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Hamlet

Quotes

The 25 passages that decide the work, each with who speaks, the linked themes and characters, and an explanation.

Act I: The Ghost and the order of revenge

Who's there?
Speaker
Bernardo, the sentinel who arrives to relieve Francisco
Characters
The Ghost, Horatio
Themes
Appearance and Reality

Explanation and analysis

The play opens with a question, asked in the dark of the battlements of Elsinore, at midnight, by a sentinel who comes to take over the watch. Around them there is cold and fear. Bernardo and Marcellus have already seen an apparition twice, and Horatio, brought to check, does not believe in it. Soon the Ghost appears, with the face and armor of the dead king, and vanishes without answering Horatio. Literally, the line is only the call of a watchman who cannot see who is approaching.

Even so, it works as a program. Before any plot, the play stages the problem that will sustain it: no one there knows for certain who is who, or what each figure wants. The Ghost has the king's face, but it is not known what it brings. Later, in Act II, Hamlet himself will say that the spirit may be the devil in a pleasing shape, and the doubt about the truth of the accusation holds the action back for a long time.

The question can be read as a motif that returns in other forms. Claudius presents himself as a serene king and hides a crime, Hamlet will feign madness, his childhood friends will play the spies, and the whole court lives on appearances. Who is there, in fact, behind each face? The line is spoken at night and has no immediate answer, and this lack of answer is the atmosphere in which the entire first act takes place.

But I have that within which passeth show; / These but the trappings and the suits of woe
Speaker
Hamlet, to Gertrude
Characters
Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius
Themes
Appearance and RealityDeath
Devices
Metaphor, Antithesis, Rhyming couplet

Explanation and analysis

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Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
Speaker
Marcellus
Characters
Hamlet, The Ghost, Claudius
Themes
Corruption and Decay
Symbols
An Unweeded Garden
Devices
Metaphor, Foreshadowing, Leitmotif

Explanation and analysis

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I am thy father's spirit, / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, / And for the day confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away
Speaker
The Ghost, to Hamlet
Characters
The Ghost, Hamlet, Claudius
Themes
DeathRevenge
Devices
Antithesis, Sensory imagery

Explanation and analysis

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The time is out of joint. O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!
Speaker
Hamlet
Characters
Hamlet, The Ghost, Horatio
Themes
RevengeAction and Inaction
Devices
Metaphor, Rhyming couplet

Explanation and analysis

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Act II: Feigned madness and the theater trap

See you now, / Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth
Speaker
Polonius, to Reynaldo
Characters
Polonius, Laertes
Themes
Appearance and Reality
Devices
Metaphor

Explanation and analysis

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God's bodykins, man, much better! Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?
Speaker
Hamlet, to Polonius
Characters
Hamlet, Polonius
Themes
Appearance and RealityMadness

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For Hecuba! / What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her? What would he do / Had he the motive and the cue for passion / That I have?
Speaker
Hamlet, alone
Characters
Hamlet
Themes
Action and InactionRevenge
Devices
Soliloquy, Rhetorical question, Allusion

Explanation and analysis

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The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil, and the devil hath power / T' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps, / Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / As he is very potent with such spirits, / Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds / More relative than this
Speaker
Hamlet, alone
Characters
Hamlet, The Ghost
Themes
Appearance and RealityAction and Inaction
Symbols
The Mousetrap
Devices
Soliloquy

Explanation and analysis

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The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King
Speaker
Hamlet, alone
Characters
Hamlet, Claudius
Themes
Appearance and RealityRevenge
Symbols
The Mousetrap
Devices
Rhyming couplet, Soliloquy

Explanation and analysis

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Act III: The Mousetrap and the death of Polonius

To be, or not to be, that is the question
Speaker
Hamlet, alone, in the soliloquy
Characters
Hamlet
Themes
DeathAction and Inaction
Devices
Soliloquy, Antithesis

Explanation and analysis

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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
Speaker
Hamlet, alone, in the soliloquy
Characters
Hamlet
Themes
Action and InactionDeath
Devices
Metaphor, Soliloquy

Explanation and analysis

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'The Mousetrap.' Marry, how? Tropically. [...] Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not
Speaker
Hamlet, to Claudius
Characters
Hamlet, Claudius, Horatio
Themes
Appearance and RealityRevenge
Symbols
The Mousetrap, The poison
Devices
Irony, Dramatic irony, Story within a story

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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?
Speaker
Claudius, alone
Characters
Claudius, Hamlet, Gertrude
Themes
RevengeCorruption and DecayDeath
Devices
Soliloquy, Rhetorical question, Dramatic irony

Explanation and analysis

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How now? A rat?
Speaker
Hamlet
Characters
Hamlet, Polonius, Gertrude
Themes
RevengeDeath
Symbols
The Mousetrap
Devices
Situational irony, Leitmotif

Explanation and analysis

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Act IV: Exile, madness, and the trap

The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body
Speaker
Hamlet, to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Characters
Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius
Themes
MadnessAppearance and RealityDeath
Devices
Paradox, Repetition

Explanation and analysis

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He's loved of the distracted multitude, / Who like not in their judgment but their eyes
Speaker
Claudius, to the councilors
Characters
Claudius, Hamlet
Themes
Appearance and RealityRevenge
Devices
Antithesis

Explanation and analysis

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How stand I then, / That have a father killed, a mother stained, / Excitements of my reason and my blood, / And let all sleep
Speaker
Hamlet, alone
Characters
Hamlet, Fortinbras
Themes
Action and InactionRevenge
Devices
Rhetorical question, Soliloquy

Explanation and analysis

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Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be
Speaker
Ophelia, driven mad, to Claudius
Characters
Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude
Themes
MadnessAppearance and Reality
Devices
Antithesis, Allusion

Explanation and analysis

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That we would do, / We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
Speaker
Claudius, to Laertes
Characters
Claudius, Laertes, Hamlet
Themes
Action and InactionRevenge
Devices
Metaphor, Situational irony

Explanation and analysis

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Act V: Graveyard and duel

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy
Speaker
Hamlet, to Horatio
Characters
Hamlet, Horatio
Themes
Death

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It will be short. The interim is mine, / And a man's life's no more than to say 'one'
Speaker
Hamlet, to Horatio
Characters
Hamlet, Horatio, Claudius
Themes
DeathRevenge
Devices
Hyperbole

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There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. [...] The readiness is all
Speaker
Hamlet, to Horatio
Characters
Hamlet, Horatio
Themes
DeathAction and InactionRevenge
Devices
Allusion

Explanation and analysis

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The rest is silence
Speaker
Hamlet
Characters
Hamlet, Horatio, Fortinbras
Themes
Death
Devices
Euphemism

Explanation and analysis

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Let four captains / Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage, / For he was likely, had he been put on, / To have proved most royal
Speaker
Fortinbras
Characters
Fortinbras, Hamlet, Horatio
Themes
DeathRevenge

Explanation and analysis

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