Hamlet Quotes (Jai)

DISCORD IN DENMARK

DISCORD IN DENMARK

On the state

"disjoint and out of frame", Hamlet

Rotten

"something is rotten in the state of Denmark", Marcellus

"tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart", Marcellus

The ghost

"nightly toils the subject of the land... does not divide the Sunday from the week", Marcellus

The garden of the Danish state

"an unweeded garden", "things rank and gross in nature possess it", Hamlet

Claudius's action

"sleeping in my orchard / A serpent stung me / That serpent did sting thy father's life", the ghost

ROLE OF FATE

ROLE OF FATE

Claudius on his sorrows

"when sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions", Claudius

Theological fate

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends"

Royalty + fate

"Majesty ... is a massy wheel", "to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortised and adjoined, which when it falls ... [attend] the bois'trous ruin"

Hamlet on heaven

"heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this, and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister"

Fate personified

"My fate cries out"

Hamlet on his own fate

"The time is out of joint. O cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right!"

THE GHOST

THE GHOST

Ghost and the state

Ghost "bodes some strange eruption to our state"

Ghost and devil

"a spirit of health or goblin damned"

"and draw you into madness?" - Horatio

Ghost on purgatory

"confined to fast in fires"

KING CLAUDIUS V OLD HAMLET

KING CLAUDIUS V OLD HAMLET

Claudius on his marriage

"With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage

In equal scale weighing delight and dole"

"Th'imperial jointness to this warlike state"

Hamlet on his relation to Claudius

"a little more than kin, and less than kind"; "I am too much in the 'son'"

Old Hamlet

"valiant Hamlet", "hyperion to a satyr"

Hamlet comparing his father with Claudius

"my father's brother, but no more like my father ... than I to Hercules"

Claudius on his act

"O mine offence is rank, it smells to heaven

It hath the eldest primal curse upon't / A brother's murder"

HAMLET RESPONDING TO MARRIAGE

HAMLET RESPONDING TO MARRIAGE

Hamlet on suspicion

"All is not well. I doubt some foul play"

The funeral meats

"The funeral baked meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables"

Hamlet on a beast mourning

"O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourned longer"

Sheets, shoes, sweat

"with such dexterity to incestuous sheets"

"ere those shoes were old"

"in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty"

Hamlet on speaking to his mother

The rose

"I will speak daggers to her"

"Such an act... takes off the rose / From the fair forehead of an innocent love / And plants a blister there"

PSYCHOANALYSIS

PSYCHOANALYSIS

Hamlet feeling like he's not worth his cause

"unpregnant of my cause", "like a wh* unpack my heart with words"

"He would drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech"

Hamlet on Ophelia during play within a play

"here's metal more attractive ... lady, shall I lie in your lap?"

WOMEN

WOMEN

Nun

"get thee to a nunnery!"

Hamlet referring to women

O: "tis brief, my lord"

H: "as woman's love"

"frailty, thy name is woman"

Hamlet on his mother

"O most pernicious woman

O villain, villain, smiling damned villain"

Hamlet on the queen's appearances

"my most seeming virtuous queen"

HAMLET AND DEATH

HAMLET AND DEATH

Hamlet on reason

God did not giver us "That capability and Godlike reason / to fust in us unused"

Hamlet on thought

"conscience doth make cowards of us all

And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"

Flesh

"oh that this too too sallied flesh would melt"

"the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to"

Hamlet on the uses of the world

"How weary, stale, and unprofitable

seem to me the uses of the world!"

Hamlet on Alexander and maggots

"Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returned to dust"

"we fat ourselves for maggots"

To be

"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 be or not to be - the afterlife

"and in that sleep what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause"

Hamlet on mankind

"what a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties ... and yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?"

Sterile promontory

"this goodly frame the Earth seems to be a sterile promontory"

"this most excellent canopy the air... appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours"

Yorick

"alas, poor Yorick"

"I knew him, Horatio"

"where be your jibes now"

"let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come."

OPHELIA

OPHELIA

Ophelia's songs

"he is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone"

"let in the maid that out a maiden never departed more"

Laertes to Ophelia on Hamlet

"a violet in the youth of primy nature"

"for his will is not his own"

Polonius to Ophelia on Hamlet

"I would not ...

Have you so slander any moment leisure

As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet"

Ophelia on Hamlet's behaviour

"Look so piteous in purport

As if he had been loosed out of hell"

Ophelia in the grave

"and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring"

Ophelia's violets

"I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died."

Ophelia's maiden nature

"Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia"

Ophelia's death

"pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death"

"glassy stream", "willow grows aslant the brook"

Ophelia on Hamlet's worth

"The expectation and rose of the fair state

The glass of fashion and the mould of form"

"Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh"

REVENGING

REVENGING

Hamlet on killing his father when he's praying

"Am I then revenged / To take him in the purging of his soul / When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?"

Eggshell

"death and danger dare even for an eggshell... how stand I then?", "delicate and tender prince"

Laertes on his revenge

"only I'll be revenged / Most thoroughly for my father"

Laertes on what he'll do to Hamlet

"To cut his throat i'th'church"

Hamlet on why Claudius deserves it

"He that hath killed my king and whored my mother ... is't not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm?"

The sparrow

"there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow"

Hamlet not wanting revenge, not seeing himself as a revenger

"bawdy villain .. O what an ass am I!"

PERFORMANCE V REALITY

PERFORMANCE V REALITY

The mirror

"The purpose of playing ... is to hold ... the mirror up to nature"

Seems?

"nay, it is. I know not 'seems'"

Claudius on the axe

"and where th'offence is rank let the great axe fall"

SUPERVISION

SUPERVISION

Hamlet's body politic

"His will is not his own, for he himself is subject to his birth"

"on his choice depends the safety and health of this whole state"

Pipe, sponge

"though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me"

"to be demanded of a sponge"

All occasions

"how all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull revenge"

Polonius hiding

"Behind the arras I'll cover myself / to hear the process"

Guildenstern and Rosencrantz on their loyalty to the king

+ Hamlet comments

"we give ourselves up in the full bent"

"did make love to their employment" - Hamlet

Hamlet to G and R

"I know the good king and queen have sent for you"

Petard quote

"'tis the sport to have the enginer / hoist with his own petard"

CLAUDIUS AS DUPLICITOUS

CLAUDIUS AS DUPLICITOUS

Claudius on a lash + harlot's cheek

"How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience"

"the harlot's cheek [...] is not more ugly ... than is my deed to my most painted word"

Claudius on his plan

"so haply slander ... may miss our name"