"To be, or not to be."

Many have thought that 'not to be' means to dies. People equate 'not to be' with action: taking up arms and vengeance (Hamlet against his uncle, who murdered his father). So if 'not to be' meant to die, then death would have the name of action on its side, when surely that title belongs to life. Instead, 'not to be' has the double meaning of 'to seem'.

Hamlet says:
"Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not seems."

Denmark is rotten - everyone ought to be mourning for Hamlet's father, especially his mother. Hamlet ought to be king. Instead, the country is celebrating his mother's marriage to his loathsome uncle, who has assumed the throne. The feigning of grief, the seeming, the wearing of black by people who can't wait to feast at the marriage tables - these galled Hamlet. He wants no part of such a world. He won't pretend. He refuses to seem. He is.

Then he learns of his father's murder, and he vows revenge. But from that point on, he enters the world of seeming. His first step is to pretend to be mad, weeps at a play etc.. He has fallen into the domain of playing, of seeming.

For Hamlet, "To be, or not to be" isn't "to be, or not to exist." It's "to be, or to seem"; that's the decision he has to make.
To seem is to act - to feign, to play a part. Not to be is to seem, and to seem is to act. To be, therefore, is not to act. Thus his paralysis.

All action is acting, all performing is performance. To design means to plan, but also to deceive. To fabricate is to make with skill, but also to deceive. Art means deception. Craft - deception. There is no escaping it. If we would play a part in the world, we must act.

- The Interpretation of Murder, by Jed Rubenfeld