Hamlet quotes Flashcards
“Who’s there?”
“Barnardo?”
“Who is there?”
“Say, what, is Horatio there?”
“What think on’t?”
“Is it not like the King?”
“Who is’t that can inform me?”
A1 S1 (not one solid part of the play)
various questions throughout the scene
sense of mystery, suspicion and distrust
“‘Tis bitter cold,/And I am sick at heart”
A1S1, Francisco when Bernardo relieves his post
pathetic fallacy
“has this thing appeared again tonight?” - “thing” inhuman
“‘tis but our fantasy”
“tush, tush, ‘twill not appear”
“so fortified against our story” - “fortified” as if one needs protections against the danger of the ghost/the story
A1S1 - discussions of the ghost
uncertainty, building tension
ghost not regarded as human
suspicion reflects elizabethan attitudes
“wisest sorrow”
“defeated joy”
“dirge in marriage”
“delight and dole”
A1S2 Claudius’ speech
lots of oxymorons
awkward, slight distrust
“A little more than kin/and less than kind”
A1S2 Hamlet’s first words
addressed to audience - metatheatrical
scathing, comedic, quick, witty
response to Claudius: “but now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son”
“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”
“Not so much, my lord. I am too much in the son.”
A1S2 - Claudius asking Hamlet if he’s still grieving and his response
another wordplay
"”Seems,” madam, nay, it is.”
A1S2 - Hamlet being open with Gertrude about his feelings
shows concern with appearance vs reality
“‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, cold mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river of the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage”
A1S2 - Hamlet discussing what shows he is mourning
“impious stubbornness: ‘tis unmanly grief.
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified or mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschooled.”
A1S2 - Claudius vague attack on Hamlet’s mourning, implying he won’t make a good king and that excessive grieving is unreligious
“we beseech you bend you to remain/Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye”
“I shall in all my best obey you, madam”
A1S2 - Claudius asking H to not go back to Wittenburg
Hamlet only agrees once he sees it’s what his mum wants and addresses her only
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter.”
A1S2 - Hamlet’s first soliloquy
expresses desire to commit suicide
describes his body physically disintegrating
“O, God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
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.”
A1S2 -Hamlet’s first soliloquy
tricolon
reflecting on the state of Denmark
“Hyperion to a satyr”
“no more like my father/than I to Hercules.”
A1S2 - Hamlet’s first soliloquy
comparing his father and Claudius - hyperbolic
shows his grief and hatred of C
classical references show education/intelligence
“Let me think on’t. Frailty, thy name is woman!”
A1S2 - Hamlet’s first soliloquy
upset at his mother
also shows pensiveness
“a beast that wants discourse of reason/Would have mourned longer”
“unrighteous tears”
“most wicked speed, to post/With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!”
A1S2 - Hamlet’s first soliloquy
discussing C and G
shows his disgust
lots of sibilence
“But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
A1S2 - ending of H’s first soliloquy
aware of his situation
“The funeral baked meats/Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables”
A1S2 - Horatio jokes with H about how close his father’s funeral and his mother’s wedding were
shows close relationship
“A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute-
No more.”
“His will is not his own”
“Fear it, Ophelia, fear it”
“The chariest maid is prodigal enough/If she unmask her beauty to the moon.”
A1S3- Laertes advising O against sleeping with H
implying that she is naive
the moon is a symbol of chastity
brotherly advice
“Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven
Whiles, a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks his own rede.”
A1S3 - O responds to L’s advice against sleeping with H
implying he is hypocritical
shows O’s competence and intelligence
“Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar”
“Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement”
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be”
“rich not gaudy”
“listen to many, but speak to few”
“This above all - to thine own self be true”
A1S3 - P’s advice to L before he leaves
arguably fairly good advice but very convoluted
reliant on aphorisms
shown as a typical politician that can’t stick to one idea
fairly ironic since he sends spies after him
“Perilous circumstances”
“Behooves my daughter and my honour”
“Green girl”
“Think yourself a baby”
“You’ll tender me a fool”
“be something scanter of your maiden presence”
“Do not believe his vows”
A1S3 - P advising O not to sleep with H
concerned with family honour and reputation
views her as naive and vulnerable
H: “The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold”
Horatio: “It is a nipping and eager air.”
