It has been generally thought that Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy provides a condensed expression of the spiritual numbness that comes as a result of the denial of all meaning in life. Perhaps because of the speech's renown, it poses enormous problems for any director - problems that have been a pitfall for many a director. What follows are a few extreme examples of ways the soliloquy has been staged, adapted, and transferred to varying contexts.

Laurence Olivier uses voice-over narratives to portray the interiority of Hamlet's reflection and pull focus shots and lap dissolves to create visual metaphors for his thought processes. Contrary to the views of Elinore Prosser and others, there is no doubt here that Olivier understands the monologue to deal with suicide. He provides Hamlet with both a knife and a precipice to do the deed. (Ironically, the precipice fulfills Horatio's concern that the encounter with the ghost might lead Hamlet to the crest of a cliff where he might be deprived of his reason.)

Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 comedy To Be Or Not To Be deals with Joseph Tura's troupe of Polish actors at the time of Hitler's invasion of Warsaw. In a running joke, Tura (Jack Benny), playing Hamlet, is repeatedly interrupted by a Polish aviator sitting in the second row who leaves at the beginning of his soliloquy for an assignation with Tura's wife (Carole Lombard).

Anyone at all familiar with Hamlet will recognize that there is something very wrong with the use of this scene in this context. What role is Maria Tura playing? While it is not specified in the film, it is implied. Gertrude is unlikely because she appears younger than her husband. Since she expected top billing, this leaves only Ophelia, and Ophelia is on stage at the end of this soliloquy. So her offstage meeting is impossible. As we see in the following example, Hamlet's famous soliloquy is more often than not taken out of context, and provides iconic recognition for the play itself.

John Ford also imported the soliloquy for use in a location far from the English stage in his 1946 film My Darling Clementine.

And one last example; Douglas Hickox drops the speech into a flashback within his 1973 horror film, Theater of Blood. In this film, Vincent Price plays Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearean actor who is spurned by the major critics' circle, and retaliates by extracting a blood revenge on his enemies after an aborted suicide attempt depicted here. Diana Rigg plays his daughter, Edwina.