Key Quotations - Hamlet Flashcards
Aside, first lines of the play, relationship with the audience
‘A little more than kin, and less then kind’
Hamlet self-loathing after Player’s performance
‘O, what a rouge and peasant slave am I!’
Hamlet feeling suicidal in his first soliloquy
‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt’
Hamlet, God and Suicide
‘That the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!’
Hamlet wanting to speak to Gertrude
‘I will speak daggers to her, but use non’
Hamlet declares he will seek revenge again
‘From this time forth/My thoughts be bloody’
(Revenge)
Hamlet using the play to find proof of Claudius’ crime
‘The play is the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’
(Doubt)
Hamlet uncertain of whether to act, live or die
‘To be or not to be, that is the question’
(Indecisiveness)
Hamlet deciding to act
‘Tis now the very witching time of night’
(Indecisiveness)
Hamlet to Gertrude about her marriage
‘In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stewed in corruption’
(Corruption)
Hamlet on Denmark’s land
‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable!’
‘Tis an unweeded garden’
(Corruption)
Hamlet’s self-deprecating humour
‘My father’s brother, but no more like my father / Than I to Hercules’
(Corruption)
Comparing OKH to Claudius
‘Hyperion to a satyr’
(Corruption)
Hamlet discussing Claudius corrupting the state
‘A serpent stung me.’
(Corruption)
Hamlet admitting his madness to Gertrude
‘I essentially am not in madness,/ But mad in craft’
(Madness)
What Hamlet wants to put on
‘An antic disposition’
(Madness, Appearance vs Reality)
Hamlet distancing himself from his madness
‘His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy’
(Madness)
Hamlet fears the afterlife
‘To die, to sleep/ To sleep, perchance to dream’
(Mortality)
Hamlet’s obsession with death
‘The skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once’
(Mortality)
Hamlet feeling trapped
‘Denmark’s a prison’
(Surveillance)
Hamlet’s misogyny in his first soliloquy
‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’
(Gender)
Hamlet’s misogyny after talking to the ghost
‘O most pernicious woman!’
(Gender)
Hamlet’s misogyny to Ophelia
‘Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?’
(Gender)
Hamlet’s sexual pun towards Ophelia
‘Lady, shall I lie in your lap?’
(Gender)
Hamlet telling Horatio to live to tell his story
‘And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story’
(Friendship)
Hamlet telling R+G he cannot be tricked
‘Do you think I am easier to be played on that a pipe?… you cannot play upon me’
(Friendship)
Hamlet saying R+G suck up to the King
‘Soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities’
(Friendship)
Hamlet with the players
‘is to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to Nature’
(Appearance vs Reality)
Hamlet saying Claudius is being duplicitous
‘O, villain, villain, smiling damned villain!’
‘Bloody, Bawdy Villain!’
(Appearance vs Reality)
Hamlet commenting on Ophelia’s appearance
‘God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another’
(Appearance vs Reality, Gender)
Uncertainties about life after death
‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come’
Hamlet admitting to his status
‘This is I, Hamlet the Dane’
Hamlet and conscience
‘Conscience does make cowards of us all’
Hamlet killing Polonius
‘Dead, for a ducat, dead!’
(Impulsiveness)
