By William Shakespearebailieborocslibrary.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/5/5/13553889/hamlet_key... · By William Shakespeare . ... ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’ ... King

Bailieborough Community School 2015-2016 Ms Quinn

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Key Quotations from ‘Hamlet’

By William Shakespeare


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‘In the same figure, like the king that’s dead’ (Bernardo affirming the identity of the ghost)

‘It harrows me with fear and wonder’ (Horatio- indicative of the sense of foreboding- all is not well)

‘This bodes some strange eruption to our state’ (Horatio- indicative of the political, social and moral

anarchy/Cultural ubiquity of corruption- it’s everywhere!)

‘Now, sir, young Fortinbras/Of unimproved mettle hot and full, /Hath in the skirts of Norway here

and there/Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes /For food and diet, to some enterprise, /That hath a

stomach in’t’ (Horatio- analogy and contrast with Hamlet-both have a filial duty to their respective

fathers; though both respond very differently; Fortinbras is impetuous but decisive; Hamlet suffers from

an aboulia and hence his mental bedevilement)

‘With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage

In equal scale weighing delight and dole’ (Claudius- indicative of the state of social anarchy emanating

from the usurper King’s reign.

‘The head is not more native to the heart

(Claudius to Laertes- portrays Claudius as an obsequious sycophant)

‘But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son’ (Claudius to Hamlet- indicative of the manipulative efforts of

Claudius to win Hamlet over)

‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’ (Hamlet to Claudius- indicative of Hamlet’s sense of

repulsion with his mother’s indecorously haste marriage to his uncle)

‘I am too much i’ the sun’ (Hamlet- indicative of Hamlet’s wit)

‘cast thy nighted colour off’ (Gertrude to Hamlet- indicative of her insensitivity towards Hamlet’s

genuine despair over his father’s death)

‘Thou know’st tis common; all that live must die,

Passing through nature to eternity’ – (Gertrude to Hamlet- indicative of her insensitivity to Hamlet’s

grief; stresses the ordinariness of death; callous reminder to move on)

‘But I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe .’ (Hamlet- indicative of the sincere and genuine loss

Hamlet feels; Hamlet’s grief is not a pretence or an act; antithetical to the Danish world of corruption,

duplicity and ‘seeming’)

‘But to persever

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness; tis unmanly grief’ (Claudius to Hamlet- indicative of Claudius’ attempts to

denigrate Hamlet’s sense of grief)

‘You are the most immediate to our throne–(Claudius to Hamlet- indicative of Claudius’ ineffective

attempts to win over the grieving Hamlet)

‘O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,


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Thaw and resolve itself into a dew

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon against self-slaughter (indicative of Hamlet’s sense of despair; quintessential intellectual

Weltschmerz articulating his despair over having to live in this world of corruption and duplicity;

Ultimately Hamlet does not take his own life because it is against his religious beliefs)

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable (portrays Hamlet as the quintessential intellectual

Weltschmerz; anathematises the world; utter repulsion and disgust)

‘tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in

Nature ‘-(Hamlet uses the imagery of things rotting in order to delineate the cultural ubiquity of

corruption; this is one of the ramifications of having an egregious King on the throne)

‘So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr’ (Hamlet contrasts his father (paradigmatic figure) with the anathematised Claudius)

‘she would hang on him

As if increase of appetite had grown’ (Hamlet portraying the paradigmatic relationship between his

father and mother; ‘seemed’ to be close and affectionate)

‘Frailty, thy name is woman’ (Hamlet’s misogynistic judgement of women; takes a spite against all

women because of his mother’s impropriety)

‘Like Niobe, all tears why she, even she-

O God! A beast, that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourn’d longer’- (Hamlet describes the fulsome grief of Gertrude; then he denigrates her

by comparing her to an animal)

‘My father’s brother’s, but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules’ (Hamlet contrasting the noble King Hamlet and egregious Claudius)

‘O most wicked speed; to post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets’ - (Hamlet’s vitriolic judgement on his mother’s relationship

with Claudius; it is an incestuous/debauched relationship; points to her impropriety/indecorous behaviour)

‘But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue’- (Hamlet is aware of his precarious position; can’t go

mouthing off; hence his need for sprezzatura/’antic disposition’ when he finds out that his father was

murdered; this exacerbates the situation completely; puts salt in the wound so to speak!)

