| “But in the gross and scope of mine opinion / This bodes some strange eruption to our state.” | Horatio to Marcellus; he is foreshadowing |
| “Why this same strict and most observant watch / So nightly toils the subject of the land, / And why such daily cast of brazen cannon / And foreign mart for implements of war, / Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task / Does not divide the Sunday from the week. / What might be toward that this sweaty haste / Doth make the night joint laborer with the day?” | Marcellus to Horatio; he is asking why they are making all these military weapons and working day and night all week long |
| “In the most high and palmy state of Rome, / A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead / Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets” | Horatio to Barnardo; he is making a comparison to Caesar, thus creating dramatic irony |
| “We do it wrong, being so majestical, / To offer it the show of violence, / For it is as the air, invulnerable, / And our vain blows malicious mockery.” | Marcellus to Horatio/Barnardo; he is saying that we were dumb in thinking we could hurt a ghost |
| ” … our sometime sister, now our queen” | King Claudius to the court; he is saying that his sister is now his wife (incest) |
| “(With an auspicious and a dropping eye, / With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, / In equal scale weighing delight and dole) / Taken to wife.” | King Claudius to the court; he is explaining that though he is sad about King Hamlet’s death he is also happy about his marriage to Queen Gertrude and is thus feeling conflicting emotions |
| “The head is not more native to the heart, / The hand more instrumental to the mouth, / Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.” | King Claudius to Laertes; he is explaining how he trusts Laertes’ father Polonius greatly |
| “Hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave / By laborsome petition, and at last / Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.” | Polonius to King Claudius; he is saying that basically Laertes begged and pleaded until Polonius was fed up with him and just agreed to get him to stop |
| “A little more than kin and less than kind.” | Hamlet to himself (aside); he is saying that even though he and Claudius are now more closely related, they are nothing alike |
| “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.” | Queen Gertrude to Hamlet; she is asking Hamlet to take off his black clothes of mourning and to look at Claudius as a friend |
| ” ‘Seems,’ madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems.’ “ | Hamlet to Queen Gertrude; he is saying that his grief is real, not fake |
| “O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolves itself into a dew, / Or that the Everlasting had not fixed / His cannon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God, God, / How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!” | Hamlet to himself (soliloquy); his saying that he wishes he could disappear, or that God hadn’t made suicide a sin, and that all the material things around him now seem meaningless |
| “Frailty, thy name is woman!” | Hamlet to himself (soliloquy); he is saying that his mother is weak mentally and emotionally |
| “It is not, nor it cannot come to good. / But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.” | Hamlet to himself (soliloquy); he is saying that even though he knows nothing good will come of this mother’s marriage, he will keep silent about his opinions |
| “The funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” | Hamlet to Horatio; he is using a hyperbole by saying that the funeral and the wedding were so close together that the meat served at the funeral was used as cold cuts at the wedding |
| “If you have hitherto concealed this sight, / Let it be tenable in your silence still; / And whatsomever else shall hap tonight, / Give it an understanding but no tongue.” | Hamlet to Horatio/Marcellus/Barnardo; he is saying to keep everything a secret and don’t tell anyone |
| “Foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.” | Hamlet to himself (soliloquy); he is foreshadowing |
| “Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, / A violet in the youth of primy nature” | Laertes to Ophelia; he is saying to be careful because Hamlet’s love won’t last long |
| “He may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself, for on his choice depends / The safety and the health of this whole state. / And therefore must his choice be circumscribed / Unto the voice and yielding of that body / Whereof he is the head.” | Laertes to Ophelia; he is saying that since Hamlet is a prince and next in line to the throne he might not get to choose who he wants to marry |
| “Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, / Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, / Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, / Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads / And recks not his own rede.” | Ophelia to Laertes; she is saying he needs to not be a hypocrite and follow his own advice |
| “Give thy thoughts no tongue, / Nor any unproportioned thought his act.” | Polonius to Laertes; he is telling him to think before he speaks |
| “Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.” | Polonius to Laertes; he is saying don’t have sex |
| “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, / Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel, / But do not dull thy palm with entertainment / Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage.” | Polonius to Laertes; he is saying that he needs to hold onto his tried and true friends |
| “Beware / Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, / Bear ‘t that th’ opposèd may beware of thee.” | Polonius to Laertes; he is saying don’t get into fights, but if you’re in one you’d better win |
| “Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.” | Polonius to Laertes; he is telling him to listen more than he talks |
| “Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.” | Polonius to Laertes; he is saying to listen to people’s opinions but keep his own |
| “Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not expressed in fancy (rich, not gaudy), / For the apparel oft proclaims the man” | Polonius to Laertes; he is saying to dress appropriately but not to spend too much |
| “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, / For loan oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” | Polonius to Laertes; his is telling him not to borrow or lend money because he’ll end up losing both the friend and the money |
| “This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” | Polonius to Laertes; he is saying that most importantly don’t lie to yourself, that way you won’t lie to everyone else |
| “Marry, well bethought. / ‘Tis told me he hath very oft of late / Given private time to you, and you yourself / Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.” | Polonius to Ophelia; he is accusing her of sleeping with Hanlet |
| “But, to my mind, though I am native here / And to the manner born, it is a custom / More honored in the breach than the observance.” | Hamlet to Horatio; he is saying that while it is a custom to party, Claudius is partying too hard |
| “Why, what should be the fear? / I do not set my life at a pin’s fee. / And for my soul, what can it do to that, / Being a thing immortal as itself?” | Hamlet to Horatio; he is asking why he should be afraid since it’s only a ghost |
| “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” | Marcellus to Horatio; he is foreshadowing |
| “My hour is almost come / When I to sulf’rous and tormenting flames / Must render up myself.” | Ghost to Hamlet; he is saying that it’s almost time for him to return to purgatory/hell |
| “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown.” | Ghost to Hamlet; he is saying that the dude who killed him is now king (aka Claudius) |
| “But, howsomever thou pursues this act, / Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven / And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge / To prick and sting her.” | Ghost to Hamlet; he is saying that he should not punish his mother and instead leave her to her guilt |
| “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 youth and observation copied there, / And thy commandment all alone shall live / Within the book and volume of my brain” | Hamlet to himself (soliloquy); he is saying that he will clear his mind of literally everything except avenging his father |
| “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.” | Hamlet to himself (soliloquy); he is explaining how Claudius is putting on a front, that he is smiling and pretending everything is okay when in reality he is the murderer |
| “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” | Hamlet to Horatio; he is saying that there far more and stranger things than he could ever imagine |
| “O cursèd spite / That I ever was born to set it right!” | Hamlet to Horatio/Barnardo; he is saying he wishes he didn’t have to be the one to fix everything |
Hamlet Act I Quotes
August 14, 2019