Hamlet Act 3 Quotations

Read on this book,

That show of such an exercise may color

Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this

(‘Tis too much proved), that with devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

Polonius

The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

O heavy burden!

Claudius

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.

Hamlet

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.

Hamlet

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

That I have longed long to redeliver

I pray you now receive them.

Ophelia

I did love you once.

Hamlet

I was the more deceived.

Ophelia

Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest,

but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were

better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud,

revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck

than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to

give them shape, or time to act them in. What should

such fellows as I do crawling between earth and

heaven. We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us.

Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

Hamlet

It shall be so.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Claudius

Madam, how like you this play?

The lady doth protest too much methinks.

O, but she’ll keep her word.

Hamlet, Gertrude, Hamlet

You would play upon me, you would seem to

know my stops, you would pluck out the heart

of my mystery, you would sound me from my

lowest note to the top of my compass; and there

is much music, excellent voice in this little

organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood,

do you think I am easier to be played on that a

pipe? Call me what instrument you will,

though you can fret me, you cannot play upon

me.

Hamlet

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon ‘t,

A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,

Though inclination be as sharp as will.

Claudius

Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying.

And I’ll do ‘t. And so he goes to heaven,

And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:

Hamlet

No. When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage

Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,

At game a-swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in ‘t—

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,

And that his soul may be damned and black

As hell, whereto it goes.

Hamlet

How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!

Hamlet

O speak to me no more!

These words like daggers enter in my ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet.

Gertrude

Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

Ghost

This counselor

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life a foolish prating knave.—

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Good night, mother.

Hamlet