Which British poet wrote the line 'To be, or not to be'?

William Shakespeare wrote the line “To be, or not to be,” spoken by Prince Hamlet in Hamlet.

The words open Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, delivered in Act 3, Scene 1, often called the nunnery scene. Hamlet weighs the pain and injustice of life against the uncertainty of death, asking whether it is nobler to endure suffering or resist it. The speech’s philosophical language has made it one of the most quoted passages in English literature.

The text survives in several early versions. The First Quarto appeared in 1603, the Second Quarto in 1604, and the First Folio in 1623. These versions differ in wording, spelling and arrangement, so modern editions sometimes vary slightly while retaining the familiar opening.

A common mix-up is to identify Shakespeare only as a playwright when this question calls him a poet. That is not a contradiction: Shakespeare wrote plays in verse and is also conventionally recognised as one of England’s major poets. The line belongs to Hamlet, not to a standalone poem.