‘the funeral bak’d meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage table

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio’ – (Hamlet to Horatio; indicative of Gertrude’s impropriety; the

marriage is indecently too soon after his father’s death; Hamlet is completely disgusted and repulsion; his

repugnance is clearly evident because he says he would have died quicker than see this event)

‘My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well

I doubt some foul play’- (Hamlet is aware of the inauspicious significance of the apparition)


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‘Foul deeds will rise

Though all the earth o’verwhelm to men’s eyes’- (Hamlet delineates the pervasiveness of the corruption

that permeates the political, social and moral fibre of the Danish court)

‘For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour

Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood’ (Laertes to Ophelia; Laertes denigrates Hamlet’s love for Ophelia)

‘his will is not his own

For himself is subject to his birth’

for on his choice depends

The safety and the health of the whole state’

(Laertes to Ophelia; Hamlet cannot pick his wife of his own volition because any prospective marriage

may have consequences for Denmark; political marriage based on politics)

‘Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister’ (the sententious/pompous Laertes to Ophelia instructing her to

stay away from Hamlet)

‘The chariest maid is prodigal enough

If she unmask her beauty to the moon’ (the sententious/ pompous Laertes to Ophelia)

‘Do not, as some ungracious pastors do

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

Whiles like a puff’d and reckless libertine

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads

And recks not his own rede’ (a glimpse of more spirited Ophelia (normally docile and subservient)

Ophelia to Laertes)

‘Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice -(the sententious/trying to sound wise Polonius to Laertes;

moral precepts that he himself should practice)

‘to thy own self be true’ (the sententious/trying to sound wise Polonius to Laertes; moral precepts that he

himself should practice)

‘You do not understand yourself so clearly

As it behoves my daughter and your honour’ (the sententious Polonius to the docile Ophelia; stay away

from Hamlet; you are not good enough for him; compromising her or rather Polonius’ reputation)

‘you speak like a green girl’ (the sententious Polonius to the docile Ophelia; tries to tell her that

Hamlet’s declarations of love are fulsome; that he is only using her; denigrates their love)

‘think yourself a baby,

That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay

Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly’ -(the sententious Polonius to the docile Ophelia;

tries to tell her that Hamlet’s declarations of love are fulsome; that he is only using her; denigrates their

love)

‘Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence’ - (the sententious Polonius to the docile Ophelia;

instructs her to stay away from Hamlet)


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‘I shall obey, my lord’ – (the too submissive and subservient Ophelia to peremptory officious Polonius)

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee- (Hamlet’s indifference to whether or not he lives or not; quintessential

intellectual Weltschmerz)

‘My fate cries out’-(Hamlet determined to speak to the Ghost)

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ (Marcellus- delineates the cultural ubiquity of corruption

and duplicity)

‘I am thy father’s spirit’ (Ghost affirms his identity)

‘Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder (Ghost’s imposition on Hamlet; this is Hamlet’s filial

duty to his father; to adhere to the principle of lex talions- GET REVENGE)

‘Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift

As mediation or the thoughts of love,

May sweep to my revenge’ (Hamlet to Ghost; Hamlet promises to avenge immediately)

‘The serpent that did sting thy father’s life

Now wears his crown’ (Ghost to Hamlet; imagery of sly snake points to the world of duplicity and

chicanery/underhand methods)

‘O my prophetic soul!’ (Hamlet’s suspicions are affirmed)

‘Ay that incestuous, the adulterate beast

With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts-

O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power

So to seduce!- won to his shameful lust

The will of my most seeming- virtuous queen’ – (Ghost delineates the chicanery employed by his

duplicitous brother in winning over Gertrude)

‘Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand

Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d;

Cut off in the blossom of sin’ (Ghost to Hamlet describes his awful fate; describes the enormity of

Claudius’ crime- regicide and fratricide; King Hamlet is burning in the fires of Purgatory)

‘Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

Against thy mother aught leave her to heaven’ (Ghost’s exhortation to leave Gertrude to heaven; don’t

touch her)

‘Remember me’-(Ghost to Hamlet; remember his injunction: please fulfil your filial obligation to me-

avenge my ‘foul and most unnatural murder’)

