To Sleep Perchance To Dream

“For in the sleep of death, what dreams may come”

Shakespeare’s Hamlet

A MODERN DAY INTERPRETATION OF HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY
The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all? Dying, sleeping—that’s all dying is—a sleep that ends all the heartache and shocks that life gives us—that’s an achievement to wish for. To die, to sleep—to sleep, maybe to dream. Ah, but there’s the catch: in death’s sleep who knows what kind of dreams might come, after we’ve put the noise and commotion of life behind us. That’s certainly something to worry about. That’s the consideration that makes us stretch out our sufferings so long. Act 3 Scene 1 FROM SPARKNOTES available at http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_138.html

In mental and moral anguish, Hamlet ponders the idea of suicide so as to end his suffering.

He hastens to reason that there is no guarantee that he will get relief through death since

To die is but a sleeping . . . 

Note:  There is no such thing as immortality of the soul.  Sir Isaac Newton would tell you the same thing, if he were alive today.  He didn’t publish any of his essays regarding such false doctrines because he’d have been burned at the stake.

To die is but a sleeping and a forgetting

 “His spirit goes out

[As a light or a flame goes out.  Nothing physically goes out from him]

He returns to the ground;

On that very day

his thoughts do perish.”

Psalms 146:4

 

See also King James Version, Psalms 146:4

“His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth;

In that very day his thoughts perish.”