Scene Description and identification Flashcards
O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast.
In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but who killed the first
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Player Queen
Context: This is during the play Hamlet stages to trap claudius
HAMLET
O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst (self-slaughter!› 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. That it should come (to this:)
But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and Earth, Must I remember? Why, she (would) hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on. And yet, within a month (Let me not think on’t; frailty, thy name is woman!),
A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father’s body, Like Niobe, all tears—why she, (even she)
(O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourned longer!), married with my uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. Within a month.
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
Context: Soliloquy, in Act 2 where he is expressing his sorrow of the world around him while grieving the loss of his father
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee “Hamlet,”
“King,” “Father,” “Royal Dane.” O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher, Wherein we saw thee quietly interred, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again. What may this mean That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel, Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous, and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
Context: Hamlet is speaking to the ghost of his father in Act 1
O all you host of heaven! O Earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart, And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me (stiffly) up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That toy co and obsentil opies the tire
Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter: Yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables-meet it is I set it down
That one may smile and smile and be a villain.
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.
THe writes.?
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word.
It is “adieu, adieu, remember me.”
I have sworn ‘t.
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
Context: After it is revealed by the ghost that Hamlets father was killed by Claudius.
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.
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
Context:
To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—
To sleep, perchance to dream.
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
ContexT:
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.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ 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 th’ 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 undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
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 pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action
Play: Hamlet
speaker: Hamlet
Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her (own› feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone or come tardy off, though it makes the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of (the) which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theater of others. O, there be players that I
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
Context: Hamlet is giving advice to his actors in the play within a play
I do believe you think what now you speak, But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth, but poor validity,
Which now, the fruit unripe, sticks on the tree But fall unshaken when they mellow be.
Most necessary ‘tis that we forget To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.
This world is not for aye, nor ‘tis not strange That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
But, orderly to end where I begun:
Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed, But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Player King
O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon ‘t, A brother’s murder. Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin And both neglect. What if this cursèd hand Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy But to confront the visage of offense?
And what’s in prayer but this twofold force, To be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or (pardoned) being down? Then I’ll look up.
My fault is past. But, O, 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, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain th’ offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world, Offense’s gilded hand may (shove) by justice,
And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law. But ‘tis not so above:
There is no shuffling; there the action lies In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe.
All may be well.
Speaker: King
Play: Hamlet
Context:
Hath this fellow no feeling of his
business? He sings in grave-making
. . . .
That skull had a tongue in it and
could sing once.
Play: Hamlet
Speaker: Hamlet
Context: Hamlet has found out Ophelia has died and is examining her body with the gravedigger
