Project Gutenberg’s Hamlet ↗ under ACT III, SCENE I. The 1623 First Folio sets the line with heavier capitalisation — “that is the Question:” — and modern editors differ on the punctuation of the break; the Folger edition uses a dash.

Facsimile
Hamlet: Second Quarto (1604) and First Folio (1623) side by side
Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1 at the Folger Shakespeare

How the wording is documented

  • 1603 — the First Quarto prints the speech differently, opening “To be or not to be, ay there’s the point, / To die, to sleep, is that all? Ay all:” (Internet Shakespeare Editions ↗). The full quarto can be read in transcription from the Huntington copy (Wikisource ↗).
  • 1604/5 — Nicholas Ling publishes the Second Quarto, and the familiar wording appears: “To be, or not to be, that is the question, / Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer.” Some copies are dated 1605, which may indicate a second impression, so Q2 is often dated “1604/5” (Wikipedia ↗; transcription at Wikipedia’s text comparison ↗).
  • 1623 — The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke is printed in the First Folio, confirming the reading with the Folio’s heavier capitalisation: “To be, or not to be, that is the Question: / Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer” (Wikipedia ↗).
  • Today — Wikiquote’s sourced Hamlet page carries the line at Act III, scene i (Wikiquote ↗), and the Folger’s edition — based on a fresh examination of the early printed texts rather than any modern edition — prints it at 3.1 (Folger Shakespeare ↗).
Public domain

Hamlet reached print in 1603, and the texts carrying this wording were published in 1604/5 (Second Quarto) and 1623 (First Folio) — centuries before any copyright that could still subsist, so the line itself is firmly in the public domain in the United States. Modern editions carry their own editorial copyright in their notes, glosses and punctuation, but not in Shakespeare’s words.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Nothing wrong with the words — plenty wrong with the memory

This is one of the rare famous quotations with no attribution problem at all: the wording is Shakespeare’s, printed in his own century. What goes wrong is the staging people picture, and the claim — passed around online — that the “real” line is something else.

“To be or not to be, ay there’s the point” Variant text

That is the First Quarto of 1603 reading, as transcribed by Internet Shakespeare Editions ↗, which also notes Q1 “may have been a pirated copy, though its exact origins remain obscure.” It is a separate and textually suspect early printing — the Folger calls Q1 a “bad quarto” and little more than half as long as the others (Folger Shakespeare Library ↗) — not a correction of the Second Quarto and Folio text.

Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull Wrong scene

The line is almost always pictured with the skull, and the two do not belong together: “the Act III, scene 1 ‘To be or not to be’ speech and the Act V, scene 1 image of Hamlet contemplating the skull of Yorick … may be linked when the play is remembered, but the two moments occur in different acts of the play” (Wikipedia ↗).

Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, Christopher Marlowe Fringe claim

The line is periodically reassigned to one of the alternative-authorship candidates — most often Bacon, de Vere or Marlowe. Shakespeare scholars “consider it a fringe theory and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims” (Wikipedia ↗).

The line is Hamlet’s, in Act 3, scene 1, and it is Shakespeare’s: printed “To be, or not to be, that is the question,” in the Second Quarto of 1604/5 and “To be, or not to be, that is the Question:” in the First Folio of 1623 (Wikipedia’s transcriptions of the early texts ↗).

Context

The most quoted line in English, and the one text that disagrees

Hamlet is not alone when he says it. Wikipedia’s account of the passage notes that Ophelia, Claudius and Polonius are on stage — Claudius and Polonius are eavesdropping — and that Hamlet appears unaware of them, which is why the speech is “almost universally regarded as a sincere soliloquy” rather than a performance for listeners (Wikipedia ↗). He is weighing whether to go on enduring life or to end it.

The interesting wrinkle is textual. Hamlet survives in three early printings that matter, and they do not agree. The First Quarto of 1603 opens the speech “To be or not to be, ay there’s the point” (Internet Shakespeare Editions ↗). The wording everybody knows arrives with the Second Quarto of 1604/5 and is confirmed by the First Folio of 1623 — so the famous line is genuine, but it is not the first version to reach print.

Two of the three early texts say “that is the question.” The odd one out is the first one printed.

Why editors mostly set the 1603 quarto aside

The Folger Shakespeare Library’s note on its own text records that the First Quarto “is little more than half as long as the others,” that many passages in it have been found extremely difficult to read, and that it has been “dubbed a ‘bad quarto’” — one theory being that it prints a manuscript put together from memory by a small-part actor. The Folger edition deliberately ignores Q1 because it is so widely different from the Second Quarto and the Folio (Folger Shakespeare Library ↗).

The Second Quarto advertised itself as “Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie” — hence its nickname, the “good quarto.” The Folio is not simply a reprint of it either: the Folger notes the Folio has some eighty-five or so lines not found in the Second Quarto, while lacking about two hundred of the Second Quarto’s lines (Folger Shakespeare Library ↗).

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Filed under

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Mortality Doubt Purpose

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1www.folger.edu

The Folger Shakespeare’s free modern text of the scene, with the soliloquy and line numbers — the Folger punctuates the break with a dash.
An Introduction to This Text: Hamletwww.folger.edu

The clearest short account of the three early texts: Q1 as the “bad quarto,” Q2 as the “good quarto,” and where the Folio adds and drops lines.
To be, or not to been.wikipedia.org

Side-by-side transcriptions of the Q1 (1603), Q2 (1604) and F1 (1623) openings, plus the note that the speech and the Yorick skull scene fall in different acts.
“To be or not to be, ay there’s the point”?internetshakespeare.uvic.ca

Internet Shakespeare Editions on the First Quarto reading and on Q1’s obscure, possibly pirated origins.
Hamlet (Project Gutenberg eBook 1524)www.gutenberg.org

Full free text; the soliloquy stands under ACT III, SCENE I and opens “To be, or not to be, that is the question:”
Hamlet, First Quarto, 1603 (Huntington Shelfmark 69304)en.wikisource.org

Transcription of the 1603 quarto from the Huntington copy, where the variant version of the soliloquy can be read in full.

The author

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright, poet & actor

William Shakespeare was baptised on 26 April 1564 and died on 23 April 1616; his date of birth is unknown but traditionally observed on 23 April. He was an English playwright, poet and actor, and wrote Hamlet sometime between 1599 and 1601. In 1623 two colleagues from the King’s Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published the First Folio — 36 plays, 18 of them printed for the first time — which is one of the two early texts carrying this line in its familiar form.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

William Shakespeare, “To be, or not to be, that is the question,” Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1, in the Second Quarto (London: Nicholas Ling, 1604; some copies dated 1605). The same line appears as “To be, or not to be, that is the Question:” in The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, printed in the First Folio (London: William and Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623). The 1603 First Quarto prints a variant reading.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/to-be-or-not-to-be-that-is-the-question/

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