Hamlet quotes

• "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark"


  ACT 1

  Marcellus quips that something in Denmark is rotten, a metaphor that invokes images of decay and corruption. Marcellus speaks this line just after the Ghost lures Hamlet away to talk to him. At this point in the play, the audience already knows about Gertrude's hasty remarriage to Claudius, her late husband's brother, but they will soon learn the even more rotten truth about how Old Hamlet died. As the play progresses, the pomp and circumstance of Denmark's royal court proves to be a thin veneer for its underlying corruption.

  shows that even the the people of Denmark are aware of the corruption
• "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."


  ACT 1

  Start of first soliloquy

  metaphor

  self-slaughter!" What he means is that he wishes he could fade away--like snow melts and disappears. But since that is not likely to happen, he wishes he could kill himself.
• I must hold my tongue


  ACT 1

  Dramatic irony

  He wants to stay quiet but he wont be able to as he will need to speak up to get revenge for his father
• "Am I a coward?"


  ACT 1

  Said by Hamlet during a soliloquy; he is feeling guilty because he really hasn't done anything yet to get revenge for his father's death
• What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have? He would drown the stage in tears.


  ACT 1

  Compares himself to Fortinbras showing he does not trust his own instincts
• To put an antic disposition on


  ACT 1

  He has no obvious reason to fake insanity, and Horatio, at least, seems to think that Hamlet is already behaving strangely: he describes Hamlet's words as 'wild and whirling' (I.v.132). Hamlet's 'antic disposition' is one of the play's great mysteries. As the play continues, Hamlet behaves more and more eccentrically, and neither the audience nor Hamlet's other characters can be certain whether Hamlet is pretending or not. Hamlet refuses to make straightforward distinctions between madness and sanity, or between reality and pretense.
• "A little more than kin and less than kind."

  ACT 1

  very first line spoken by Hamlet in the whole play but it is characteristic of him to begin as he means to go on, revelling in the punning possibilities of words.

  In saying this, Hamlet means that his uncle's relationship with his mother is now more than a filial or brotherly kinship"Kind" has two meanings: it means both "natural" and "compassionate." Shakespeare puns on both meanings: the relationship is both unnatural (it is incestuous, in that a former brother-in-law and sister-in-law are sleeping together) and lacking in compassion. He implies, in "less than kind," that perhaps Claudius pushed Gertrude into the marriage before she was ready in order to consolidate his hold on the throne. Essentially, even before meeting with the ghost, Hamlet is upset with his uncle.
• "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."


  ACT 2

  he means that he will use a dramatic performance to test whether his uncle, Claudius, is guilty of murdering Hamlet's father. He will have the actors perform a murder scene similar to the one described by Hamlet's father's ghost, and Hamlet will observe Claudius's behaviour to see if he acts like he has a guilty conscience.
• "I doubt it is no other but the main, His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage."


  ACT 2

  saying that the reason he is most likely acting different is because of the death of his father and her quick remarriage. This shows that she knows what is upsetting Hamlet but she doesn't care she is only worried about her own happiness.
• Words, words, words


  ACT 2

  In response to Polonius's question to what he is reading Hamlet suggests that words are meaningless and are merely a medium for thoughts and not actions1. The meaning of Hamlet's response is open to interpretation, but it is generally believed that he is expressing his frustration with the emptiness of language
• "get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?"


  ACT 3

  Hamlet is sincerely expressing his own thoughts and feelings in this scene tend to interpret his cruelty to Ophelia as arising out of his disgust with his mother Gertrude for marrying her husband's murderer, which he has generalized to the whole of her sex
• "Frailty, thy name is woman"


  ACT 1

  The quote is an early indicator of Hamlet's lasting misogynistic attitude towards the women in his life. It's a view he held before the play began and one that is only bolstered by his opinion of the various actions the women in his life take throughout the scenes of the play. His mother's choice to remarry her husband's brother, Claudius, is, to Hamlet, an indicator of her frail character.
• Tis brief my lords

  As women's love

  ACT 3

  Hamlet's response is sarcastic, and is directed both at Ophelia, who wanted to return Hamlet's keepsakes and who was willing to be used by her father, and at Gertrude who was able to get over the death of Old Hamlet within a month to marry Claudius
• Words without thoughts never to heaven go


