To Be Or Not To Be, You Say?

If mankind were limited to only one existential question, surely it would be either: To Be Or Not To Be? or, Is There Anything Billy Shakespeare Didn't Think Of?

Here are several versions of Hamlet's most famed soliloquy performed by some of the most celebrated thespians of the past century, all pondering the same questions; all sans answers.

Which among them, one may ask, is the greatest performance? 'Tis a resolution devoutly to be wished.

John Gielgud - Linked (the soliloquy begins at 5:45.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCyjXJ9oogg

Laurence Olivier - directed by Olivier 1944

Richard Burton directed by John Gielgud -1964 

Kenneth Branaugh - 1996

Derek Jacobi directed by Kenneth Branaugh

Removed from youtube on copyright grounds

David Tennant - Royal Shakespeare Company 2009

Benedict Cumberbatch - 2015

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,

And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; —

To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death, —

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know naught of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

Hamlet, Act III, scene i