HAMLET CHARACTER QUOTES

HAMLET ACT 1-2 [14]

(Aside) “A little more than kin and less than kind”

“All forms, moods, shapes of grief that can denote me truly”

“The Everlasting had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter!”

“They clepe us drunkards”

“Wings as swift … may sweep to my revenge”

“Antic disposition”

OPHELIA: “Loosed out of hell”

“Denmark’s a prison”

(Aside) “If you love me, hold not off”

“What is this quintessence of dust?”

“Welcome to Elsinore … the players”

“He could drown the stage with tears … yet I … can say nothing”

“The spirit that I have seen may be the devil”

“The play’s the thing / wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”

HAMLET ACT 3 Pre Scene 4 [16]

“To be or not to be? That is the question”

“To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … or to take arms against a sea of troubles”

“Conscience does make cowards of us all”

“Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered”

“You should not have believed me”

“Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”

“God has given you one face and you make yourselves another”

CLAUDIUS: “His melancholy sits on brood”

“The players cannot keep counsel. They’ll tell all”

“(Tis brief, my lord) As woman’s love”

“What, frighted with false fire?”

“It’s as easy as lying”

“Yet you cannot play upon me”

“I will speak daggers to her but use none”

“And now I’ll do it”

“No. Up sword”

HAMLET ACT 3 Scene 4 [4]

“Mother, you have my father much offended”

“You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife”

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

“Almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king and marry his brother”

HAMLET ACT 4-5 [9]

“In heaven … if your messenger find him not there, seek him in the other place yourself”

“Still I have cause and will and strength and means to do it”

“Oh, from this time forth / my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”

“Alexander returneth to dust … Imperious Ceasar, dead and turned to clay”

“This is I, Hamlet the Dane”

“I loved Ophelia”

“If it be not now, yet it will come - readiness is all”

“Let be”

“Give me your pardon, sir: I’ve done you wrong”

CLAUDIUS [15]

GHOST: “That incestuous, that adulterous bastard”

“That, opened, lies within our remedy”

“How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience”

“O heavy burden!”

ABOUT HAMLET: “Was not like madness”

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go”

OPHELIA: “The king rises”

“O my offence is rank. It smells to heaven.”

“The primal, eldest curse … a brother’s murder”

“In the corrupted currents of this world offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice”

“O wretched state! O bosom black as death!”

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go”

“The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England”

“The people muddied, thick, and unwholesome in their thoughts”

“Laertes, I must commune with your grief”

GERTRUDE [12]

HAMLET: “A beast … would have mourned longer!”

GHOST: “Won to his shameful lust … my most seeming-virtuous queen”

“The lady protests too much, methinks”

“Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended”

“Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!”

“What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?”

“Alas, he’s mad!”

“If words be made of breath … I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me”

“Mad as the sea and wind when both contend”

“An envious sliver broke … and herself fell in the weeping brook”

“Her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch … into muddy death”

“I will, my lord. I pray you, pardon me”

OPHELIA [11]

POLONIUS: “Think yourself a baby”

“I shall obey, my lord”

POLONIUS: “Read on this book”

“You made me believe so”

“At home, my lord”

“I think nothing, my lord”

GENTLEMAN: “She speaks much of her father, says she hears there’s tricks in the world”

HORATIO: “She may strew dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds”

CLAUDIUS: “This is the poison of deep grief”

“There’s fennel for you, and columbines”

“I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died”

POLONIUS [3]

“Mad for thy love”

“Why, day is day, night night, and time is time”

“Brevity is the soul of wit”

LAERTES [6]

“Fear it, Ophelia. Fear it”

“O thou vile king, give me my father!”

“The drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard”

“I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father”

“This is too heavy. Let me see another.”

“And yet it is almost against my conscience”

EXTRA [7]

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”

GHOST: “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”

“The murder of Gonzago” vs “The mousetrap”

THE CROWD: Laertes shall be king!

GRAVEDIGGER: “Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?”

PRIEST: “Her death was doubtful, and yet here she is allowed virgin crants”

FORTINBRAS: “Here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot”

THE PLOT TO KILL HAMLET [3]

CLAUDIUS: “A sword unbated”

LAERTES: “I’ll anoint my sword … I bought an unction”

CLAUDIUS: “I’ll have prepared him a chalice”

DEATHS [5]

LAERTES: “I am justly killed with mine own treachery”

GERTRUDE: “O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! I am poisoned.”

HAMLET: “Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, drink off this potion.”

HAMLET: “Follow my mother”

HAMLET: “The rest is silence”