Hamlet quotes: Madness, alienation, melancholy

1.5, Horatio: These are but These are but wild and whirling words, my lord
1.5, Hamlet: as perchance hereafter as perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on
2.1, Ophelia: describes Hamlet as looking as if he had been ‘loosed out of… loosed out of hell/ to speak of horrors
2.2, Hamlet: for if the sun… for if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog,/ being a good kissing carrion – have you a daughter?
3.1, Claudius: madness in great ones… madness in great ones must not unwatched go
1.4, Horatio: he waxes… he waxes desperate with imagination
3.1, Ophelia: now see that noble and now see that noble and sovereign reason/ like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh
4.1, Gertrude: Hamlet is ‘mad as the sea and wind… mad as the sea and the wind/ when both contend which is the mightier
2.2, Hamlet to Polonius: I am but mad north-north west. I am but mad north-north west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw
2.2, Hamlet: […] The spirit that I have seen/May be the devil The spirit that I have seen/ may be the devil, and the devil hath power/ T’assume a pleasing shape
3.4, Gertrude: Alas, how is’t with you, Alas, how is’t with you, that you do bend your eye on vacancy/ And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
4.5, Claudius: poor Ophelia, Divided poor Ophelia, divided from herself and her fair judegment,/ Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts
3.1, Ophelia: describes Hamlet as having his ‘doublet all unbraced’ and his ‘head waving thus up and down’
2.2, Polonius: this be madness, this be madness, yet there is method in’t
3.1, Claudius suspects Hamlet ‘puts on… puts on this confusion
2.2, Hamlet describes himself as a toothless, ‘wrinkled’ old man who has no ‘wit’; he adds that Polonius will be this old ‘ if, like a crab, you could go backward
1.2, Hamlet: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt/ O, that this too too solid flesh would melt/ thaw and resolve itself into a dew!/Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d/His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!
5.2, Hamlet: If Hamlet from himself If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,/ And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,/ Then Hamlet does it not
4.5, Gentleman: her speech… her speech is nothing
4.5, Ophelia, singing: Young men will do’t, young men will do’t, if they come to’t;/ By cock, they are to blame.
4.5, Ophelia, singing: Quoth she, before you tumbled me,/ Quoth she, before you tumbled me,/ You promised me to wed
2.2, Hamlet: perhaps,/ Out of my weakness and my melancholy,/ perhaps,/ out of my weakness and my melancholy,/ as he is very potent with such spirits,/ Abuses me to damn me
3.4, Hamlet: I essentially am not in madness,/ I essentially am not in madness,/ but mad in craft
5.2, Hamlet tricks Osric into first agreeing that ‘it is indifferent cold’ and then that ‘it is very sultry’
1.2, Hamlet: Thrift, thrift, Horatio. thrift, thrift, Horatio. the funeral baked meats/ Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables
Horatio fears that the Ghost will: deprive deprive your sovereignty of reason/ And draw you into madness
Ophelia’s soliloquy on Hamlet’s madness: O, what a noble mind O, what a noble mind/ is here o’erthrown!
3.2, Hamlet says he is mad: ‘my wit’s… My wit’s diseased
Claudius on how Denmark will not endure Hamlet’s madness: The terms of our estate the terms of our estate may not endure/ Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow/ Out of his brows
Ophelia: That unmatched form That unmatched form and stature of blown youth/ Blasted with ecstasy
1.2, Hamlet to Claudius: ‘Not so, my lord. Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun.
August 22, 2019