A1S4 - pathetic fallacy
builds tenseness
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
A1S4 - Marcellus
tense, mysterious
lack of trust esp as about to see ghost
“I do not set my life at a pin’s fee”
A1S4 - H feeling suicidal and not valuing his life
“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?”
A1S4 - Horatio is concerned the ghost is evil
reflects protestant fears about ghosts being demons turning people mad/ killing them
lots of foreshadowing
shows Horatio caring about H
Hamlet addresses the ghost with “thou”
A1S5
informal
suggests he views the ghost as his dad, rather than using “it”
“sulf’rous and tormenting flames.”
“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.”
A1S5 - ghost describing purgatory-like conditions
protestants don’t believe in purgatory but catholics do
repeated f sounds - like flickering flames
perfect iambic pentameter
fiery semantic field
“Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”
A1S5 - Ghost’s demands for H
“I with wings as swift
as meditation or the thoughts of love
May sweep to my revenge”
“Thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain”
A1S5 - H promises the ghost
lots of irony
shows he believes the ghost
“The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/Now wears his crown.
“That incestuous, that adulterate beast”
“So to seduce - won to his shameful lust/The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen”
A1S5 - Ghost describing C
serpent like the devil - sybilence
“Leave her to heaven”
A1S5 - Ghost orders H to not punish G
She’ll be judged by god
“Cursed hebona in a vial,/And in the porches of my ears did pour/the leperous distilment”
“Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,/
All my smooth body”
“Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand,/Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched”
A1S5 - ghost remembering his death
reference to Cain and Abel (Cain murders his brother out of jealousy)
Potentially lists in order of importance - love for G
“O most pernicious woman!/O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!”
“Now, to my word. It is ‘Adieu, adieu. Remember me.’ I have sworn’t.”
“That one may smile and be a villain.”
A1S5 - H’s second soliloquy
Deeply passionate - lots of exclamatives which disrupt his rhythm
emphasis on smiling shows his concern with appearance vs reality
“thy commandment all alone shall live/
Within the book and volume of my brain/
Unmixed with baser matter.”
“Now to my word./It is ‘Adieu, adieu, remember me.’/I have sworn’t.”
A1S5 - H addressing ghost
rage and revenge are his new purposes - ironic
H decides to “put an antic disposition on”
A1S5
“Put on him/What forgeries you please-marry, none so rank/As may dishonour him
“Drinking, fencing, swearing,/Quarreling, drabbing” “Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth”
“You must not put another scandal on him.”
A2S1 - P conspiring with Reynaldo to spy on L
theme of surveillance
deeply concerned with reputation
overly elaborate
“Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,/
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,/
Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle./
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,/
And with a look so piteous in purport/
As if he had been loosed out of Hell/
To speak of horrors-he comes before me.”
A2S1 - O describing H approaching her in his madness
lots of dramatic irony
he appears almost like a ghost
“Mad for love?”
“This is the very ecstasy of love”
A2S1 - Polonius thinks H’s love for O has driven him mad
“Brevity is the soul of wit”
A2S2 - Polonius
ironic considering his extremely over elaborate speech
“Your noble son is mad”
“That he’d mad, ‘tis true, ‘tis true, ‘tis pity,/And pity ‘tis, ‘tis true”
A2S2 - P giving C and G his opinion on H’s behaviour
“Excellent well. You are a fishmonger”
what do you read, my lord”, “words, words, words”
A2S2 - H and P
H putting on “antic disposition”
fishmonger is a euphemism for a brothel keeper
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.-“
A2S2 - P during interaction with H
alliterative emphasises duality of H in this scene
“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; nor women neither”
A2S2 - H on humanity
nihilistic attitude
expression of his depression
“I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw”
A2S2 - H describing madness to R+G
warning that he’s often sane
can distinguish enemies from friends
showing his distrust of them
“You were sent for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which our modesties have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.”
A2S2 - H shows he knows why R+G are there
followed by H: “Nay, then, I have an eye of you. AIf you love me, hold not off”
G: “My Lord, we were sent for.”