  ACT 3

  Personification

  Claudius utters these lines at the beginning of a soliloquy in which he confesses to murdering his brother. At first Claudius does not explicitly state that he killed his brother. However, his reference to the "primal eldest curse" that has been laid on his "offence" alludes to Cain's murder of his brother, Abel, as recounted in the Bible. By comparing himself to Cain, Claudius illustrates that he understands the severity of his sin, and he expresses his sense of his own moral corruption through images of decay and putrefaction: his sin is "rank" and sends the smell of rot all the way to heaven. Additionally, Claudius's confession also gives the audience (and only the audience) confirmation that he did, in fact, kill his brother. Hamlet's apparent descent into madness might otherwise suggest that the murder conspiracy exists solely in Hamlet's head, but Claudius's confession clears this ambiguity up—but not for any of the characters in the play, sadly enough.
• making love over the nasty sty


  ACT 3

  Compare his mother to a pig

  further accentuates Hamlet's disgust and revulsion at his mother's sexual relationship - "sty" has connotations of disease, implying that Hamlet sees Claudius' and Gertrude's marriage as a disease that must be contained and obliterated.
• Mad as the sea and the wind

  ACT 4

  Allusion to the natural world "sea and wind" shows the magnitude of Hamlet's power and his motivation. However Gertrude also lies to Claudius through this, so "sea and wind" may be an exaggeration and shows the breakdown of the royal court's loyalty to Claudius - beginning of the end.
• "God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another"


  ACT 3Hamlet here claims that the deceitfulness of women, who wear makeup to look like something they're not, is what has driven him mad. Hamlet's madness is one of the more ambiguous elements of the play. While at certain times he explicitly says he is only pretending to be mad, at other times he seems possibly sincere about admitting he's lost his grip on sanity. Throughout the play, Hamlet does seem genuinely troubled by his feelings about women, heaping abuse on both Gertrude and Ophelia with no particular purpose.
• By indirections find directions out

  ACT 2

  certain characters direct other characters to try to discover something through deception and indirection. Polonius's words thus foreshadow significant events in the play, such as Hamlet's attempt to use the performance of a fictional play to determine whether or not Claudius is truly guilty.
• "The readiness is all"


  ACT 5

  The quote is spoken by Hamlet, who is contemplating death and the inevitability of fate1. The quote suggests that one should be prepared for whatever comes their way, as the future is uncertain and unpredictable
• Lost all my mirth, foregone custom of exercises


  ACT 2

  Part of his second soliloquy Hamlet feels like he has lost all interest in life and has become isolated "forgone customs of exercise" suggests that he has abandoned all activities

  he reflects on his inner turmoil
• Not where he eats, but where he is eaten

  ACT 4

  In these lines, Hamlet uses the images of a king, a beggar, and a fish to reflect on the equalizing quality of death. The worms eat both king and beggar. The fish eats the worm that has eaten a king, and the beggar eats the fish, mingling them all. Social status, therefore, means nothing.
• Forty thousand brothers with all their quality of love could not make my sum


  ACT 5

  shows hamlets true love for Ophelia
• Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears


  ACT 5

  Laertes cannot hold back his tears for the sister he loved. He has lost his father and now his sister. This turns out to be the breaking point for Laertes and sets him firmly on a revenge quest against Hamlet. Crying is not a manly thing to Laertes, he says that after he stops crying "the woman will be out."
• take arms against a sea of troubles

  ACT 3

  Is it easier to just die or should you fight back

  hamlets biggest enemy is himself
• To die,—to sleep;— To sleep: perchance to dream


  ACT 3

  if death is but a sleep, and dying is just like falling asleep, then perhaps ('perchance') we will dream after death. Perhaps the afterlife will be full of dreams.