‘Ay, thou poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe’ - (indicative of Hamlet’s loyalty to his father)

‘O most pernicious woman! - (Hamlet’s misogynistic judgement of his mother- it’s all her fault;

resonates with the Prolapsarian story- where Eve was seen as the cause of all evil in the world)


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O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!’ (Hamlet’s anathematisation of both Gertrude and Claudius-

delineates the corruption and duplicity of Denmark- Janus-faced characters)

‘one may smile, and smile, and be a villain’ (Hamlet delineates the corruption and duplicity of

Denmark- Janus-faced characters)

‘wild and whirling words’ (Horatio’s comment on Hamlet’s revelations about the Ghost)

‘It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you’- (Hamlet believes in the veracity of what the ghost has said)

‘As I perchance hereafter shall think meet

To put an antic disposition on’- (Hamlet decides to assume an ‘antic disposition’ in an effort to

disconcert his arch-nemesis, Claudius. This ‘antic disposition’ is a bellicose/combative tactic in his psychological warfare with Claudius; it is a type of sprezzatura- a defensive form of irony employed as a

defence mechanism)

‘The time is out of joint, O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right’- (Hamlet as the classic intellectual Weltschmerz; begins to crumble

under the Ghost’s heavy imposition; feels unable to fulfil his filial obligations to his father; essentially not

suited to the role of avenger)

‘Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth’ – (the fulsome Polonius to obsequious sycophantic

Reynaldo)

‘As if he had been loosened out of hell

To speak of horrors’ - (Ophelia to Polonius; Ophelia describes Hamlet’s strange and erratic behaviour)

‘Of Hamlet’s transformation; so I can call it,

Since nor the exterior nor the inward man

Resembles that it was’ - (King to the court; believes the Hamlet is genuinely non compos mentis;

Hamlet’s sprezzatura is effectively working; attacks the orthodoxy of corruption and duplicity of the

Danish Court)

‘to gather,

So much as from occasion you may glean

Whe’r aught to us unknown afflicts him thus,

That, open’d, lies within our remedy’. (The manipulative King Claudius to obsequious sycophantic

Guildenstern and Rosencrantz)

‘My too much changed son’ (Gertrude believes that Hamlet is genuinely mad; that he is non compos

mentis)

‘Heavens make our presence, and our practices

Pleasant and helpful to him’ (the obsequious Guildenstern to the morally bankrupt Claudius)

‘I have found

The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy’ – (the officious Polonius to duplicitous Claudius and morally

ambiguous Gertrude; Polonius erroneously believes that he has found the cause of Hamlet’s madness)


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‘I doubt it is no other but the main;

His father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage’ – (Gertrude to Claudius the perspicacious Gertrude

knows her son)

‘Your noble son is mad’ – (Polonius to King and Queen)

‘you are a fishmonger’ - (Hamlet to Polonius; attacking the orthodoxy of corruption of the Danish

court; Polonius exemplifies the fawning servile man of self-advancement)

‘Though this be madness, yet there is

Method in‘t’ - (the perspicacious Claudius begins to see through Hamlet’s feigned madness)

‘How pregnant sometimes his replies are’ (the perspicacious Claudius begins to see through Hamlet’s

feigned madness; Hamlet is not really non compos mentis; his madness is only a form of sprezzatura;

employed in his psychological warfare against the egregious Claudius)

‘Denmark’s a prison’ - (Hamlet to Guildenstern- indicative of Hamlet’s sense of nausea at the pervasive

corruption and duplicity of the Danish Court; Hamlet is made nauseous by the extensive corruption that

pervades the cultural ubiquity of Denmark)

‘there is nothing

Either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’- (Hamlet- extremely logical; reflects the ratiocinativeness

of his character; brilliant intellect)

‘There is a kind of confession in your looks’ (the perspicacious Hamlet to obsequious sycophantic

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

‘I have of late- but wherefore I know not, - lost all my mirth, forgone

All custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the

Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most

Excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’er

Hanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other thing to

me but

A foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’ - (Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern describes his

taedium vitae; completely fed up with life; role of malcontent (speaking about the ills of society and he is

totally disgusted) overwhelms him)

‘What a piece of work is a man!........................... and yet to me, what is

This quintessence of dust’ - (Hamlet the classic intellectual Weltschmerz- totally world-weary;

completely fed up; feels swamped by the role of malcontent)

‘I am mad north-north-west when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw’ (Hamlet

declares his madness is feigned; there are times in the play that Hamlet’s appears to be mad; when he is

gripped by intense emotional anguish; but there is a world of difference between mental

bedevilement/torture and insanity; you can be angry and flip out but it doesn’t necessarily mean you are

insane!)