“For the supply and profit of our hope”
“My too much changed son”
A2S2 - G offers R+G compensation for their spying on H
“Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore.” “You are welcome.”
“You are welcome, masters, welcome all.-I am glad to see thee well. Welcome, good friends.-Oh, old friend! Why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last” “Masters, you are all welcome.”
A2S2 - H welcoming the actors
lots of repetition of welcome
first time audience sees him genuinely happy
“I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or if it was, not above once, for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; ‘twas caviar to the general.”
A2S2 - H talking to actors
shows he knows them well - uses informal thee (they’re of lower social status)
flattering them and showing off knowlegde of feelings
“Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”
“Is it not monstrous that this player here/Could force his soul to his own conceit”
“all for Nothing. For Hecuba/What’s Hecuba to him, or he to her,/That he should weep for her?”
“Yet I/A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak/Like John-a-dreams,”[an idle person] “unpregnant of my cause,/And can say nothing-no, not for a king/Upon whose property and most dear life/A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?”
“But I am a pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter”
A2S2 - H’s third soliloquy
frustrated at his inaction
comparing his inaction to the action of the actors for fictional stories
appearance vs reality
“Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! Oh, vengeance!”
A2S2 - H’s third soliloquy
switches from anger at his own inaction to anger at C
asyndetic list
“I have heard/That guilty creatures sitting at a play/Have by the very cunning of the scene/Been struck so to the soul that presently/They have proclaimed their malefactions;”
“I’ll have these players/Play something like the murder of my father/Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;”
“The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil”
“The play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
A2S2 - H’s third soliloquy
forming a plan to have the mousetrap performed
rationalising his inaction through his distrust of the ghost
rhyming couplet at the end - sense of completion/ conclusivity
“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?”
A3S1 - H’s fourth soliloquy
caesura after not to be - reflective
metaphors about battle
passive nihilism - thinks about death a lot but doesn’t act on it
“To die: to sleep-
No more - and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.”
“to die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
A3S1 - H’s fourth soliloquy
repetition of die and sleep - views death as peaceful
mortal coil - sense of neverending suffering
“For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
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 pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”
A3S1 - H’s fourth soliloquy
listing of troubles all relating to H
bodkin = domestic tool
emphasis of the struggles of life
the ghost is arguably a traveller that has returned from death
“How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience.
The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
Oh, heavy burden!”
A3S1 - C shows his guilt
spurred by Polonius commenting on how a facade of faith can conceal the devil (And pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself)
covering an ugly reality with makeup
appearance vs reality
“Their perfume lost,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind”:
A3S1 - O gives back H’s gifts
as instructed by P
only insults H by calling him “unkind” but it triggers an outburst of anger against her
“Ha, ha, are you honest?”
“Are you fair?”
“for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness”
“I did love you once.”
“I loved you not”
“get thee to a nunnery”
“why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”
“Where’s your father?”
A3S1 - H insulting O
repeats the idea of her going to a nunnery 5 times
patronising
insulting her appearance - as she’s beautiful he implies she is dishonest
contradicts himself
“Oh, help him, you sweet heavens!”
“Heavenly powers, restore him!”
A3S1 - O asking God to help H
Shows she cares about him
“I have heard of your paintings well enough.”
“God has given you one face and you make yourselves another”
“You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness ignorance”
A3S1 - H’s misogynistic attitude to O and all women
appearance vs reality (makeup - links to C talking about the “harlot’s cheek”)
“noble mind”
“courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword”
A3S1 - qualities O thinks a prince should have (that H lacks)
jumbled up
a soliloquy from O
“That unmatched form and stature of blown youth/Blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me,/T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”
A3S1 - O soliloquy
self pitying based on H’s treatment of her
shows she cares for him
“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue”:
“I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant.”
“Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor.”
A3S2 - H telling actors what to do
patronising
ironic due to H’s inaction
“Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy”
A3S2 - H instructs Horatio to watch C during mousetrap
a lot of trust
protestant distrust of ghosts
speaks in verse - respect for Horatio
Gertrude: “come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.”
H: “No, good mother, here’s metal more attractive”
“Lady, shall I lie in your lap?”
