Hamlet Quotes Flashcards
Claudius thinks that Hamlet would have killed him (not polonius) if he had been there -
“It had been so with us, had we been there”
Gertrude says that Hamlet is “Mad as…
…the sea and wind when both contend”
Claudius wants Hamlet imprisoned -
“His liberty is full of threats to us all”
Claudius is worried that they will be blamed for Hamlet’s actions (killing polonius)
“It will be laid to us”
Hamlet is liked by the masses
“He is loved by the distracted multitude, who like not in their judgement, but in their eyes”
Fortinbras is prepared to surrender
“Two thousand should and twenty thousand ducats” for “and eggshell”
Fortinbras is concerned about his name
“We go to gain a little patch of ground, that hath no profit but in the name”
(Declared by captain)
Hamlet can’t act, unlike his players
“What’s Hecuba to him, Or he to Hecuba?”
Hamlet resolves after seeing Fortinbras that he will revenge
“Oh from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth”
At first hamlet wonders if his father’s ghost is
The “devil” in a “pleasing shape”
The ghost makes it clear that learning the truth makes hamlet bound to avenge it
“So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear”
Hamlet says he only exists to revenge
“Ever I was born to set it right”
Hamlet believes in fate
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends”
Fortinbras is goal orientated and has…
…“divine ambition”
Hamlet only acts on impulse, killing Claudius, once he is dying and has nothing to lose
“I am dead”
Hamlet wishes he could commit suicide
“o that this too too solid flesh would melt”
Hamlet cannot commit suicide
“Or that the everlasting had not fix’d his cannon ‘gainst self slaughter”
Fortinbras is hot headed and driven
“Of unimproved mettle hot and full”
Claudius wants to create kingdom solidarity
“Our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe”
Gertrude describes hamlets grief as
“Unmanly”
The kings ghost is caught in purgatory
“Doomed for a certain term to walk the night”
The king’s ghost begs to remain in Hamlet’s memory
“Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me! Remember me”
Claudius regrets his actions and refers to Cain and Abel
“O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven / it hath the primal eldest curse upon’t / a brother’s murder”
Hamlet discusses the transience of life with the skull in his hand
“That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once”
Hamlet is in love with ophelia
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
Hamlet philosophises about thought and it’s effect on life
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”
Hamlet talks about his madness plan
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
Claudius talks about the lack of truth in his holy words
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
Gertrude is falsely nice to ophelia after death
“Sweets to the sweet.”
Polonius gives Laertes some key advice
“This above all: to thine own self be true.”
It is unclear whether Gertrude sees the parallels with herself and the queen in the play
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Hamlet’s madness is not real
“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. “
Bernado is loyal to the king
“Long live the king”
Irony is created in the first scene through calm
“Not a mouse stirring”
Barnado makes heavy sounds when recalling the ghost
“The bell then beating one”
Norway are prepared for war
“This same strict and most observant watch”
The ghost must leave
“The cock crows”
Claudius claims to be both happy and sad
“One auspicious and one drooping eye”
Hamlet says that Claudius is not quite his relative in an aside
“A little more than Kin and less than kind”
Claudius says that he respects hamlets mourning
“Tis sweet and commendable in your nature hamlet”
Claudius says that death is natural
“Your father lost a father, that father lost, lost his”
Ophelia describes hamlet when he is mad as
“Head thus waving up and down”
Claudius suspects hamlet
He “puts on this confusion”
In the final scene hamlet declares that he was in fact mad, in the 3rd person
“His madness is poor hamlets enemy”
The king calls ophelia’s madness
“The poison of deep grief”
Polonius’ funeral is rushed and described as
“Hugger-mugger”
Ophelia’s speech is
“Nothing” and is marked by “half sense”
Ophelia’s open madness contrast with her submissive nature in act 1
“I do not know my lord, what I should think”
Laertes warns Ophelia of syphilis
“Contagious blastments”
Hamlet says unfaithful women ruin their husbands
“Marry a fool. For wise men know well enough what monsters make of them.”
Hamlet thinks his lack of action makes him womanly
“Must like a whore unpack my heart with words”
Only king hamlet dies in an unmanly way which emphasises that it is
“Strange, and unnatural”
Laertes believes that crying will get ride of his feminine side after ophelia’s death
“Woman will be out”
Hamlet is disgusted by Claudius who
“Killed my father and whored my mother”
Hamlet describes Gertrude’s sexual relationship in great detail
“The rank sweat of an enseamed bed”
Laertes warns ophelia not to loose her
“Chaste treasure”
Laertes grieves for ophelia and references sexuality
“Fair and unpopulated flesh”
Hamlet explicitly reinforces Ophelia as a chaste maiden
“Get thee to nunnery”
The ghost calls Claudius
“That incestuous, that adulterated beast”
Marcellus suggests that ghosts should not be scared of as they are
“The air”
Hamlet refers to death as the
“Undiscovered country” from which “no traveller returns”
Horatio rationally says that the ghost is a
“Prologue to the omen”
Yorick’s skull makes him feel sick
“My gorge rises at it”
The transiency of life is shown through Hamlet noting that even kings die
“Turned to clay”
The priest at ophelia’s funeral suggests she doesn’t deserve a Christian funeral
“Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown at her”
Ophelia references death in her final song
“Go to thy deathbed”
Gertrude’s words at ophelia’s funeral contrast those of ophelia’s last song
“Marriage bed”
Ophelia seems to know that the other characters will not see her again
“God bye you” (god be with you)
There is a pile of bodies at the end of the play
“High on stage”
Horatio’s final words suggest the play is the product of his promise to “speak”
“So shall you hear / Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts”
The play opens with darkness
“Is Horatio there?”
