Hamlet Act 1 Study Guide

“Who’s there?” / “Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.” — Who asks the first question?

Barnardo → Francisco

“For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart.”

Francisco → Barnardo

“Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy / And will not let belief take hold of him / Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us. / Therefore I have entreated him along / With us to watch the minutes of this night, / That, if again this apparition come, / He may approve our eyes and speak to it.”

Marcellus → Barnardo and Horatio

“Sit down awhile, / And let us once again assail your ears, / That are so fortified against our story, / What we have two nights seen.”

Barnardo → Horatio

“When yond same star that’s westward from the pole / Had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven / Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, / The bell then beating one—”

Barnardo → Horatio and Marcellus

“Thou art a scholar. Speak to it, Horatio.”

Marcellus → Horatio

“What art thou that usurp’st this time of night, / Together with that fair and warlike form / In which the majesty of buried Denmark / Did sometimes march? By heaven, I charge thee, / speak.”

Horatio → the Ghost

“Before my God, I might not this believe / Without the sensible and true avouch / Of mine own eyes.”

Horatio → Marcellus and Barnardo

“In what particular thought to work I know not, / But in the gross and scope of mine opinion / This bodes some strange eruption to our state.”

Horatio → Marcellus and Barnardo

“Now, sir, young Fortinbras, / Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full, / Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there / Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes / For food and diet to some enterprise / That hath a stomach in ’t, which is no other / (As it doth well appear unto our state) / But to recover of us, by strong hand / And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands / So by his father lost.”

Horatio → Marcellus and Barnardo

“A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. / In the most high and palmy state of Rome, / A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, / The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead / Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets,”

Horatio → Marcellus and Barnardo

“We do it wrong, being so majestical, / To offer it the show of violence, / For it is as the air, invulnerable, / And our vain blows malicious mockery.”

Marcellus → Horatio and Barnardo

“Break we our watch up, and by my advice / Let us impart what we have seen tonight / Unto young Hamlet, for, upon my life, / This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.”

Horatio → Marcellus and Barnardo

“Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death / The memory be green, and that it us befitted / To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom / To be contracted in one brow of woe, / Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature / That we with wisest sorrow think on him / Together with remembrance of ourselves.”

Claudius → the court

“Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, / Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state, / Have we (as ’twere with a defeated joy, / With an auspicious and a dropping eye, / With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, / In equal scale weighing delight and dole) / Taken to wife.”

Claudius → the court

“Young Fortinbras, / Holding a weak supposal of our worth / Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death / Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, / Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage, / He hath not failed to pester us with message / Importing the surrender of those lands / Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, / To our most valiant brother—so much for him.”

Claudius → the court

“And we here dispatch / You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand, / For bearers of this greeting to old Norway, / Giving to you no further personal power / To business with the King more than the scope / Of these dilated articles allow.”

Claudius → Cornelius and Voltemand

“The head is not more native to the heart, / The hand more instrumental to the mouth, / Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.”

Claudius → Laertes

“My dread lord, / Your leave and favor to return to France, / From whence though willingly I came to Denmark / To show my duty in your coronation, / Yet now I must confess, that duty done, / My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France / And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.”

Laertes → Claudius

“A little more than kin and less than kind.”

Hamlet → himself (aside)

“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” / “Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.” — Who gives the reply?

Hamlet → Claudius

“Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. / Do not forever with thy vailèd lids / Seek for thy noble father in the dust. / Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die, / Passing through nature to eternity.”

Gertrude → Hamlet

““Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” / ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, / Nor customary suits of solemn black, / Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,”

Hamlet → Gertrude

“That can denote me truly. 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 → Gertrude

“But to persever / In obstinate condolement is a course / Of impious stubbornness. ’Tis unmanly grief. / It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, / A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, / An understanding simple and unschooled.”

Claudius → Hamlet

“We pray you, throw to earth / This unprevailing woe and think of us / As of a father, for let the world take note, / You are the most immediate to our throne, / And with no less nobility of love / Than that which dearest father bears his son / Do I impart toward you.”

Claudius → Hamlet

“For your intent / In going back to school in Wittenberg, / It is most retrograde to our desire, / And we beseech you, bend you to remain / Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, / Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.”

Claudius → Hamlet

“O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, / Or that the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God, God, / How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!”

Hamlet → himself

“Seem to me all the uses of this world! / Fie on ’t, ah fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden / That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely. That it should come to this:”

Hamlet → himself

“So excellent a king, that was to this / Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother / That he might not beteem the winds of heaven / Visit her face too roughly.”

