| Horatio to Hamlet on how the ghost might… (take his reason and drive him mad) | ‘deprive your sovereignty of reason/And draw you into madness’ |
| Polonius tells C+G Hamlet is mad | ‘Your noble son is mad’ |
| Claudius on what Hamlet is ruining his own ‘days of quiet’ with | ‘With turbulent and dangerous lunacy’ |
| Ophelia despairing over Hamlet’s state after the ‘get thee to a nunnery’ scene | ‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!/…/That unmatched form and stature of blown youth/Blasted with ecstasy’ |
| Claudius on how madness in important people cannot be overlooked (perhaps a justification of his spying on Hamlet) | ‘Madness in great ones must not unwatched go’ |
| Hamlet suggests he is mad in III-ii | ‘My wit’s diseased’ |
| Horatio on the words that Hamlet uses to try and cover up why the ghost really came to haunt them | ‘These are but wild and whirling words, my lord’ |
| Polonius how there seems to be an objective behind Hamlet’s madness even though it is genuine | ‘Though this be madness yet there is/method in’t’ |
| Claudius on how Denmark will not endure Hamlet’s madness | ‘The terms of our estate may not endure/Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow/Out of his brows’ |
| Hamlet tries to convince Gertrude that he is telling the truth in the closet scene, and that his words are not a product of his madness | ‘It is not madness/That I have uttered. Bring me to the test/And I the matter will reword, which madness/Would gambol from’ |
| Tells Gertrude not to flatter herself with the idea that the fault is with Hamlet’s madness and not her own | ‘Lay not that flattering unction to your soul/That not your trespass but my madness speaks’ |
| Hamlet’s melancholy is resting upon something dark within his soul as if it will hatch into something terrible | ‘There’s something in his soul/O’er which his melancholy sits on brood’ |
Hamlet Quotes – Madness
October 19, 2019