Hamlet Quotes/Literary Device Quiz Prep

Apostrophe

When a speaker directly addresses someone absent, dead, or something non-human.

Personification

Giving human traits or actions to non-human things.

Pun

A joke that plays on words with multiple meanings or similar sounds.

Paradox

A statement that seems contradictory but actually reveals a truth.

Stichomythia

A rapid back-and-forth exchange of short lines between characters.

Heroic Couplet

Two rhyming lines of poetry in iambic pentameter.

Biblical Allusion

A reference to a person, event, or idea from the Bible.

Mythological Allusion

A reference to a figure or story from mythology.

Chiasmus

A reversal of structure in two parts of a sentence (ABBA pattern).

Hamlet's fatal flaw

Indecision regarding the murder of the king.

The murder of Gonzaga

Play played inside a play by Hamlet.

"Brevity is the soul of wit"

Polonius (paradox?).

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"

Marcellus (Personification).

"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."

Hamlet (Apostrophe).

"This above all: to thine own self be true"

Polonius

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all"

Hamlet (Personification).

"I must be cruel to be kind"

Hamlet (paradox).

"Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?"

Hamlet (pun).

"Look at that cloud out, very like a whale"

Polonius

"Take you me for a sponge"

Rosencrantz

"What art thou that usurp'st this time of night"

Horatio (Apostrophe)

"This bodes some strange eruption to our state."

Horatio (Personification)

"A little more than kin, and a little less than kind"

Hamlet (pun)

"Chaste treasure... then way what loss honor, list song, lose heart"

Laertes

"But know now noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown."

Ghost (Biblical allusion)

"O my prophetic soul! My uncle!"

Hamlet (Apostrophe??)

"O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right"

Hamlet

" I doubt it is no other but the main— His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage"

Queen

"when the wind is southerly i know a hawk from a handsaw"

Hamlet

"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

Hamlet

"I'll have grounds / More relative than this"

Hamlet (pun)

"He took me by the wrist and held me hard.... His brow"

Ophelia

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Queen

"To punish me with this and this with me"

Hamlet (Chiasmus + inverted sentence)

"We go to claim a little patch of ground"

Captain

"By letters congruent to the death of Hamlet"

King

"From this time forth, my thoughts will be bloody, or be nothing worth it!"

Hamlet

"bear arms"

Clown (pun)

"That I might be the organ"

Laertes

"Alas, poor Yurick, I knew him"

Hamlet (Apostrophe)

"You will lose this wager my lord"

Horatio

"I'll be your foil"

Hamlet (pun)

"I have shot mine arrow o'er the house and hurt my brother."

Hamlet

"And yet it is almost against my conscience."

Laertes

"Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage."

Fortinbras

FLORAL

= Ophelia

Hamlet vs Laertes

= (Foil - opposites)

"hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature"

Hamlet