Mock themed quotes

The nation as a diseased body

‘tis an unweeded garden’

‘rank and gross in nature’

‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’

Performance/theatre and tragic conventions - performance vs reality

‘seems madam? Nay it is; I know not seems’

Performance/theatre and tragic conventions - Meta theatre

‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king’

Performance/theatre and tragic conventions - Hamlet’s tragic self-conciousness

‘I must be cruel only to be kind’

Tragic conventions - rogue

‘Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Tragic conventions - conscience

‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all’

Love (Ophelia)

‘I did love you once’ - love is unstable in a corrupt world

‘Get thee to a nunnery’ - love becomes misogyny and mistrust - Hamlet’s disillusionment of women after Gertrude’s remarriage.

Friendship (Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

‘Were you not sent for?’ - friendship as poltical performance, trust is eroded by surveillance and manipulation

Friendship (Horatio and Hamlet)

‘I will wear him in my heart’s core’ - deep emotional trust, opposite of ros and guild

‘If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart’ -Hamlet entrusts Horatio with his legacy and truth.

‘Good night, sweet prince’ - Horatio tender, poetic farewell provides emotional closure to the tragedy.

Family - Hamlet to Claudius cheeky

‘A little more than kin and less than kind’ - familial disgust

Family (Hamlet to Gertrude)

‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’ - Hamlet’s grief turns into gendered betrayal, shaping his attitude to ove and marriage.

‘O, most pernicious woman!’

“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain’

Revenge - ghost

‘revenge his foul and most unnatural murder’ - sets revenge plot in motion act 1 scene 5

Revenge - Hamlet guily

‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all’

Revenge - Hamlet delaying the murder clau is praying

‘Now I might do it pat, now he is praying’ - Hamlet deliberately delays revenge.

Revenge - action vs inaction.

‘The plays the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king’

‘How all occasions do inform against me’ - Ham condemns his own occassion after seeing fortinbras

‘Oh from this time forth my thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth’

Mystery of death

‘Undiscover’d country’ - fear of the afterlife paralyses action and feeds into hamlet’s delay.

‘The rest is silence’

Justice and morality - revenge..

‘Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder’

Justice and Morality - offence

O my offence is rank, it smells to heav’n’