Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

HAMLET KEY QUOTES

Act 1, scene 2

“A little more than kin and less than kind” – Hamlet, aside. Reveals disgust at his new
‘rela onship’ to Claudius.

“that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon against self-slaughter” – Hamlet is so
depressed that he brie y contemplates suicide but won’t go through with it because it’s a
sin.

“Frailty, thy name is woman” – Hamlet, in reference to Gertrude. (Soliloquy 1).

“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 on Gertrude’s marriage to Claudius. (Soliloquy 1).

“I doubt some foul play…/Foul deeds will rise/ Though all the earth o’erwhelm
them to men’s eyes” – Hamlet. He is determined to uncover the truth.

Act 1, scene 5 – Hamlet meets his father’s ghost and learns the truth.

“Haste me to know it, that I with wings as swift/ As meditation or the thoughts of
love/ May sweep to my revenge” – Hamlet to the ghost. He asks for the details of the
murder so he can seek revenge.

“The serpent that did s ng thy father’s life/Now wears his crown.” Ghost.

“Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand/Of life, of crown, and queen at once dispatched:
Cut o even in the blossoms of my sin.” Ghost.

“From the table of my memory/ I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records…/And thy
commandment all alone shall live/ Within the book and volume of my brain” From
this moment on, revenge consumes Hamlet.

“As I perchance herea er shall think meet/To put an an c disposi on on.”

“The time is out of joint. O cursed spite/ That ever I was born to set it right!” He
comments that the state of Denmark has been a icted with a terrible sickness and laments
the fact that it is his fate/des ny to nd the cure.

Act 2, scene 2. Hamlet plans the play within the play

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 Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

“It appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours”.

Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, revealing his disillusionment with the world.

“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly and I know a hawk
from a handsaw” – Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He reveals that he is only a
li le/only occasionally mad to his old school friends.

“Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I…/ Am I a coward…/I am pigeon-livered

and lack gall/ To make oppression bitter” – Hamlet in soliloquy 3. Hamlet berates
himself, having seen the passion of the players, for not ac ng on his own passionate desire
for revenge.

“…the play’s the thing/ wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” – Hamlet.

Act 3, scene 1 – the ‘nunnery scene’, Soliloquy 4, Hamlet and Ophelia

“The harlot’s cheek, beau ed with plastering art,/Is not more ugly to the thing that helps
it/Than is my deed to my most painted word./Oh heavy burden!” Claudius, revealing his
guilt.

“To be or not to be, that is the question/ Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or to take arms against a sea of
troubles/ And by opposing, end them” –Hamlet

“To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub. For in that
sleep of death what dreams may come…” Hamlet on the unknown.
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Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of
resolution/ Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought/ And enterprises of great
pitch and moment/ With this regard their currents turn awry/ And lose the name
of action” – Hamlet soliloquy 4. On morality.

“Get thee to a nunnery…if thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry:
be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow” Hamlet to Ophelia.

“If thou wilt marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters
you make of them” – Hamlet to Ophelia, revealing his view of women.

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” Claudius on Hamlet.

Act 3, scene 2. The play within the play – Hamlet tests and con rms Claudius’ guilt with
the performance of “The Murder of Gonzago”

“He poisons him I’ th’ garden for his estate…You shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago’s wife” – Hamlet to Claudius.

“Give me some light – away!” Claudius’ reac on to the play within the play as he leaves.

“Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her, but use none”. Hamlet,
in soliloquy 5 as he prepares to speak to Gertrude.
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 Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

Act 3, scene 3 – the prayer scene: Claudius’ soliloquy.

“I like him not, nor stands it safe with us/To let his madness range.” Claudius on Hamlet.

“O my o ence is rank, it smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t: A brother’s
murder!” Claudius.

“Why this is hire and salary, not revenge” – Hamlet resolving not to murder Claudius
while at prayer (soliloquy 6).

“My Crown, mine own ambi on and my Queen. May one be pardoned and retain
th’o ence.”

“Then trip him that his heels may kick at heaven/ And that his soul may be as
damned and black/ As hell whereto he goes” ” – Hamlet (soliloquy 6).