  But that's where the problem lies for Hamlet, who, of all of Shakespeare's characters, is the one most prone to over-thinking. For as he goes on to say, in that 'sleep of death' we do not know what kind of dreams might befall us: they may, after all, be more like nightmares than dreams. Of course, Hamlet doesn't say 'but that's the problem', but 'ay, there's the rub': a 'rub' being an impediment or obstacle. The word comes from the game of bowls: a rub was the name given to an obstacle which causes the bowled ball to veer off course.
• There is a divinity that shapes our ends


  ACT 5

  Hamlet means that God is in control of what happens to us, guiding us even as we try to forge our own paths through life.
• "Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay"


  ACT 5

  further emphasizing that for all one's greatness in life, one cannot control one's fate after death nor avoid being used for the most basic or indeed humiliating of uses
• my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!


  ACT 4 soliloquy

  Hamlet vowes to think of nothing else but his bloody revenge against his uncle. From this moment forth he promises to stand for nothing else than that which he long knew he must do, and Hamlet makes good on his vow. The rest of Hamlet's actions throughout the play focus on executing his revenge
• I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand men

  ACT 4 sillioquy

  Hamlet has contemplated the brave actions of the soldiers as they march off to imminent doom for the shear sake of honor of king and country, yet Hamlet has not taken arms against the massive affront to the personal honor of himself, his father, his mother, and the state of Denmark itself.

  He laments the fact that to his shame twenty thousand men go to their doom as easily as the would go to bed, all for an illusion (a fantasy and trick of fame). They fight for a small piece of land not even large enough to hold the graves of all who will die there; yet he, who would be fighting for something real, has don nothing, despite the fact that he has the means and strength and desire to do it.
• That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,


  ACT 4 silioquy

  His father was murdered, his mother stained with incest, by marrying her husbands brother. These sick action provoke his sense of reason and his passions (excite his reason and blood) to just revenge.
• unweeded garden


  The use of the extended metaphor of an 'unweeded garden' to describe Denmark as the corruption of the throne and his mother has spread like an 'unweeded garden' to the state and people causing troubled times and for this to end, corruption needs to be stopped. Thus, we see Gertrude as presented in some play adaptations willingly drinking the poison, which is representative of corruption, therefore she ends her inner corruption with suicide as she couldn't bear it any longer.
• And it must follow as the night the day


  ACT 1

  dramatic irony as Polonius is saying that you should always be truthful
• "she would hang on him"

  ACT 1

  soliloquy

  describing the loving relationship between his mother and father. This appears in Hamlet's first soliloquy, in which he expresses his disgust with the idea that his mother is now sleeping with his uncle.
• Sweets to the sweet: farewell! / I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife


  ACT 5

  says the Queen, as she scatters flowers at Ophelia's funeral. When Hamlet comes rushing in and grapples with Laertes in the grave, the Queen excuses him by saying that "This is mere madness."
• There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love,

  remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts."


  ACT 5

  distributing flowers to the court as a symbol of her lost love and sanity.
• He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection tome


  ACT 1

  Ophelia is Gertrude's opposite. She ispure, innocent, loyal, honest and loving. She submits to herfather's authority as a dutiful daughter must and confesses toher love affair with Hamlet, her father's interference will havetragic consequences for both characters.
• for to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind


  ACT 3

  Ophelia is heartbroken in the face of this angry outburst. She isbeing used by Polonius and Claudius in this scene to seek thesource of his 'antic disposition'. Unlike Gertrude she is innocentof any crime, she is trying to remain a loyal daughter and isobedient to her father.
• How should I your true love know from another one?

  ACT 5

  In her insane state Ophelia singsthree songs about death, the first one being about the deathand burial of a 'true love.' This reminds us of the death of thelove she and Hamlet shared due to her father's corrupt advise.It also foreshadows her own later death and burial.
• First her father slain. Next your son gone....poor Ophelia divided from herself and her fair judgement


  ACT 5

  Claudius observesthat Ophelia is no longer herself. Her madness reminds us ofHamlet's feigned madness earlier in the play. Hamlet's rejectionand abuse of her and her father's death and meddling havetwisted and corrupted her innocent and pure mind and hasreduced her to this pathetic state.
• Lay her I'th' earth, and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring!


  ACT 5

  vidence of Ophelia'svirtuous and uncorrupted nature are made clear in this scene.Floral imager is employed once more to highlight her innocence.Her death is as the result of madness due to grief and Hamlet'srejection of her. Her innocent nature did not equip her towithstand the abuse of her trust by the key men in her life: herfather, brother and lover.