🎭 Abraham Lincoln’s Favorite Line from Hamlet Wasn’t “To Be”

James H. Hackett

In August 1863, with the Civil War raging and casualty lists piling up post-Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln took a quiet moment to write a fan letter to a stage actor.

James H. Hackett was internationally famous for playing Sir John Falstaff, the roguish knight in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Lincoln, a lifelong Shakespeare addict, had seen Hackett perform in Washington and wrote a short note of praise. But tucked inside Lincoln made a startling literary confession:

“Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing ‘O, my offence is rank’ surpasses that commencing ‘To be, or not to be.’”

It was a staggering preference.

Every theatergoer loved Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be”—a philosophical meditation on existential dread. But Lincoln preferred King Claudius — the usurper who murdered his brother for the crown and, in Act III, tries to pray but finds himself spiritually paralyzed:

“My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent…”

Why would Lincoln prefer the villain’s prayer? 

Because Hamlet’s speech is abstract, while Claudius’s is raw, personal, and morally urgent. Claudius is trapped between conscience and ambition, wrestling with the terrifying cost of power. To a President carrying the crushing weight of a bloody war, Claudius’s torment wasn't fiction—it was a reflection of the agony of executive accountability. He had to make decisions that cost lives, challenged laws, and reshape the nation. He knew what it meant to wrestle with conscience—and to do so publicly.

Then came the twist.

Flattered by the President’s praise, Hackett printed copies of the letter to show friends. Naturally, it leaked.

Opposition newspapers like the New York Herald went feral. They published Lincoln's letter and mocked him relentlessly, calling him an illiterate "backwoods ape" pretending to be a refined literary critic while young men died in the mud.

Horrified, Hackett sent a frantic letter apologizing for subjecting the President to national embarrassment.

On November 2, 1863—just seventeen days before delivering the Gettysburg Address—Lincoln replied with characteristic, unbothered grace:

“Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject... These comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured too much of it to be disturbed by it.”

In one short exchange, Lincoln gave us a rare window into his soul: a leader who sought solace in the darkest corners of moral drama, and who possessed the unflappable thick skin required to survive the storm.

From the archives of Abraham Lincoln, Storyteller.

Mac

📚 Works Cited

[1] Abraham Lincoln to James H. Hackett, Aug. 17, 1863, and Nov. 2, 1863, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 6, pp. 392–393, 558–559.