Act 3, scene 4 – Hamlet’s confronta on with Gertrude in her room. He accidentally kills
Polonius.

“You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife/ And would it were not so, you
are my mother” – Hamlet to Gertrude.

“O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, And I see there such
black and grained spots/As will not leave their nct.” Gertrude’s guilt at her own ac ons.

“A bloody deed – almost as bad, good mother/ As kill a king and marry with his
brother” – Hamlet to Gertrude, having just killed Polonius.
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Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

“A murderer & a villain…a vice of kings/ A cutpurse of the empire & the rule”. This
is Hamlet’s assessment of Claudius’ character, designed to torture his mother with guilt.
(Cutpurse = Thief)

“I essentially am not in madness/ But mad in craft”. Hamlet reveals to his mother that
his madness is nothing more than an act.

Act 4, scene 4 – Hamlet’s nal soliloquy (7)

“I do not know/Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do’, Sith I have cause, and will,
and strength, and means to do’t.”

“O from this time forth/ My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth”.

Act 4, scene 7 – Claudius and Laertes

“My lord, I will be ruled; The rather if you could devise it so/That I might be the organ”.
Laertes to Claudius.

“No place indeed should murder sanctuaries; Revenge should have no bounds.” Claudius.
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Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

Act 5, scene 1 – The graveyard scene and Ophelia’s funeral.

“That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once…This might be the pate of a
politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God”.
Hamlet on the inevitability of death.

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Hora o; a fellow of in nite/jest, of most excellent fancy. He
hath borne me on his back a thousand mes. And now, how abhorred in my imagina on it
is! My gorge rises at it.”

“What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis?”. Hamlet on Laertes’ over-the-top

grief

“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/ Could not with all their quantity of
love/ Make up the sum” Hamlet feels the nature and quality of his love was more
powerful than Laertes’.
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Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

Act 5, scene 2 –Final scene. Fencing match. Bloodbath.

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends/ Rough-hew them how we will”. Hamlet

“He that hath killed my king, and whored my mother/ Popped in between th’
election and my hopes/ Thrown out his angle for my proper life” This is a summary
of all of Hamlet’s grievances with Claudius

“I am very sorry, good Horatio/ That to Laertes I forgot myself/ For by the image
of my cause I see/ The portraiture of his”. Hamlet regrets his row with Laertes realising
that Laertes has a just reason for seeking vengeance and that they share a yearning for
revenge.

“Thou wouldst not think how ill’s here about my heart… a kind of gaingiving as
would perhaps trouble a woman”. He is lled with a sense of foreboding, his spirit is
troubled, but he suspects this is no more than womanly cowardice and supers on.

“If it be now ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now,
yet it will come”. Hamlet has lost all fear of death – he believes that if his me has come,
there is nothing he can do about it. (Que sera, sera, what will be will be).

“Give me your pardon sir, I have done you wrong…What I have done…I here
proclaim was madness”. Hamlet asks Laertes to forgive him, he did not knowingly kill his
father.

“How does the queen?…O villainy. Ho, let the door be locked…The point
envenomed too?/ Then venom to thy work.” Hamlet stabs the King, then forces
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Hamlet Quotes 5th Year HL English Oide Carol

him to drink poison. His mother’s death nally provokes Hamlet to ac on. It is ng that
Claudius is killed with the weapons he himself poisoned in order to kill Hamlet.

“Heaven make thee free of it” Hamlet o ers Laertes forgiveness as he lies dying.

“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart/ Absent thee from felicity awhile/ And in
this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/ To tell my story”. Hamlet begs Hora o on
his deathbed to tell the truth to the world and thus protect his memory beyond the grave.

“I do prophesy th’ election lights/ On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice…the rest is

silence”. Hamlet’s nal words reveal his noble concern for the future of the kingdom, even
as he lies dying.

“Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight sweet prince and ights of angels sing thee to thy
rest” Hora o following Hamlet’s death.

“Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To
have proved most royal”. For nbras a er Hamlet’s death.

“…THE REST IS SILENCE…”

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