What did shakespear's question mean "to be or not to be"?

Question

it always seemed to me this question is like one of the "ultimate questions" that we ponder over. Well, yesterday I had a realization of what he meant, I'm probably wrong, but this really clicked. I think what he meant was, men have always had a struggle with being "himself" or not being "himself", but "something else" , so that is the question and the dilemma we all face. what do you think?

Answer 1

The usual interpretation is that Hamlet is contemplating suicide.

Answer 2

Essentially, Hamlet is trying to decide which is more preferable: existence, or non-existence, not just suicide.

Inside this question is wrapped up the question about the entire meaning of life: if life as we know it is so miserable that we would be better off never having lived, then life must have been a big mistake.

The essential purport of the world-famous monologue in Hamlet is, in condensed form, that our state is so wretched that complete non-existence would be decidedly preferable to it. Now if suicide actually offered us this, so that the alternative "TO BE OR NOT TO BE" lay before us in the full sense of the words, it could be chosen unconditionally as a highly desirable termination ("a consummation devoutly to be wish'd" [Act III, Sc. I.]). There is something in us, however, which tells us that this is not so, that this is not the end of things, that death is not an absolute annihilation.

                           -Arthur Schopenhauer