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"To die, to sleep...sleep of death"
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Act 3,
Scene 1
Lines 58-70

A discussion of the difference between sleep and death in Act 2, Scene 2 of myShakespeare's Hamlet. 

myShakespeare | Hamlet 3.1 Discussion: “To Die, to Sleep...sleep of death”

Hamlet

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep,
No more. And by a sleep, to say we end 
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub.    
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil    
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.    
Video Transcript: 

SARAH: Hamlet now repeats his earlier line — " to die: to sleep", which equated death and sleep. But rethinking this comparison, he begins to find a difference between death and ordinary sleep.

RALPH: When we sleep, we often dream... but if we have something similar to dreams after we die, we don't know what such dreams would be like. And this uncertainty about the nature of these dreams might cause us to hesitate, no matter how appealing death might otherwise seem.

SARAH: Hamlet continues, saying that this hesitation is caused by a respect — in other words a fear, or an apprehension. Because we don't know what the afterlife is like, we continue to live a long time, and this long life is a kind of calamity, or hardship.

RALPH: But Hamlet's line here can also mean that this respect makes hardships last a long time, and that it's the calamities that have a long life.

SARAH: Indeed, Ralph. Finally, we might point out that it's clear from these words that Hamlet doesn't find the prospect of dying so frightful — but rather the state of being dead. It's what comes after dying that is unknown and therefore disturbing.