Shakespeare used six words to pose the essential human choice: To be, or not to be? Elizabeth, a character in Ingmar Bergman s Persona, uses two to answer it: No, don t! She is an actress who one night stopped speaking in the middle of the performance, and has been silent ever since. Now her nurse, Alma, has in a fit of rage started to throw a pot of boiling water at her. No, don t! translates as: I do not want to feel pain, I do not want to be scarred, I do not want to die. She wants . . . to be. She admits . . . she exists.