Hamlet Quote Analysis

Question 1

Decay in Act 1 (Quotes)

Answer 1

“‘Tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart” (1.1.9)

“Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse” (1.1.120)

“by our late dear brother’s death / Our state to be disjoint and out of frame” (1.2.19-20)

“tis an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely” (1.2.136-137).

“The canker galls the infants of the spring / Too oft before their buttons be disclosed” (1.3.39-40),

“some vicious mole of nature in them,/ As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty” (1.4.24),

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (1.4.90)

Question 2

Decay in Act 2 (Quotes)

Answer 2

“For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion” (2.2.181-182)

it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours” (2.2.299-303).

Question 3

Decay in Act 3 (Quotes)

Answer 3

G: “distemp’red . . . with choler.”
H “for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler” (3.2.305-307).

“‘Tis now the very witching time of night, / When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out / Contagion to this world” (3.2.388-390),

“O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven” (3.3.36),

“In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, / Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love / Over the nasty sty” (3.4.92-94).

“do not spread the compost on the weeds, / To make them ranker (3.4.151-152).

“It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, / Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, / Infects unseen” (3.4.146-149),

“the bloat king” (3.4.182),

Question 4

Decay in Act 4 (quotes)

Answer 4

“We would not understand what was most fit; / But, like the owner of a foul disease, / To keep it from divulging, let it feed / Even on the pith of life” (4.1.20-23),

“Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots” (4.3.21-23),

“Do it, England; / For like the hectic in my blood he rages, / And thou must cure me” (4.3.65-67).

“This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, / That inward breaks, and shows no cause without / Why the man dies” (4.4.27-29),

gave us not / That capability and god-like reason / To fust in us unused” (4.4.36-39),

“O, this is the poison of deep grief” (4.5.75),

Question 5

Decay in Act 5 (Quotes)

Answer 5

“is’t not to be damn’d, / To let this canker of our nature come / In further evil?” (5.2.68-70).

“He is justly served; / It is a poison temper’d by himself” (5.2.327-328)

Question 6

A vs R in Act 1 (Quotes)

Answer 6

“Foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes” (1.2.256-257)

The whole of Claudius’ speech in 1.2

“Seems madam? nay it is, I know not seems.” (1.2.76)

“Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt,” (1.2.129)

“Hyperion to a satyr” (1.2.140)

“Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads” (1.3.50)

“I am thy father’s spirit,” (1.5.9)

Question 7

A vs R in Act 2 (Quotes)

Answer 7

“To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather, / So much as from occasion you may glean, / Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus” (2.2.14-17).

“Were you not sent for?” (2.2.274).

“‘The rugged Pyrrhus . . . / When he lay couched in the ominous horse’” (2.2.452-454).

“For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak / With most miraculous organ,” (2.2. 593-594)

Question 8

A vs R in Act 3 (Quotes)

Answer 8

with devotion’s visage / And pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself” (3.1. 46-48),

“Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul; / And there I see such black and grained spots / As will not leave their tinct” (3.4.89-91).

Question 9

A vs R in Act 4 (Quotes)

Answer 9

“This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, / That inward breaks, and shows no cause without / Why the man dies” (4.4.27-29),

“Her speech is nothing, / Yet the unshaped use of it doth move / The hearers to collection” (4.5.7-9),

Question 10

A vs R in Act 5 (Quotes)

Answer 10

“To outface me while leaping in her grave?” (5.1.245)

“Who does it then? His madness.” (5.2.209)

“The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath,” (5.2.243)

Question 11

Fortune, Fate, and Providence in Act 1 (Quotes)

Answer 11

“If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, / Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, / O, speak!” (1.1.133-135).

“nature’s livery, or fortune’s star” (1.4.32).

“My fate cries out, / And makes each petty artery in this body / As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve” (1.4.81-83).

Question 12

Fortune, Fate and Providence in Act 2 (Quotes)

Answer 12

“Happy, in that we are not over-happy, on fortune’s cap we are not the very button” (2.2.228-229)… “O, most true; she is a strumpet” (2.2.235-236).