Hamlet → himself

“And yet, within a month / (Let me not think on ’t, frailty, thy name is woman!), / A little month, or ere those shoes were old / With which she followed my poor father’s body, / Like Niobe, all tears—why she, even she / (O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason / Would have mourned longer!), married with my / uncle,”

Hamlet → himself

“She married. O, most wicked speed, to post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! / It is not, nor it cannot come to good. / But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”

Hamlet → himself

“Sir, my good friend. I’ll change that name with you. / And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?”

Hamlet → Horatio

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. / Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven / Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!”

Hamlet → Horatio

“He was a man. Take him for all in all, / I shall not look upon his like again.”

Hamlet → Horatio

“Two nights together had these gentlemen, / Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch, / In the dead waste and middle of the night, / Been thus encountered: a figure like your father, / Armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie, / Appears before them and with solemn march / Goes slow and stately by them.”

Horatio → Hamlet

“And whatsomever else shall hap tonight, / Give it an understanding but no tongue. / I will requite your loves. So fare you well. / Upon the platform, ’twixt eleven and twelve, / I’ll visit you.”

Hamlet → Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo

“My father’s spirit—in arms! All is not well. / I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come! / Till then, sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s / eyes.”

Hamlet → himself

“For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor, / Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, / A violet in the youth of primy nature, / Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, / The perfume and suppliance of a minute, / No more.”

Laertes → Ophelia

“His greatness weighed, his will is not his own, / For he himself is subject to his birth. / He may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself, for on his choice depends / The safety and the health of this whole state.”

Laertes → Ophelia

“Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, / And keep you in the rear of your affection, / Out of the shot and danger of desire. / The chariest maid is prodigal enough / If she unmask her beauty to the moon. / Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes.”

Laertes → Ophelia

“I shall the effect of this good lesson keep / As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, / Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, / Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, / Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, / Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads / And recks not his own rede.”

Ophelia → Laertes

“And these few precepts in thy memory / Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, / Nor any unproportioned thought his act. / Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. / Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, / Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,”

Polonius → Laertes

“Beware / Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, / Bear ’t that th’ opposèd may beware of thee. / Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. / Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.”

Polonius → Laertes

“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not expressed in fancy (rich, not gaudy), / For the apparel oft proclaims the man, / And they in France of the best rank and station / Are of a most select and generous chief in that. / Neither a borrower nor a lender be, / For loan oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”

Polonius → Laertes

“This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Polonius → Laertes

“He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders / Of his affection to me.”

Ophelia → Polonius

“Affection, puh! You speak like a green girl / Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. / Do you believe his “tenders,” as you call them?”

Polonius → Ophelia

“Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby / That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay, / Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly, / Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, / Running it thus) you’ll tender me a fool.”

Polonius → Ophelia

“Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, / When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul / Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter, / Giving more light than heat, extinct in both / Even in their promise as it is a-making, / You must not take for fire.”

Polonius → Ophelia

“For Lord Hamlet, / Believe so much in him that he is young, / And with a larger tether may he walk / Than may be given you.”

Polonius → Ophelia

“Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers, / Not of that dye which their investments show, / But mere implorators of unholy suits, / Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds / The better to beguile.”

Polonius → Ophelia

“The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, / Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels, / And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, / The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out / The triumph of his pledge.”

Hamlet → Horatio

“But, to my mind, though I am native here / And to the manner born, it is a custom / More honored in the breach than the observance. / This heavy-headed revel east and west / Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations. / They clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase / Soil our addition.”

Hamlet → Horatio

“Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, / Being nature’s livery or fortune’s star, / His virtues else, be they as pure as grace, / As infinite as man may undergo, / Shall in the general censure take corruption / From that particular fault.”

Hamlet → Horatio

“Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! / Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, / Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from / hell, / Be thy intents wicked or charitable, / Thou com’st in such a questionable shape / That I will speak to thee.”

Hamlet → heaven, then the Ghost

“I’ll call thee “Hamlet,” / “King,” “Father,” “Royal Dane.” O, answer me! / Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell / Why thy canonized bones, hearsèd in death, / Have burst their cerements, why the sepulcher, / Wherein we saw thee quietly interred, / Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws / To cast thee up again.”

Hamlet → the Ghost

“It beckons you to go away with it / As if it some impartment did desire / To you alone.”

Horatio → Hamlet

“Why, what should be the fear? / I do not set my life at a pin’s fee. / And for my soul, what can it do to that, / Being a thing immortal as itself?”

Hamlet → Horatio

“What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord? / Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff / That beetles o’er his base into the sea, / And there assume some other horrible form / Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason / And draw you into madness? Think of it.”

Horatio → Hamlet

“My fate cries out / And makes each petty arture in this body / As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve. / Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen. / By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me! / I say, away!—Go on. I’ll follow thee.”

Hamlet → Horatio and Marcellus, then the Ghost

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Marcellus → Horatio

“I am thy father’s spirit, / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night / And for the day confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away.”

