Voor Engels ga je aan de slag met het allerbekendste zinnetje uit de Engelse literatuur (en de titel van deze quest): To be, or not to be... en kom je erachter waar dat zinnetje vandaan komt en waar het over gaat!
Eerst ga je kijken naar drie introductiefilmpjes over wie dit zinnetje schreef, uit welk literair werk het komt en waarom dat werk nog steeds relevant is. Over die filmpjes beantwoord je een aantal vragen.
Daarna ga je een klein stukje lezen van de beroemde To be or not to be-soliloquy (=monoloog). Ook hierover beantwoord je een aantal vragen.
Introductiefilmpjes
(want ik kon 'm niet embedden in deze pagina... :( )
De soliloquy
soliloquy |
modern translation |
fragment 1 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 heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to |
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 on earth gives us |
fragment 2 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, [...] Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? |
After all, who would put up with all life’s humiliations— Who would choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting life, unless they were afraid of something dreadful after death, the undiscovered country from which no visitor returns, which we wonder about without getting any answers from and which makes us stick to the evils we know rather than rush off to seek the ones we don’t? |
fragment 3 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. |
Fear of death makes us all cowards, and our natural boldness becomes weak with too much thinking. Actions that should be carried out at once get misdirected, and stop being actions at all. |