O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve into dew | Hamlet (after talking to Claudius), He is mortified about Claudius being his father, and he would rather die than be his son |
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.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 the Guards ( after the ghost sighting) This ghost sighting is serious. Remember before Caesar died the dead rose from their grave and were in the streets |
A little more than kin and less than kind | Hamlet to himself, He is upset with the incest between his mom and uncle |
with an auspicious and a dropping eye,with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,in equal scale weighing delight and dole | Claudius to kingdom, We need to grieve the king, but we need to look united. I’m marrying my sister in law |
I have that within me which passes showthese but the trappings and the suits of woe | Hamlet to Claudius, I have real grief for my father. My clothes just show the surface. I have real emotions inside |
frailty, thy name is woman | Hamlet (about Gertrude) he thinks she is weak because she married her brother in law just months after her husbands death |
this above all-to thine ownself be true | Polonius to Laertes (when he is leaving for France) He gives him a big speech about advice, and then he tells him that the most important thing to do is to be true to yourself |
something is rotten in the state of denmark | Marcellus, It foreshadows the revenge plot, the ghost , and the king’s wrongful death |
what’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,that he should weep for her? | Hamlet about players, Why are they crying for nothing |
to be or not to be….. | Hamlet, to commit suicide or to live? is it nobler to end it before it kills you? |
to sleep: perchance to dream….for in that sleep of death what comes | Hamlet, The only thing with death is the dreaming. You can’t escape those terrible dreams that you may have after you have sinned |
Get thee to a nunnery | Hamlet to Ophelia, Nobody wants you, and you shouldn’t have children because they’ll be liars like you. (he is trying to act crazy to save her) |
I am but mad north north west | Hamlet to Guilden. I am okay when everything is normal, but when there is struggle then I struggle |
the play’s the thingwherein ill catch the conscience of the king | Hamlet to horatio, the play will start the revenge plot for his father’s death. The king will know that Hamlet knows about the real death |
let me be cruel, not unnatural;I will speak daggers to her, but use none | Hamlet to the ghost, says that he wants to break his mom because he is mad that she fell into the plan of marrying claudius |
now might I do it pat, now he is praying;and now ill do’t. and so he goes to heaven;and so am I revenged | Hamlet (about killing Claudius), he can’t kill Claudius while he is praying because he will go to heaven because he repented |
refrain tonight,and that shall lend a kind of easinessto the next abstinence: the next more easy;for use almost can change the stamp of nature | Hamlet to Gertrude, Don’t have sex with Claudius tonight when he asks, and then it will be easier to say next time and the time after that |
This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-reaches… | Hamlet to Horatio (about the skulls that the gravedigger is throwing), He is throwing the skulls around like it is nothing. That one might have been and important politician, but none of that matters in death |
Hamlet quotes, identifications, and meanings
August 19, 2019