Hamlet refers to the globe theatre
“This majestical roof fretted with golden fire”
One of hamlets lines has a triple reading of head, earth or theatre
“Memory holds a seat / in this distracted globe”
Hamlet hopes to catch out Claudius via the play
“The plays the thing / wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”
Hamlet attacks female vanity
“God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another”
Claudius words to cover his sin are similar to a whore’s makeup
“The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art”
“My most painted word”
Gertrude uses tautology to emphasise that the ghost seems impossible to her
“Th’incorporal air”
“Bodiless … Ecstasy”
Hamlet could have created the ghost
“The very coinage of [hamlet’s] brain”
Hamlet’s soul is described as
“Prophetic”
Laertes says he would happily kill hamlet
“Cut his throat in the church”
Gertrude tells hamlet to stop mourning his father
“Caste off thy nighted colours”
Hamlet accidentally kills polonius
“I took thee for thy better”
The cockerel is said to
“Awake the god of day”
Fortenbras wants to attack
“Our state to be disjoint and out of frame”
Hamlet contrasts the two kings
“Hyperion to satyr”
Hamlet makes a satire remark about the speed with which the royals married
“The funeral baked meats /did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables”
Hamlet suspects Claudius
“I doubt some foul play”
Gertrude is equally as submissive as ophelia
“I shall obey you”
Hamlet uses exaggeration regarding his father’s death
“Look how cheerfully my mother looks, an my father / died within two hours”
Player queen says she will marry her husbands murderer
“In second husband let me be accurst / none we’d the second but who killed the first”
Hamlet promises not to kill his mother
“I’ll speak daggers to her but use none”
Before entering Gertrude’s bed chamber hamlet is angry
“Now I Could drink hot blood”
Claudius says heaven can’t help him
“Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens / to wash it white as snow”
Hamlet cannot kill Claudius while he’s praying
“I his sole son do this same villain send to heaven”
Gertrude cannot be in love
“The heyday in the blood is tame”
Gertrude regrets her actions
“Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul / and there I see such black and grained spots”
Hamlet uses ceasura which makes it seem like he’s thinking on his feet?
“To be or not to be / that is the question”
Prose is used by the gravediggers
“I tell thee she is. Therefor make her grave straight.”
Hamlets anger towards his mother and Claudius is shown through sibilance
“Such dexterity to incestuous sheets”
Personification is used to represent the Danes
“The general ear”
Ophelia uses a simile to describe hamlet’s madness
“Been loosed out of hell / to speak of horrors”
A rhyming couplet makes hamlet’s words seem decisive
“O from this time forth!/ my thoughts be bloody or nothing worth”
Horatio acts as the sceptic of the play
“Tush, tush ‘twill not appear”
The ghost is prepared for battle
“Fair and warlike form” (H)
In contrast to “thing” and “apparition”
“Majestically”
Hamlet says he is exposed in his mourning
“I’m too much in the sun”
The funeral and marriage were so close to each other
“The funeral baked good did coldest furnish the marriage tables”
Hamlet could not marry Ophelia
“He himself is subject to his birth”
Ophelia tells Laertes to not be a hypocrite
“Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, whiles…himself the primrose path of dalliance treads”
Atmosphere is crates prior to the second meeting of the ghost
“The air bites shrewdly”
The ghost could tell a harrowing tale
“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word/ would Harrow up thy soul”
Hamlet’s first mention of revenge says he will be swift
“I with wings as swift / as mediation or the thoughts of love / may sweep to my revenge”
The ghost triples his loses
“Of life, of crown, of queen”
polonius says that truth is reached through lies
“Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are interchangeable
C: thanks R and gentle G
G: thanks G and gentle R
Old Fortinbras has tripled problems
“In sickness, age and impotence”
Hamlet references mettle and contrasts to Fortinbras
“Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal”
When people act holy we misjudge them
“With devotions visage and pious action,/ we do sugar o’er the devil himself”
Hamlet says conscience is a bad thing
“Conscience does make cowards of us all”
Ophelia says she doesn’t even think
“I think nothing my lord”
The play replicates reality
[pours poison in the ear]
Ironically, Claudius asks the play to stop
“Give me some light”
After the play, the setting is bleak
“Tis now the very witching time of night, / when churchyards yawn and he’ll itself breaths our/ contagion into this world”
Hamlet references Roman mythology
“Let not ever the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom”
The benefits of claudius’ sin are tripled
“My crown, my own ambition and my queen”
Hamlet says he is less capable than a stone
“Preaching to stones would make them capable”
Hamlet uses morbid humour regarding Polonius’ death
“Not where he eats but where he is eaten”
Hamlet tells Claudius to search heaven or hell
“If your messenger find him notch there, seek him in the other place”
Hamlet says riches make no impact in the end
“Your fat king and your lean beggar is bus variable service - two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.”
Claudius makes a simple response when questioned regarding Polonius
“Dead”
The player queen gives her husband superfluous death
“A second time I kill my husband dead / when second husband kisses me in bed”
Lucianus poisons the king
“Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, with Hecat’s ban thrice blasted”
