III.i. To Be or Not to Be - French Rock Opera

At the center of Johhny Hallyday's Hamlet (at the beginning of Disc 2) is a dirge, constructed as a show-stopping number based on the play's most famous speech. It uses the opening line quite a lot (and as a title), with no translation. Though "Être ou ne pas être" is a famous French phrase, Hallyday opts for the original text because, well, it's famous no matter what language you speak. Before getting into it, here are the words, and then my doggerel translation.

To be or not to be
To be or not to be
To be or not to be
To be or not to be

To be or not to be
To be or not to be
To be or not to be

Encore choisir, choisir encore
Choisir entre chair et poussière
Entre bleu ciel et ver de terre
Pourrir du coeur, mourir du corps
Quelle question tragique à poser

To be or not to be
To be or not to be
To be or not to be

Mourir, dormir, un point c’est tout
Plus de justice à voir boiter
D’amours bafoués à voir ramper
Dormir seul au fond de son trou
Quelle question mortelle à poser

To be or not to be
To be or not to be
To be or not to be

Mourir, dormir, rêver peut-être ?
Voir chaque nuit les souvenirs
Sortir de l’ombre comme des vampires
Et vous tournoyer dans la tête
Quelle question vitale à poser

To be or not to be
To be or not to be
To be or not to be

Sans cette peur au cul blafard
Quel est le fou ou le peureux
Qui perdrait le temps d’être vieux
Alors qu’il suffit d’un poignard
Pour que la question soit réglée

To be or not to be...

To Be Or Not To Be
To be or not to be x6

Again to choose, to choose again
To choose between flesh and dust
Between blue sky and earthworm
Rot of the heart, die of the body
What a tragic question to ask

To be or not to be x3

To die, to sleep, and that's all there is to it
No more justice to see someone limp
Of ridiculed love, to see someone crawl
To sleep alone at the bottom of one's hole
What a mortal question to ask

To be or not to be x3

To die, to sleep, perchance to dream
Each night to see memories
Come out of the shadows like vampires
And spin in your head
What a vital question to ask

To be or not to be x3

Without that pale-assed fear
What fool or coward
Would give up growing old
When all you need is a dagger
To answer the question

To be or not to be...

The odd thing about the arrangement is that it has back-up singers. In the rock opera, these usually represent the people, courtly whispers or Danish opinion. Hamlet's voice is Hallyday's, and in this most private of moments (spied on or not), he is somehow accompanied by others. I'd like to say that it's the line reverberating across history, its sentiment universal. I rather think it's a mistake, thematically, and that Hallyday's wish to make this a bigger production number made him forget the conventions of his own opera.

The question gets asked a lot in this version of the speech, acting as a driving beat. It is asked in other ways as well. For example, the question is initially "tragic" and "mortal" (some word play here, since "mortelle" means both mortal and lethal), and later, "vital". Hamlet moves between life and death, flesh and dust. The choice predominates. The first line gives a false choice ("Again to choose, to choose again"), while also making the choice a repeated one. Hamlet has been on the line between choosing life and suicide since before the start of the play. Hallyday correctly understands this speech as a last time he will consider death as an alternative to action. He makes the choice again, but for the last time. Are we also to understand he believes the question to be a false choice? Because ultimately, it is. Hamlet may claim to long for death, but he argues strongly against it. Given who he is, and the fact that he has not yet taken his own life, this contemplation can have only one outcome. And yet, he hasn't acted. The alternative to dying has not been living, but rather, doing nothing. His thoughts, here described as vampires, have sucked the action out of him. So while Hamlet was never going to kill himself, he needs to strike the option off his list with words, so that he can move on to the active option of revenge.

Lost in translation
There's a nice pun in "Entre bleu ciel et ver de terre" lost in the literal translation I offered. "Bleu ciel" is not truly "blue sky", but rather "sky blue", the color. "Ver de terre" is "earthworm" (a link to the one going through the guts of Hamlet's metaphorical beggar), but is homophone of "vert de terre", which would mean "earth green". In French, the choice is between two colors, on representing life and the other death, though in the funereal world of the speech, could both be visions of the afterlife.