Key Quotations - Hamlet

Question 1

Aside, first lines of the play, relationship with the audience

Answer 1

‘A little more than kin, and less then kind’

Question 2

Hamlet self-loathing after Player’s performance

Answer 2

‘O, what a rouge and peasant slave am I!’

Question 3

Hamlet feeling suicidal in his first soliloquy

Answer 3

‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt’

Question 4

Hamlet, God and Suicide

Answer 4

‘That the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!’

Question 5

Hamlet wanting to speak to Gertrude

Answer 5

‘I will speak daggers to her, but use non’

Question 6

Hamlet declares he will seek revenge again

Answer 6

‘From this time forth/My thoughts be bloody’
(Revenge)

Question 7

Hamlet using the play to find proof of Claudius’ crime

Answer 7

‘The play is the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’
(Doubt)

Question 8

Hamlet uncertain of whether to act, live or die

Answer 8

‘To be or not to be, that is the question’
(Indecisiveness)

Question 9

Hamlet deciding to act

Answer 9

‘Tis now the very witching time of night’
(Indecisiveness)

Question 10

Hamlet to Gertrude about her marriage

Answer 10

‘In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stewed in corruption’
(Corruption)

Question 11

Hamlet on Denmark’s land

Answer 11

‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable!’
‘Tis an unweeded garden’
(Corruption)

Question 12

Hamlet’s self-deprecating humour

Answer 12

‘My father’s brother, but no more like my father / Than I to Hercules’
(Corruption)

Question 13

Comparing OKH to Claudius

Answer 13

‘Hyperion to a satyr’
(Corruption)

Question 14

Hamlet discussing Claudius corrupting the state

Answer 14

‘A serpent stung me.’
(Corruption)

Question 15

Hamlet admitting his madness to Gertrude

Answer 15

‘I essentially am not in madness,/ But mad in craft’
(Madness)

Question 16

What Hamlet wants to put on

Answer 16

‘An antic disposition’
(Madness, Appearance vs Reality)

Question 17

Hamlet distancing himself from his madness

Answer 17

‘His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy’
(Madness)

Question 18

Hamlet fears the afterlife

Answer 18

‘To die, to sleep/ To sleep, perchance to dream’
(Mortality)

Question 19

Hamlet’s obsession with death

Answer 19

‘The skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once’
(Mortality)

Question 20

Hamlet feeling trapped

Answer 20

‘Denmark’s a prison’
(Surveillance)

Question 21

Hamlet’s misogyny in his first soliloquy

Answer 21

‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’
(Gender)

Question 22

Hamlet’s misogyny after talking to the ghost

Answer 22

‘O most pernicious woman!’
(Gender)

Question 23

Hamlet’s misogyny to Ophelia

Answer 23

‘Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?’
(Gender)

Question 24

Hamlet’s sexual pun towards Ophelia

Answer 24

‘Lady, shall I lie in your lap?’
(Gender)

Question 25

Hamlet telling Horatio to live to tell his story

Answer 25

‘And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story’
(Friendship)

Question 26

Hamlet telling R+G he cannot be tricked

Answer 26

‘Do you think I am easier to be played on that a pipe?… you cannot play upon me’
(Friendship)

Question 27

Hamlet saying R+G suck up to the King

Answer 27

‘Soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities’
(Friendship)

Question 28

Hamlet with the players

Answer 28

‘is to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to Nature’
(Appearance vs Reality)

Question 29

Hamlet saying Claudius is being duplicitous

Answer 29

‘O, villain, villain, smiling damned villain!’
‘Bloody, Bawdy Villain!’
(Appearance vs Reality)

Question 30

Hamlet commenting on Ophelia’s appearance

Answer 30

‘God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another’
(Appearance vs Reality, Gender)

Question 31

Uncertainties about life after death

Answer 31

‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come’

Question 32

Hamlet admitting to his status

Answer 32

‘This is I, Hamlet the Dane’

Question 33

Hamlet and conscience

Answer 33

‘Conscience does make cowards of us all’

Question 34

Hamlet killing Polonius

Answer 34

‘Dead, for a ducat, dead!’
(Impulsiveness)