“Do you think that I meant country matters?”
“That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.”
A3S2 - H making lots of innuendos before the mousetrap to O
euphamisms
embarrassing her - very public
H: “Madame, how like you this play?”
G: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
A3S2 - Hamlet to Gertrude during mousetrap
“Give me some light - away!”
“Lights, lights, lights”
A3S2 - C leaves the play
imperatives - control
“Why, look you now how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery. You would send me from my lowest note to my compass, and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you, though you fret me, you cannot play upon me.”
A3S2 - H addresses R+G
aware of their spying - making sure they know he knows
euphamism - played like a pipe?
extended metaphor of playing instruments
“Now could I drink hot blood”
“Soft, now to my mother / O heart, lose not thy nature!”
“Let me be cruel, not unnatural / I will speak daggers to her but use none.”
A3S2 - after mousetrap, H gives an impassioned speech expressing readiness to kill C and his desire to speak to G
heeding the ghosts words to let God judge G
“he to England shall along with you.”
A3S3 - C plots to send H away with R+G
“Behind the arras I’ll convey myself
To hear the process.”
A3S3 - P decides to hide behind tapestry to spy on H and G
“Oh, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder.”
“Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow?”
“But oh, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder?’
That cannot be since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder-
My crown, my own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain th’offense?”
A3S3 - Claudius’ soliloquy
expressing extreme guilt
lists effects of murder in order of importance? similar to the ghosts listing
confessional - like catholics
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
A3S3 - end of C’s soliloquy
finds he cannot pray and repent fully
dramatic irony as H doesn’t kill him because he is praying
“Now might I do it. But now ‘a is a-praying.
And now I’ll do’t.
And so ‘a goes to heaven,
And so I am revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.”
A3S3 - H debating killing C whilst he prays
wants to ensure he goes to hell
fails to take action
“Look you lay home to him.
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that Your Grace hath screened and stood between
Much heat and him.”
“I’ll silence me even here”
A3S4 - P tells G how to behave with H
then he ironically says he’ll be silent throughout
G: “Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.”
H: “Mother, you have my father much offended.”
G: “Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.”
h: “Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.”
A3S4 - G tries to use authority over H but he doesn’t respect her
playful symmetry/tension
“Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.”
A3S4 - H uses imperative with G, intending to make her feel guilty
G: “what wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, ho!”
P: “What ho! Help!”
H: “How now, a rat?
Dead for a ducat, dead!”
P: “Oh, I am slain!”
G: “O me, what hast thou done?
H: “Nay, I know not. Is it the King?”
A3S4 - P dies
G seems genuinely scared of H
repeated d sounds emphasise anger and violence
H “thrusts” his rapier through - decisive
- “Almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.” - “Hyperion’s curls” “the front of Jove himself” “An eye like Mars to threaten and command” “A station like the herald Mercury”.
- “Have you eyes?”
-“Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker.”
A3S4 - H encouraging G to feel guilty
hypocritical as he’s just killed P
comparing C and OH again
“O Hamlet, speak no more.”
“Thou turn’st my very eyes into my soul.
And there I see black and grieved spots.”
A3S4 - G admits she feels guilty
repeatedly asks H to stop - “words like daggers”
“But to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty.”
A3S4 - H expresses disgust at C and G in bed together (after she asks him to stop making her feel guilty)
“Alas, he’s mad!”
“You do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?”
A3S4 - G is unable to see the ghost
“Do not forget! This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.”
A3S4 - ghost reminds H what to do
“I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft.”
A3S4 - H tells G he’s putting on his madness but audience isn’t sure whether to believe him
“Go not to my uncle’s bed.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.”
“Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence.”
A3S4 - H to G
expressing more anxiety over C and G in bed together
“Not where he eats, but where ‘a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service-two dishes, but to one table.”
A4S2 - H refuses to say where P’s body is
morbid
cynicism towards death
toying with C
“like the hectic in my blood he rages,
And thou must cure me. Till I know ‘tis done,
Howe’er my haps, my joys, will ne’er begin.”
A4S3 - C can’t be happy until H is gone
“We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.”
A4S4 - Captain describes what Fortinbras is fighting for
H confused at so much action over something so insignificant but admires him for it (“Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell.”