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends! (2.2.493-497)

Question 13

Fortune, Fate and Providence in Act 3 (Quotes)

Answer 13

“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?” (3.1.55-59).

“A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards / Hast ta’en with equal thanks” (3.2.67-68).

“This world is not for aye, nor ‘tis not strange / That even our loves should with our fortunes change” (3.2.200-201).

“Our wills and fates do so contrary run / That our devices still are overthrown; / Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own” (3.2.211-213).

“For this same lord, / I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, / To punish me with this and this with me, / That I must be their scourge and minister” (3.4.172-175).

Question 14

Fortune, Fate and Providence in Act 5 (Quotes)

Answer 14

“let us know, / Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, / When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us / There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will” (5.2.7-11).

“Why, even in that was heaven ordinant” (5.2.48),

Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. 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: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be. (5.2.219-224)

Question 15

Revenge in Act 1 (Quotes)

Answer 15

“Speak; I am bound to hear…So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear”(1.5.6-7).

“If thou didst ever thy dear father love – / . . . Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.23-25)

“Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge” (1.5.29-31).

“duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed / That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf / Wouldst thou not stir in this” (1.5.32-34).

Question 16

Revenge in Act 2 (Quotes)

Answer 16

“after Pyrrhus’ pause, / Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work” (2.2.487-488).

O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A stallion! Fie upon’t! foh! (2.2.581-587)

Question 17

Revenge in Act 3 (Quotes)

Answer 17

I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious” (3.1.123-124)

“Come, ‘the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge’” (3.2.253-254)

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; / And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven; / And so am I revenged” (3.3.73-75)

Do you not come your tardy son to chide, / That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by / The important acting of your dread command? O, say!” (3.4.106-108).

Question 18

Revenge in Act 4 (Quote)

Answer 18

How all occasions do inform against me, / And spur my dull revenge!” (4.4.33)

“both the worlds I give to negligence, / Let come what comes; only I’ll be revenged / Most thoroughly for my father” (4.5.135-137).

“is’t writ in your revenge, / That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe / Winner and loser?” (4.5.142-144)

“Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, / It could not move thus” (4.5.170)

“Laertes, was your father dear to you? / Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart? (4.7.107-109)

“No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; / Revenge should have no bounds” (4.7.127-128).

Question 19

Revenge in Act 5 (Quotes)

Answer 19

Does it not, think’st thee, stand me now upon–
He that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother,
Popp’d in between the election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage–is’t not perfect conscience,
To quit him with this arm? (5.2.63-68)

“I am satisfied in nature, / Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most / To my revenge: but in my terms of honour / I stand aloof” (5.2.244-247)

Question 20

Natural Imagery in Act 1 (Quotes)

Answer 20

“‘tis an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely” (1.2.134-136)

“A violet in the youth of primy nature” (1.3.7)

“The canker galls the infants of the spring / Too oft before their buttons be disclosed” (1.3.39-40)

“I find thee apt; / And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed / That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, / Wouldst thou not stir in this. (1.5.31-34)

“‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, / A serpent stung me” (1.5.35-36)

Question 21

Natural Imagery in Act 3 (Quotes)

Answer 21

“O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven” (3.3.36),

ngs. Hamlet, in the fury of his rage against his mother, tells her that she is living “In the rank sweat of an enseamed [greasy] bed, / Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love / Over the nasty sty” (3.4.92-94).

“rank corruption, mining all within” (3.4.148),

“do not spread the compost on the weeds, / To make them ranker (3.4.151-152).

“takes off the rose / From the fair forehead of an innocent love / And sets a blister there” (3.4.42-44),

“There is a willow grows aslant a brook” (4.7.166)

Question 22

Natural Imagery in Act 5 (Quotes)

Answer 22

“Yet here she is allow’d her virgin crants, / Her maiden strewments and the bringing home / Of bell and burial” (5.1.232-234),

“Lay her i’ the earth: / And from her fair and unpolluted flesh / May violets spring!” (5.1.238-240).

“As England was his faithful tributary, / As love between them like the palm might flourish, / As peace should still her wheaten garland wear” (5.2.39-41)