‘O! What a rogue and peasant slave am I’ - (Hamlet’s self-deprecation at his own inability to act; his

aboulia is a source of self-deprecation and abasement; Caught in a Scyllaeo-Charybdean dilemma;


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basically he is screwed- there is nothing noble about being a murderer yet there is nothing noble about

being a coward)

‘Am I a coward?’ - (Further evidence of Hamlet’s self-deprecation over his aboulia; source of mental

bedevilement)

‘But I am pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall’ - (Further evidence of Hamlet’s self-deprecation over his

aboulia; source of mental bedevilement)

‘Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave

That I, the son of a dear father murder’d

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,

And fall a-cursing, like a very drab

A scullion’ - (Further evidence of Hamlet’s self-deprecation over his aboulia; source of mental

bedevilement; refers to the fact that he has to employ sprezzatura ‘like a whore, unpack my heart with

words’)

‘The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil: and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape: yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy-

As he is very potent with such spirits

Abuses to damn me’ - (Hamlet procrastinates; begins to doubt the veracity of the Ghost; inept at playing

the avenger role)

‘the play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king’- (the perspicacious Hamlet devises a plan to affirm

Claudius’ guilt)

‘But, with crafty madness, keeps aloof’ - (Guildenstern to the Claudius; Sprezzatura is effective;

disconcerting and attacking the orthodoxy of corruption)

‘And as for your part, Ophelia, I do wish

That your good beauties be the happy cause

Of Hamlet’s wildness; so shall I hope your virtues

Will bring him to his wonted way again

To both your honours - (Gertrude to Ophelia; portrays her maternal affection for her son Hamlet)

‘The harlot’s cheek, beautified with plastering art

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word:

O heavy burden! - (Claudius, like Hamlet employs the imagery of painting in order to highlight the

duplicitous and corrupt nature of the Danish Court; indicative of the fact that Claudius does have a moral

awareness of his wrongdoings; His ‘limed soul’ is struggling to be free/ Hamlet is not the only one in the

play who is wrestling with his conscience!)

‘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


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Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?- (Hamlet’s Scyllaeo-Charybdean dilemma; should he avenge or not; the

mental strain of his father’s injunction causes him intense mental bedevilement/upset; essentially he is

inept at playing the roles of avenger and malcontent; totally swamped by the mental pressure of fulfilling

his filial duty – to avenge his father’s murderer)

‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all’ - (Hamlet reflects on his inability to act; mental strain of

his father’s injunction has caused him to suffer from a specific aboulia: to avenge or not to avenge)

‘thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought’ - (Hamlet reflects on his inability to act; mental strain of

his father’s injunction has caused him to suffer from a specific aboulia: to avenge or not to avenge)

‘Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a

Breeder of sinners? - (Hamlet’s vitriolic verbal attack on the blameless Ophelia)

‘I could accuse myself of such things that it were

Better my mother had not borne me. I am proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my

beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in’-

(Hamlet’s self-deprecation; caustic and denigrating; yet perhaps very honest)

‘Or, if thou wilt marry, marry

A fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them’- (Hamlet’s vitriolic attack

on the innocent Ophelia)

‘I have heard of your paintings well enough; God

Hath given you one face, and you make yourselves

Another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname

God’s creatures, and make your wantonness

Your ignorance’ - (Hamlet to Ophelia; indicative of the ‘seeming’ /duplicitous nature of the Denmark;

Corruption is ubiquitous; Everyone is not what they pretend to be; everyone wears a mask; dissemblance

of corruption; though as the play’s malcontent, Hamlet will impugns/expose as false this corruption and

hypocrisy)

‘O! what a noble mind is here o’erthrown:

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword,

The expectancy and rose of the fair state

The glass of fashion and the mould of form

The observed of all observers’-(Ophelia laments Hamlet’s downfall; affirms Hamlet’s nobility; almost

every character in the play affirms Hamlet’s nobility; he is essentially a tragic noble hero and this is how

audiences are suppose to view him though his behaviour throughout the play is quite polemical to this

nobility; Hamlet’s tragedy is that he is this noble idealistic young man who through no fault of his own,

finds himself in a Scyllaeo-Charybdean dilemma; it really doesn’t matter what Hamlet does, he’s screwed

either way- This is why this play is a tragedy!)

