Hamlet: Theatre and Acting

With mirth in funeral

and with dirge in marriage

Claudius,

Act 1, Scene 2

In equal scale weighing

delight and dole

Claudius,

Act 1, Scene 2

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted

colour off

Gertrude,

Act 1, Scene 2

Seems madam? Nay it is, I know not seems.

‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother

Hamlet,

Act 1, Scene 2

These indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might

play, but I have that within which passes show - these but the trappings and the suits of woe

Hamlet,

Act 1, Scene 2

One may smile, and smile,

and be a villain

Hamlet,

Act 1, Scene 5

My most seeming

virtuous queen

Ghost,

Act 1, Scene 5

He that plays the king shall be welcome,

his majesty shall have tribute of me

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 3

Give thy thoughts

no tongue

Polonius,

Act 1, Scene 3

As I perchance hereafter shall think meet

to put an antic disposition on

Hamlet,

Act 1, Scene 5

And thus do we […] with windlasses and assays

of bias, by indirections find directions out

Polonius,

Act 2, Scene 1

As if he had been

loosed out of hell

Ophelia,

Act 2, Scene 1

Hamlet’s transformation - so call it, sith nor

th’exterior nor the inward man resembles that it was

Claudius,

Act 2, Scene 2

A crafty

madness

Guildenstern,

Act 3, Scene 1

With devotion’s visage and pious

action, we do sugar o’er the devil himself

Polonius,

Act 3, Scene 1

The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art, is not more

ugly to the thing that helps it than my deed is to my most painted word.

Claudius,

Act 3, Scene 1

The play’s the thing

wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

I did enact Julius Caesar. I was

killed i’th’capitol, Brutus killed me.

Polonius,

Act 3, Scene 2

It was a brute part

of him to kill so capital a calf there

Hamlet,

Act 3, Scene 2

In second husband let me be accurst: none

wed the second but who killed the first

Player Queen,

Act 3, Scene 2

A second time I kill my husband dead

when second husband kisses me in bed

Player Queen,

Act 3, Scene 2

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

of violent birth but poor validity

Player King,

Act 3, Scene 2

The lady doth protest too

much methinks

Gertrude,

Act 3, Scene 2

Let the galled jade winch,

our withers are unwrung

Hamlet,

Act 3, Scene 2

The rugged Pyrrhus, whose sable arms,

black as his purpose, did the night resemble

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

Head to foot, now he is total gules, horridly

tricked with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

So, as a painted tyrant Pyrrhus stood, and

like a neutral to his will and matter, did nothing

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

so after Pyrrhus’s pause, a roused

vengeance sets him new a-work

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

O what a

rogue and peasant slave am I!

Hamlet,

Third Soliloquy (Act 2, Scene 2)

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to

Hecuba, that he should weep for her?

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

He would drown the stage with tears, and cleave

the general ear with horrid speech. Make mad the guilty and appall the free.

Hamlet,

3rd Soliloquy

I, the son of the murdered, prompted to my

revenge by heaven and hell, must like a whore unpack my heart with words

Hamlet,

Third Soliloquy

There is sir an eyrie of children, little eyases,

that cry out on top of question and are most tyranically clapped for’t.

Rosencrantz,

Act 2, Scene 2

There was for a while no money bid for an

argument unless the poet and the playwright went to cuffs in the question

Rosencrantz,

Act 2, Scene 2

For the play I remember pleased

not the million; ‘twas caviary to the general

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

An excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down

with as much modesty as cunning […] an honest method

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

To hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature; to

show virtue her own feature [..] the very age and body of the time his form and pressure

Hamlet,

Act 3, Scene 2

Distracted

globe

Hamlet,

Act 1, Scene 5

Those that would make mouths at him while

my father lived now give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

He’s loved

of the distracted multitude

Claudius,

Act 4, Scene 3

More matter

with less art

Gertrude,

Act 2, Scene 2

They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the

time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live

Hamlet,

Act 2, Scene 2

You would play upon me, you would seem to

know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery

Hamlet,

Act 3, Scene 2

Call me what instrument you will, though

you can fret me, you cannot play upon me

Hamlet,

Act 3, Scene 2

You go not till i set you up a glass

where you may see the inmost part of you

Hamlet,

Act 3, Scene 3

"A meta-commentary on

the emotional effects of oratory”

Heather Hirschfeld

In response to the Player’s grief over Hecuba, Hamlet is anguished not

necessarily by his own delay, but rather that it might “cast doubt on the authenticity of his grief”

Steven Mullaney

The Player’s speech “functions as

a means for Hamlet to spy on himself” - Hirschfeld

The Player King’s speech demands a “central place”

in the play’s overarching construction, for it is framed by Hamlet’s “soliloquies of self-reproach for a deed undone”

Harold Jenkins

The movement of events intertwines the two

actions of revenge and marriage and brings them to their crises together

Harold Jenkins

The play-within-a-play is “of a piece with the

mirroring nature of tragedy, a drama in which experience are constantly multiplied”

Gillian Woods

“Hamlet may have started the play by rejecting ‘seeming’ appearances,

but his way of understanding and dealing with his situation is pointedly theatrical. Performance is part of reality.”

Gillian Woods

“We are reminded that art holds a mirror up to

nature, but the heart of a man’s mystery is not easily plucked out.”

Harold Jenkins

“History, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical

pastoral”

Polonius, Act 2, Scene 2

“A vulgar and barbarous drama that would not

be tolerated by the vilest populace of France or Italy” - Voltaire