Shakespeare References in On Death And Dying

Death has been on my mind lately, so I finally read On Death And Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. The book contains two Shakespeare references. Or, rather, it makes the same reference to Hamlet twice. Kübler-Ross writes, “To tell or not to tell, that is the question” (p. 28). She is talking about whether to tell a patient that he or she is dying. I wasn’t aware there was a question at all. I assumed doctors were under some sort of obligation to let patients know such things. A few pages later, she makes the same reference, writing, “Another example of a problem of ‘to tell or not to tell’ is Mr. D., of whom nobody was sure whether he knew the nature of his illness” (p. 35).

On Death And Dying was published in 1969. First Macmillan Paperbacks Edition was published in 1970.