‘O! woe is me,

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see’ (Ophelia is genuinely distressed at having witness a

distraught Hamlet)

‘There’s something in his soul


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O’er which his melancholy sits on brood

And I do doubt, the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger’- (the perspicacious Claudius cops on to Hamlet’s feigned madness- his sprezzatura

is only a defence mechanism in his psychological warfare with the egregious Claudius)

‘he shall with speed to England’ - (Claudius’ decisiveness in dealing with his divisive/troublesome

nephew)

‘Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go’ (the discerning Claudius cops on to Hamlet’s feigned

madness- his sprezzatura is only a defence mechanism in his psychological warfare with the egregious

Claudius)

‘to hold as ‘twere, a mirror up to nature – (Hamlet’s role as malcontent; exposes and impugns the

corruption, the duplicity and the hypocrisy of the Danish court)

‘Bless’d are those

Whose blood and judgement are so well comingled

That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger

To sound what stops she pleases’- (Hamlet’s ideal man= Horatio; he is not ‘passion’s slave’)

Speaking about the prologue

Ophelia: ‘tis brief

Hamlet: as woman’s love (Hamlet’s misogynistic judgement of women; total disparagement)

‘I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim’d their malefactions’- (the perspicacious/discerning Hamlet devises a plan to

confirm both the veracity of the Ghost’s declaration and the reprehensibility of Claudius)

Your majesty and we that have free souls,

It touches us all’ - (Hamlet’s ironic riposte to Claudius; he knows that Claudius is guilty of his father’s

murder; therefore his soul is not ‘free’)

‘What! Frighted with false fires’-(Hamlet’s use of riposte; Hamlet knows that Claudius is guilty)

‘I’ll take the ghost’s words for a thousand pound’- (Hamlet believes in the veracity of the Ghost;

Claudius is morally reprehensible/to blame)

‘my wit’s diseased’ - (Hamlet to Guildenstern; Sprezzatura; attack on Guildenstern’s ‘seeming’)

Why look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would

seem to know my stops: you would pluck out the heart of my mystery (Hamlet to Guildenstern; the

perspicacious Hamlet is aware of Guildenstern’s chicanery/underhand methods; Hamlet knows that he is

playing him)

Do you think I am easier to be played upon than a pipe? - (Hamlet to Guildenstern; Hamlet to

Guildenstern; the perspicacious Hamlet is aware of Guildenstern’s chicanery/underhand methods; Hamlet

knows that he is playing him)


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‘Now could I drink hot blood

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on’ (Hamlet after seeing Fortinbras’ army on its way to regain a worthless ‘little

patch of grown; Hamlet, mortified by his own action, is piqued into action; becomes decisive;

sanguinary/bloodthirsty for revenge)

‘I like him not, nor stands it safe with us

To let his madness rage’ (the discerning Claudius sees through Hamlet’s pretence, his ‘antic disposition’

and starts making plans to get rid of him)

‘Never alone did the king sigh, but with a general groan’- (Claudius stresses the importance of the king

to the overall health of the state; ‘There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark’ because of

Claudius ‘the bloat king’ [s] rule; Claudius is the source of corruption, hypocrisy and duplicity)

O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven (Claudius- imagery of corruption/things are foul because of

the heinous nature of his crime: regicide/fratricide; political, social and moral anarchy- theme of madness

and theme of corruption are interlinked)

‘May one be pardon’d and still retain the offence?’ (Claudius knows that he cannot be pardoned and

yet keep his guilty lucre- ‘my crown, mine own ambition and my queen’)

In the corrupted currents of this world

Offence’s gilded hand may shove past by justice…….. but ‘tis not so above’ (Claudius delineates the

cultural ubiquity of corruption; however he is aware that he will be held accountable; no escaping the jus

divinium of justice)

