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.
Act III, Scene 1 · Hamlet
Context
Continuing his soliloquy, Hamlet entertains the idea of death as peaceful sleep, then halts when he realizes that death might bring dreams—nightmares, perhaps—that would be worse than living.
Analysis
The repetition 'To die, to sleep. / To sleep' starts to sound like Hamlet is soothing himself, the rhythm almost lulling—until 'perchance to dream' breaks the spell. The colloquial phrase 'there's the rub' drops suddenly from formal meditation into plain speech, as if he has caught himself in wishful thinking and now must face the real obstacle. 'Shuffled off this mortal coil' makes death sound easy, like shrugging off a coat, but the line immediately before admits we have no idea what comes after.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Hamlet's soliloquies follow a pattern of hope collapsing into doubt—he builds up an appealing idea (death as rest) then dismantles it by imagining the one detail that makes it unbearable (unknown dreams).