Hamlet Quotes + Critics

Hamlet - victim of the world around him

Act 3 scene 4

‘Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen’

Hamlet - victim of the world around him

Act 5 scene 2

‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow’

Hamlet - victim of the world around him

Act 5 scene 2

‘The potent poison quite overcrows my spirit’

Hamlet - victim of the world around him

Act 3 scene 4

‘Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!’

Hamlet - victim of the world around him

Act 1 scene 4

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’

Hamlet - victim of the world around him

Critic - Nigel Alexander

‘How does one deal with a man like Claudius, without becoming like him?’

Hamlet - introspective and contemplative

Act 1 scene 2

‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt/ thaw and resolve itself into a dew’

Hamlet - introspective and contemplative

Act 1 scene 5

‘O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?/ And shall I couple hell?’

Hamlet - introspective and contemplative Act

Critic - Nigel Alexander

Hamlet is ‘aware that more than one set of answers exists’

Hamlet - introspective and contemplative

Act 1 scene 5

‘I, with wings as swift as meditation… may sweep to my revenge’

Hamlet - introspective and contemplative

Act 2 scene 2

‘The earth seems to me a sterile promontory’

Hamlet - introspective and contemplative

Act 3 scene 2

‘Give me that man/ That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him/ In my heart’s core…’

Hamlet - introspective and contemplative

Act 4 scene 4

‘My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worse’

Hamlet - inadequate tragic hero

Act 1 scene 2

‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother’

Hamlet - inadequate tragic hero

Act 1 scene 5

‘O most pernicious woman!’

Hamlet - inadequate tragic hero

Critic - Knight

‘Hamlet is the poison in the veins of the community’

Hamlet - inadequate tragic hero

Act 5 scene 2

‘Incestuous, murderous, damned Dane’ ‘drink off this poison’

Hamlet - inadequate tragic hero

Act 3 scene 3

‘O this is hire and salary not revenge’

Hamlet - inadequate tragic hero

Act 4 scene 4

‘How stand I then,/ That have a father killed, a mother stained’

Hamlet - excessive delay

Act 1 scene 5

‘I with wings as swift as meditation… may sweep to my revenge’

Hamlet - excessive delay

Act 2 scene 2

‘A dull and muddy mottled rascal… Who calls me villain?’

Hamlet - excessive delay

Act 3 scene 2

‘Now I could drink hot blood’

Hamlet - excessive delay

Act 3 scene 3

‘O, this is hire and salary, not revenge’

Hamlet - appearance vs reality

Act 1 scene 2

‘A little more kin and less than kind’

Hamlet - appearance vs reality

Act 1 scene 2

‘Inky cloak’

Hamlet - appearance vs reality

Act 1 scene 2

‘Like Niobe, all tears’

Hamlet - appearance vs reality

Act 2 scene 2

‘Happy in that we are not over-happy; on Fortune’s cap we are not the very button’

Claudius - appearance vs reality

Act 2 scene 2

‘Of Hamlet’s transformation - so I call it,/ Sith nor th’exterior nor the inward man/ Resembles that it was’

Hamlet - appearance vs reality

Critic - Stephen Greenblatt

‘Who’s there? Hamlet famously begins. The question, centred on the ambiguous figure of the Ghost, haunts the entire play’

Foils - Fortinbras

Act 1 scene 1

‘Recover of us, by strong and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost’

Foils - Fortinbras

Act 4 scene 4

‘Witness this army… divine ambition’

Foils - Fortinbras

Critic - Philip Edwards

‘Fortinbras is success where Hamlet is failure

Foils - Laertes

Act 4 scene 7

‘To cut his throat in the church’

Foils - Laertes

Act 5 scene 2

‘Why, as a woodcock to mine own springs… I am justly killed with mine own treachery’

Foils - Laertes

Critic - Nigel Alexander

‘Laertes seems to exemplify in conduct the alternative courses of action considered by Hamlet in his soliloquy’

The Ghost

Critic - Tiffany Stern

For the contemporary audience ‘the ghost in Hamlet [was] unquestionably evil’

The Ghost

Act 1 scene 4

‘A spirit of health or goblin damned’

The Ghost

Act 3 scene 4

‘Pale’ appearance, sensitivity towards Gertrude: ‘O, step between her and her fighting soul’

The Ghost

Act 1 scene 5

‘Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder’

The Ghost

Act 1 scene 5

‘Any, that incestuous, that adulterous beast’

Claudius - villain

Act 1 scene 2

‘The memory be green’

Claudius - villain

Act 3 scene 3

Soliloquy

‘O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven’

Claudius - villain

Act 4 scene 5

‘O this is the poison of deep grief’

Claudius - villain

Act 4 scene 5

‘And where th’offence is, let the great axe fall’

Claudius - villain

Act 4 scene 7

‘Revenge should have no bounds’

Claudius - villain

Act 5 scene 2

‘It is the poisoned cup: it is too late’

Claudius - villain

Critic - Amanda Mabillard

He is a ‘multi-faceted villain’ ‘monstrous’

Claudius - relationship with Hamlet

Act 4 scene 5

‘There is such divinity that doth hedge a king’

Claudius - relationship with Hamlet

Act 2 scene 2

‘Kindless villain’

Claudius - relationship with Hamlet

Act 1 scene 2

‘My cousin Hamlet and my son’

Claudius - relationship with Hamlet

Act 3 scene 3

‘I like him not’

Claudius - relationship with Hamlet

Act 5 scene 2

‘Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, ‘Drink off this potion’

Claudius - relationship with Hamlet

Critic - Nigel Alexander

‘How does one deal with a man like Claudius without becoming like him?’

Claudius - relationship with Hamlet

Critic - Wilson Knight

‘The question of the relative morality of Hamlet and Claudius reflects the ultimate problem of the play’

Ophelia - relationship with Hamlet

Act 3 scene 1

‘Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breed of sinners’

Ophelia - relationship with Hamlet

Act 3 scene 1

‘I have heard of your paintings too, well enough’

Ophelia - relationship with Hamlet

Act 3 scene 1

‘O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown’

Ophelia - relationship with Hamlet

Act 4 scene 5

‘Lord we know what we are but not what we may be’

Ophelia - relationship with Hamlet

Act 3 scene 2

‘Do you think I meant country matters?’

Ophelia - relationship with Hamlet

Act 3 scene 2

‘I think nothing, my lord’

Ophelia - relationship with Hamlet

Critic - Leverenz

She ‘mirrors in her madness the tensions that Hamlet perceives through her impossible to obey contradictory voices’

Gertrude

Act 1 scene 2

‘Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off’

Gertrude

Act 1 scene 2

‘As if increase of appetite had grown… frailty thy name is woman!’

Gertrude

Act 3 scene 2

‘I will speak daggers to her, but use none;/ My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites’

Gertrude

Act 3 scene 4

‘A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother,/ As kill a king, and marry with his brother’

Gertrude

Act 5 scene 2

‘Incestuous damned Dane’

Gertrude

Critic - Marilyn French

‘Hamlet is not concerned with killing Claudius, the king. He is only concerned with Claudius, the husband’