The Ghost → Hamlet

“Haste me to know ’t, that I, with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge.”

Hamlet → the Ghost

“’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, / A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark / Is by a forgèd process of my death / Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth, / The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown.”

The Ghost → Hamlet

“Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, / With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts— / O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power / So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust / The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. / O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!”

The Ghost → Hamlet

“Sleeping within my orchard, / My custom always of the afternoon, / Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole / With juice of cursèd hebona in a vial / And in the porches of my ears did pour / The leprous distilment,”

The Ghost → Hamlet

“Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand / Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched, / Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin, / Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled, / No reck’ning made, but sent to my account / With all my imperfections on my head.”

The Ghost → Hamlet

“But, howsomever thou pursues this act, / Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven / And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge / To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once. / The glowworm shows the matin to be near / And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire. / Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.”

The Ghost → Hamlet

“Yea, from the table of my memory / I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records, / All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, / That youth and observation copied there,”

Hamlet → himself

“My tables—meet it is I set it down / That one may smile and smile and be a villain. / At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark. / So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word.”

Hamlet → himself

“Touching this vision here, / It is an honest ghost—that let me tell you. / For your desire to know what is between us, / O’ermaster ’t as you may.”

Hamlet → Horatio and Marcellus

“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. / There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Hamlet → Horatio

“How strange or odd some’er I bear myself / (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on)”

Hamlet → Horatio and Marcellus

“And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. / The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite / That ever I was born to set it right! / Nay, come, let’s go together.”

Hamlet → Horatio and Marcellus

Where does Act 1 open, and what is happening?

Elsinore Castle, Denmark. Barnardo relieves Francisco at midnight.

How are Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, and the dead king related?

Gertrude is Hamlet’s mother. Claudius is his uncle and new stepfather. King Hamlet was his father.

Why do the guards bring Horatio to see the Ghost?

He is an educated skeptic who can confirm the sighting and speak to it.

How does the Ghost appear and behave in 1.1?

It wears King Hamlet’s armor, stays silent, and disappears when the cock crows.

What happened between King Hamlet and the elder Fortinbras?

King Hamlet killed him in combat and lawfully won his lands.

What does young Fortinbras want, and who rules Norway?

He wants his father’s lost lands. His uncle is Norway’s king.

What is Claudius trying to accomplish in his opening speech?

Justify the marriage, establish authority, and address the Norwegian threat.

Who are Cornelius and Voltemand, and what is their mission?

Ambassadors sent to ask Norway’s king to stop young Fortinbras.

Why is Laertes in Denmark, and where does he want to go?

He attended Claudius’s coronation and wants to return to France.

Where does Hamlet want to study, and why does he stay in Denmark?

Wittenberg. Claudius opposes his leaving, and Hamlet agrees to obey Gertrude.

What does Hamlet’s first soliloquy reveal, and what stops him from suicide?

Grief and disgust at the remarriage. God’s law forbids suicide.

How quickly did Gertrude remarry?

Within a month of King Hamlet’s death. He has been dead less than two months.

What do “more than kin” and “too much in the sun” criticize?

Claudius’s new role as Hamlet’s father. “Sun” puns on “son.”

What do Hyperion, the satyr, Niobe, and Hercules refer to?

Hyperion/satyr: King Hamlet/Claudius. Niobe: mourning. Hercules: heroic strength.

Why does Laertes warn Ophelia about Hamlet?

His affection may fade, and royal duty limits his choice of wife.

How does Ophelia challenge Laertes’s advice?

She tells him to follow his own rules instead of pursuing pleasure himself.

What does Polonius order Ophelia to do?

Stop talking with Hamlet.

Why does Hamlet criticize the royal drinking custom?

It makes Danes look like drunkards. One fault can overshadow good qualities.

Why do Horatio and Marcellus oppose Hamlet following the Ghost?

It might lure him into physical danger or madness.

According to the Ghost, how was King Hamlet murdered?

Claudius poured poison into his ears while he slept in the orchard.

What afterlife condition does the Ghost describe, and why was his death spiritually terrible?

Purgatory. He died without final religious preparation.

What does the Ghost tell Hamlet to do about Claudius and Gertrude?

Avenge the murder, but do not plot against Gertrude. Leave her to heaven and conscience.

Does Act 1 establish that Gertrude helped murder King Hamlet?

No. Her involvement is not established.

What is an “antic disposition,” and what must Hamlet’s friends keep secret?

A possible act of madness. They must hide the Ghost encounter and their knowledge of his behavior.

What do “smile and smile and be a villain” and “the time is out of joint” suggest?

Appearances can hide evil. Hamlet feels burdened with repairing the disorder.