Quotes highlighting religion

Question 1

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!

Answer 1

Hamlet wants to die, but “self-slaughter” is a sin. Cue a major religious and moral dilemma that will haunt him (and us) throughout the play.

Question 2

Hamlet
“Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed.”

Answer 2

Hamlet insists that Gertrude’s hasty marriage to Claudius has turned the world into an “unweeded garden.” So, was Denmark some kind of idyllic Eden when his father was alive?

Question 3

“O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon ‘t,
A brother’s murder.”

Claudius

Answer 3

• major religious allusion: biblical story of Cain and Abel.
• Comparing his sin of killing Old Hamlet to Cain’s sin of killing Abel

Question 4

Hamlet
“Not a whit, we defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”

Answer 4

When Horatio warns Hamlet that he’ll lose the duel with Laertes, he reveals that he’s decided to give in to God’s “providence,” i.e. fate.

“fall of the sparrow” is from Matthew
—means God oversees the life and death of every single creature, even the sparrow.

Question 5

“The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape.”

Answer 5

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet would like to believe the Ghost, but the spirit he has seen may simply be the devil trying to tempt him to kill Claudius.

Question 6

“Conscience does make cowards of us all.”

Answer 6

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Hamlet says that our conscience tells us it is a sin to take one’s life. His own guilty conscience decides a melancholic Hamlet against suicide.