‘A villain kills my father: and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven’- (Hamlet’s somewhat pathetic excuse not to kill Claudius in the Prayer Scene- procrastinates

further- essentially boils down to his aboulia; he is not temperamentally suited to the role of avenger)

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent’ - (Hamlet decides to seek vengeance when Claudius is

‘fit for his passage; Make sure he is on the road to perdition)

That has no relish of salvation in‘t

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,

And his soul may be as damn’d and black

As hell, whereto it goes’ – (Hamlet decides to seek vengeance when Claudius is ‘fit for his passage;

Make sure he is on the road to perdition; Claudius is a chthonic figure)

‘My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

Words without thoughts never to heaven go’- (Claudius is unable to pray; morally aware of his

wrongdoing; not a simplistic portrayal of a villain; does have redeeming features; ‘his limed soul’

struggles)

‘O! what a rash and bloody deed is this!’ (Gertrude’s comment on Hamlet’s rash murder of Polonius)

‘A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king and marry with his brother’ (Hamlet tries to make Gertrude morally aware)


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‘Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell’- (Hamlet’s callous dismissal of the obsequious

sycophantic Polonius; this wanton cruelty is not an endearing aspect of Hamlet’s character)

‘I took thee for thy better’- (Hamlet thought Polonius was Claudius; Hamlet is disappointed by the

appearance of Polonius’ corpse not remorseful)

‘Let me wring your heart; for so I shall if it be made of penetrable stuff’ -(Hamlet is extremely cruel

towards his mother; he sees it as his duty to make her moral aware; perhaps this makes Hamlet a little

sententious, considering that he is only after killing Polonius; up on his moral hobby-horse)

A combination and a form indeed

Where every god did seem to set his seal

To give the world assurance of a man

Here is your husband; like a mildewed ear

Blasting his wholesome brother’- (Hamlet sees his father as the ideal man; he revered his father; the fact

that Hamlet is dilatory is not due to any want of attachment on Hamlet’s part; rather he is given a task that

he is temperamentally unsuited for; Hamlet sees Claudius as a ‘mildewed ear’- imagery of corruption,

things gone off, things foul, rotten, rank all emanate from parasitic Claudius)

‘Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct’ - (Gertrude – tells Hamlet that she is morally aware of her wrongdoing)

‘Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an ‘enseamed bed,

Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty’- (Hamlet- anathematises the marriage of Claudius and Gertrude using animal

imagery; bestial relationship- absolute repugnance is conveyed through the pig references; shows

Gertrude’s lascivious impropriety)

‘These words like daggers enter in my ears’- (Gertrude- before this Hamlet said that he would ‘speak

daggers’ to his mother in order to make her morally aware of her shortcomings; Hamlet’s vitriolic words

seems to have been efficacious)

‘A king of shreds and patches’- (Hamlet- denigration of usurper King; Polonius told his son that ‘the

apparel oft proclaim the man’- Claudius has no legitimacy as king of Denmark)

‘Do you not come your tardy son to chide’- (Hamlet’s response to the second visitation of the Ghost;

knows that the Ghost is annoyed by his failure to adhere to his filial obligation)

‘This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose’-(Ghost’s peremptory reminder to kill Claudius; please

adhere to the principle of lex talions)

‘Confess yourself to heaven

Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come’- (Hamlet’s pleas with his mother to repent of her lascivious

impropriety)


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‘O Hamlet! Thou has cleft my heart in twain’-(Gertrude is deeply upset by Hamlet’s shocking

revelations)

‘I must be cruel only to be kind’- (Hamlet’s acknowledgement of his cruelty towards his mother)

‘I essentially am not in madness

But mad in craft’- (Hamlet reveals that his madness, his assumed ‘antic disposition’ is essentially a

pretence; sprezzatura used in his psychological warfare against Claudius)

‘My two schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d’- (Hamlet recognises Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for what

they are-obsequious sycophants; note the recurring serpent imagery- emphasises the duplicity and

scheming that makes up the social and moral fibre of the Danish court)

‘I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room’ (Hamlet’s callous dismissal of Polonius’ body)

‘A foolish prating knave’- (Hamlet’s callous dismissal of Polonius)

