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[email protected] OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, Wed Dec 19 2012, NEWGEN 1 3 ‘Where be his quiddities now’? Law and Language in Hamlet Eric Heinze * [T]o die: to sleep— No more, and by a sleep to say we end Th e heartache and the thousand natural shocks Th at fl esh is heir to: tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. [ . ]For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th ’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, Th e pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, Th e insolence of offi ce and the spurns Th at patient merit of th’unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? (Ham . 3.1.59–63, 65–75) In world literature’s most famous speech, ‘To be or not to be’ (Ham. 3.1.55–87), Hamlet ponders whether suicide would cure what he calls the ‘natural’, as well as the social ills that grieve us. He never itemizes the natural ones. Th eir affl ictions are too obvious and too numerous.