“That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d […] while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men”)
“How all occasions do inform against me
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.”
A4S4 - H cursing his inaction again (5th soliloquy)
“O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth!”
A4S4 - end of H’s 5th soliloquy
“He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass green turf,
At his heels a stone.”
“Larded all with sweet flowers,
Which bewept to the ground did not go
With true-love showers.”:
A4S2 - O song about P
had to find her voice through song in madness
more in control
“How do you, pretty lady?”
A4S2 - C responses to O’s madness
patronising
limiting her to just her appearance
“Indeed, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t:
‘By Gis, and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do’t if they come to’t;
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.’
He answers:
‘So would I ha’done, by yonder sun,
And thou hadst not come to my bed.’”
A4S2 - O 4th song
talking about a man manipulating a virgin into sleeping with him by saying he’ll marry her
“thy madness shall be paid with weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May,
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!”
A4S5 - L reacting to O’s madness
fennel - flattery
columbines - unchastity
daisy - disguise
rue - repentence
violets - faith (“withered all when my father died”)
A4S2 - O gives out flowers and their meanings
“One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister’s drowned, Laertes.”
“There is a willow grows askant the brook,
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples.”
“on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snaches of old lauds.”
A4S7 - G describes O’s death
very poetic
leaves ambiguous if it’s suicide
gently done and with sympathy
“Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she willfully seeks her own salvation?”
A5S1 - Gravedigger suggests O committed suicide
“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up the sum.”
A5S1 at O’s funeral - H comparing him and L relationship with her
they fight over her grave
“Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?”
“Revenge should have no bounds”
A4S4 - C manipulates L into fighting H
“If this should fail, I’ll have prepared him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venomed stuck
Our purpose may hold there.”
A4S4 - C and L plan to also poison H
“Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”
“He hath bore me on his back a thousand times,”
A5S1 - H with Yorick’s skull
shows his admiration for him
childlike imagery creates sympathy for H
“Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
A5S1 - H nihilism and reflecting on how we’re all alike in death
“I thank your lordship; it is very hot”
“It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.”
“exceedingly, my lord. It is very sultry”
A5S2 - Osric’s contradictions
comic relief
suggests corruption in court - only there as he owns land
“I’ll be your foil, Laertes”
A5S2 - H to L before the duel - both being very cordial inc H apologising
they are eachothers foils in terms of action/inaction
“Now the King drinks to Hamlet.”
“Our son shall win.”
A5S2 - C over the top backing H before the duel
overcompensating
“Gertrude, do not drink.”
“I will, my lord. I pray you pardon me.”
A5S2 - G drinks from the poisoned cup
“I am justly killed by my own treachery”
“Thy mother’s poisoned.
I can no more. The King, the King’s to blame.”:
A5S2 - L is killed by the poisoned sword - sense of guilt over his plot
“No, no, the drink, the drink- O my dear Hamlet!-The drink, the drink! I am poisoned.”
A5S2 - G exposes C who tries to cover up her poisoning, helping to spur H on
“The point envenomed too? Then, venom, to thy work!” [stabs the king]
“Here, thou incestuous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion! Is the onyx here?
Follow my mother.”
A5S2 - H kills C
does it twice - lots of action
dominates over C
suggests C and G going to the same place
“Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.
Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me.”
A5S2 - L seeking forgiveness
“in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.”
A5S2 - H tells Horatio not to kill himself and to tell his story
“I do prophesy th’election lights
On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.”
A5S2 - H ensures crown of Denmark is safe while dying
“The rest is silence.”
A5S2 - H’s last words
“Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels to thy rest.”
A5S2 - Horatio’s words when H dies
“So shall you hear
Or carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of death put on by cunning, and for no cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on th’inventors’ heads.”
A5S2 - Horatio quickly summarises events to Fortinbras (for audience mostly)
“Let four captains
Bear hamlet like a soldier to the stage,
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royal; and for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rite of war
Speak loudly for him.”
“Go bid the soldiers shoot.”
A5S2 - Fortinbras orders military funeral for H
shows his respect
H was a good swordsman
empathy for H
final line of the play