‘As mad as the sea and wind, when both contend

Which is the mightier?’ - (Gertrude- an act of maternal loyalty- goes along with Hamlet’s pretence)

‘The unseen good old man’ - (Gertrude description of Polonius)

‘It had been so with us had we been there’- (Claudius- trying to emphasise the seriousness of the threat

Hamlet poses)

‘Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain’ - (Claudius emphasising the need to get rid of Hamlet)

‘He’s the loved of the distracted multitude’- (Claudius describes the charisma of Hamlet; the proletariat

love him; he is a very charismatic figure; inadvertently affirms Hamlet’s nobility)

‘Do it England;

For like the hectic in my blood he rages

And thou must cure me’ - (Claudius reveals his intention to have Hamlet executed in a soliloquy)

‘We go to gain a little patch of ground

That hath no profit but the name’- (Captain- Fortinbras’ army are willing to go to war over a worthless

piece of land; this piques Hamlet and he feels ashamed by his own inaction; it’s the principle of the matter

that is important; Hamlet’s filial duty is to avenge his father’s murder; it’s a matter of principles)

‘How all occasions do inform against me

And spur my dull revenge!’ – (Hamlet’s self-deprecation at his own inaction)

‘Now whe’r it be

Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event’–(Hamlet’s self-deprecation at his own inaction; he feels

frustrated by his aboulia- why is he unable to be decisive and just do it!)

‘Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument


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But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honour’s at the stake’ – (Hamlet compares himself to Fortinbras and is made aware of his own

inadequacy)

‘How stand I then

That have a father kill’d, a mother stained

And let all sleep while I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men’- (Hamlet compares himself to Fortinbras and is made

aware of his own inadequacy; Hamlet has ample reason and justification to seek vengeance; more so than

Fortinbras; yet Hamlet procrastinates while Fortinbras wilfully risks the lives of twenty thousand men just

for a principle)

‘O! from this time forth

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing forth’- (Hamlet becomes decisive and sanguinary)

‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions’ (Claudius)

‘There’s such a divinity doth hedge a king

That treason can but peep to what it would (Claudius- emphasises the importance of the king; the king

was seen as God’s representative on earth)

‘To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil

Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit

I dare damnation’ - (Laertes; Laertes contrasts sharply with the indecisive Hamlet; Laertes does not

suffer from ‘bestial oblivion’ or from ‘craven scruple’; He has a ‘noble father lost and a sister driven

to desperate terms’ and so seeks vengeance immediately; not encumbered by any moral scruples as

Hamlet is; Laertes acts as a foil to Hamlet in the same manner as Fortinbras does)

‘Now you speak like a good child and true gentleman’- (The manipulative Claudius to ductile/easily led

Laertes; Claudius gets Laertes on side )

‘The queen his mother

Lives by his looks, and for myself-

My virtue or my plague, be it either which

She is so conjunctive to my life and soul

That, as the star moves not but in his own sphere

I could not by her’ (Claudius explains why he cannot have Hamlet stand public trial to Laertes)

‘The great love the general gender bear him’-(Claudius explains why he cannot have Hamlet stand

public trial to Laertes; inadvertently affirms Hamlet’s nobility; everyone loves Hamlet; charismatic)

‘And so have I a noble father lost

A sister driven into desperate terms’ - (Laertes’ reasons to kill Hamlet; his filial duty is to seek

vengeance by killing Hamlet)

‘Will you be rul’d by me’- (Claudius manipulates Laertes)

‘For his death no wind of blame shall breathe’ - (Claudius’ chicanery/trickery- emphasising the world

of corruption and duplicity)


15

‘Laertes, was your father dear to you?

Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without heart?’ (Claudius, like Hamlet employs the imagery of painting in order to find out if

Laertes really did love his father; imagery of painting emphatically highlights the world of corruption,

hypocrisy, duplicity and ‘seeming’)

‘what would you undertake

To show yourself your father’s son in deed

More than in words?’- (Claudius to Laertes- Laertes will do anything to fulfil his filial duty to his father-

anything! He will not be bound by moral constraints unlike Hamlet)

‘To cut his throat i’ the church’ - (Laertes- Laertes replies he will cut Hamlet’s throat in a church; this is

a direct comment on Hamlet’s inability to do the same for Claudius in the Prayer scene; Laertes, like

Fortinbras acts as a foil to Hamlet; three sons have lost their fathers; the three have been given the task to

avenge their respective father’s murders; the three react very differently to the imposition to gain

vengeance)

‘And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring’ (Laertes- genuinely upset by his sister’s ‘doubtful death’; delineates Ophelia as the

epitome of innocence and vulnerability; she is play’s only guiltless victim; tragic victim of the ‘corrupted

currents’ of the Danish court)

‘I hop’d thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife;

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d sweet maid,

And not have strew’d thy grave’ (Gertrude – Gertrude is genuinely upset by Ophelia’s untimely death)

‘For though I am not splenetive and rash

Yet I have in me something dangerous

Which let thy wisdom fear’- (Hamlet- warns Laertes to stay away from him in the Graveyard scene;

admits that he is not mad; he is compos mentis)

‘I lov’d Ophelia; forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love

Make up my sum’ - (Hamlet- declares his true love for Ophelia; genuinely heart-broken by her untimely

death)

‘Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well

When our deep plots do pall’ (Hamlet- on his return from England, Hamlet believes in the power of

providence- whatever will be will be)

‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough-hew them how we will’ - (Hamlet- Hamlet- on his return from England, Hamlet believes in the

power of providence- whatever will be will be)

‘Not shriving-time allow’d’- (Hamlet –callously sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths

without giving them time to make their peace with God)

‘Why, man, they did make love to their employment


16

They are not near my conscience, their defeat

Does by their own insinuation grow’- (Hamlet tells Horatio that the sycophantic Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern deserved to die and he is not responsible for their deaths)

‘he, being remiss,

Most generous and free from all contriving’ - (Claudius affirms the nobility of Hamlet to Laertes while

devising a plan to kill him)

‘The interim is mine’- (Hamlet believes in the power of providence- if the time to avenge Claudius is

now, well so be it)

‘For, by the image of my cause, I see

The portraiture of his’- (Hamlet recognises the parallels between himself and Laertes; both have filial

obligations to fulfil; Laertes, like Fortinbras, acts as a foil to the noble idealist young Hamlet)

‘We defy augury, there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’- Hamlet- on his return from

England, Hamlet believes in the power of providence- whatever will be will be)

‘the readiness is all’- (Hamlet- on his return from England, Hamlet believes in the power of providence-

whatever will be will be)

‘I do receive your offer’d love like love,

And will not wrong it’ - (Laertes to Hamlet- indicative of the world of duplicity; Laertes is only

pretending to forgive Hamlet)

‘Gertrude do not drink’ - (Claudius ineffectual attempt to save the life of the woman who is so

‘conjunctive to [his] life and soul’)

‘I am justly killed by mine own treachery’ - (Laertes openly declares his perfidy and does not blame

Hamlet; he takes responsibility for the consequences of his actions)

‘The king, the king’s to blame’- (Laertes points to the source of corruption in the play- Claudius)

‘Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane

Drink off this potion’ - (Hamlet finally gains vengeance; Hamlet finally adheres to the principle of lex

talions)

‘Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet’- (Laertes to Hamlet- Laertes affirms the nobility of

Hamlet)

‘I am more an antique Roman than a Dane’ - (Horatio- Horatio is willing to die alongside his best

friend; act of loyalty; archetypal Achates/loyal friend)

‘Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story’- (Hamlet begs Horatio not to commit suicide but rather set the record straight)

‘Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’ (Horatio affirms the nobility of the eponymous protagonist)


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‘For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have prov’d most royally’- (Fortinbras, like so many other characters in the play, affirms Hamlet’s

nobility; Hamlet’s tragedy is that he found himself in a Scyllaeo-Charybdean dilemma; he was charged

with a task that he was temperamentally unsuited for; he suffered from an aboulia as a result; constantly

changing his mind in relation to what course of action he should take; Hamlet’s true role as Ophelia

reminds us in her tearful lament is that of noble prince; he is clearly unsuited to the role of malcontent and

revenger; Hamlet’s hamartia is that he is who he is!)

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By William Shakespearebailieborocslibrary.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/5/5/13553889/hamlet_key... · By William Shakespeare . ... ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’ ... King