What's the meaning of Shakespeare's "...therin lies the rub"?

Question

What was the context he used this phrase in? Does it mean, "there's the catch", or "this is where it's tough", or "it doesn't make sense"?

Answer 1

Hamlet, the melancholic, brooding Prince, who is faced with the difficult question of what to do with the Ghost's revelations about his murderous uncle, is a very sensitive man, who contemplates suicide from time to time: "to shuffle off this mortal coil," as he puts it. What happens when you die, he asks. No one has returned from that land ("that bourne") to tell us. Perhaps through death we merely escape the ills we know in this world to find other ills we know not of. And so suicide (to purchase quiet with a bodkin) no longer seems a clear answer. "Therin lies the rub": of the three alternative meanings you have proposed, the first fits the meaning the best, the second is acceptable, the third slightly less so.

Answer 2

In the game of bowls, popular at the time of Shakespeare, the term "rub" meant a divot or some other deformation in the lawn that would
catch the ball. So the first answer "there's the catch" is perfect.

Answer 3

The Rub Definition

Answer 4

Your first answer is most accurate.
If you look at the context of the speechm which goes:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
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 heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

Hamlet is reflecting on the possibility of suicide and ways the simplicity of ending it all then comes to the realization that no one knows what happens when we die with the line "to sleep: perchance to dream: Ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come." It is at this point Hamlet realizes there is a downside or a catch to suicide.

Answer 5

And Therein Lies The Rub

Answer 6

There in lies the truth!

Still used today have you ever heard some one say "whats the Rub"

Answer 7

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Answer 8

That's the tough part.

Answer 9

mistake in reasoning