You come most carefully upon your hour. (1.1.6)
For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold
And I am sick at heart. (1.1.10) Francisco is a minor character in the play, and this is his most
significant line. Francisco's lament that he is "sick at heart" acts in concert with Marcellus's
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (1.4) to provide an account of a diseased
country. Their comments set the gloomy mood of a neglected populace and substantiate
Hamlet's suspicions about Claudius's corruption.
Not a mouse stirring. (1.1.12) a simple yet important line if we accept that it foreshadows
Hamlet's "Mouse-trap" (3.2.235), through which he will establish Claudius's guilt.
Look, where it comes again! (1.1.41)
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. (1.1.125)
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. (1.1.148)
The memory be green. (1.2.2)
A little more than kin, and less than kind. (1.2.65) These are the first words Hamlet speaks in
the play. He refers to Claudius as "more than kin" because he is now his uncle and step
father, and I would take "less than kind" at face value, although some interpret "kind" as
"natural" because of Shakespeare's use of the word elsewhere.
Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun. (1.2.67)
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. (1.2.68)
All that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity. (1.2.72)
Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not 'seems'. (1.2.77) Hamlet has just arrived at Claudius's
court. The sullen and grieving Hamlet appears dressed in all black, much to the annoyance of
Claudius and Gertrude, who have exchanged their mourning clothes for lavish court
costumes.
Although initially reserved, Hamlet lashes out at his mother when she asks him why he
should still be so upset when everyone else has come to terms with the death of his father:
O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew; (1.2.129)
A truant disposition, good my lord. (1.2.169)
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. (1.2.175)
He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again. (1.2.187)
In the dead vast and middle of the night. (1.2.198)
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. (1.2.231)
While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. (1.2.240)
Give it an understanding, but no tongue. (1.2.249)
All is not well;
I doubt some foul play. (1.2.254)
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. (1.2.256) Hamlet's rhyming couplet concludes
one of the most intense scenes in the play. Horatio has just revealed to Hamlet that the ghost of
Hamlet's father has appeared on the platform and Hamlet is desperate to meet with the ghost
himself, hoping to confirm Claudius is responsible for his death. Claudius's "foul deeds will rise"; his
guilt will not be kept hidden.
Hamlet's belief in this divine justice gives him the strength to push forward - to use all his intellectual
gifts to catch Claudius in his guilt. It is not difficult to understand why the Shakespearean scholar
Horace Howard Furness concluded these are the pivotal lines in the play: "The dogma, that 'Foul
deeds will rise though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes,' is proved here with fearful
import. By this fundamental idea is Hamlet to be explained" (298).
Apparently, these lines are also very challenging for even the most skilled actor, due to the burst of
intensity required followed by such a quick exit from the stage. One of the most respected
Shakespearean actors of all time, Edwin Booth, scribbled down on his study copy of the play that "Of
all the hateful rhyming exits this is the worst."¹
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. (1.3.48) Here Ophelia, as graciously as possible, tells Laertes to refrain
from lecturing her on how to behave while ignoring his own advice. This is not the only time
Shakespeare mentions the "primrose path" to destruction
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man. (1.3.68)
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,
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. (1.3.69)
You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. (1.3.101)
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. (1.3.116)
I do not set my life at a pin's fee. (1.4.65) Shakespeare makes reference to pins many times in his
plays as they were a fashionable product in Elizabethan England, and newly available in bulk at
cheap prices.
Unhand me, gentlemen,
By heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me. (1.4.85)
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (1.4.90) Marcellus, shaken by the many recent
disturbing events and no doubt angered (as is Hamlet) by Claudius's mismanagement of the body
politic, astutely notes that Denmark is festering with moral and political corruption. Horatio replies
"Heaven will direct it" (91), meaning heaven will guide the state of Denmark to health and stability.
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. (1.5.25)
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. (1.5.27)
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damn'd villain!
My tables, - meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark. (1.5.105)
Hamlet. There's never a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he 's an arrant knave.
Horatio. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this. (1.5.123)
Every man has business and desire,
Such as it is. (1.5.130)
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. (1.5.133)
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! (1.5.164)
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (1.5.166) The emphasis here should be on "dreamt of", as
Hamlet is pointing out how little even the most educated people can explain.
One can imagine happier times when Hamlet and Horatio, studying together at Wittenberg, engaged
in heated philosophical debates.
Shakespeare does not expand on the specific nature of Horatio's philosophy, and in the First Folio
(1623), the text actually reads "our philosophy." Some editors, such as Dyce, White and Rowe,
choose to use "our" instead of "your" (as found in Q2), believing Hamlet is speaking in general terms
about the limitations of human thought.
To put an antic disposition on. (1.5.172)
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! (1.5.182)
The time is out of joint; O curs'd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right! (1.5.188) out of joint, utterly disordered; a metaphor from a
bone which has slipped from its proper juncture with another bone, the same metaphor being
apparently mixed up with that of setting a clock.
cursed spite ... right, "Hamlet does not lament that the disjointed time is to be set right by him, but
that he ... whose duty it of necessity becomes to set the time right, should have been born"
(Seymour).
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! (2.2.316)
piece ] i.e. excellent piece; a work of art.
faculty ] powers of thought.
express ] perfectly suited; possibly expressive (full of expression).
apprehension ] the ability to apprehend or understand.
paragon ] without peer; i.e. the most perfect of animals.
quintessence ] Besides the four elements of fire, earth, air, and water, the early alchemists believed
that there was a fifth essence, which was the highest. This, then, means the concentrated virtue of
the spirit (the "dust").
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimed blood. (2.1.32)
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ancle. (2.1.78)
This is the very ecstasy of love. (2.1.101)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (2.2.90)
To define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad? (2.2.93)
More matter, with less art. (2.2.95)
That he is mad, 't is true: 't is true 't is pity;
And pity 't is 't is true. (2.2.97)
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love. (2.2.116)
Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star. (2.2.141)
Pol. Do you know me, my lord?
Ham. Excellent well; you are a fishmonger. (2.2.173)
Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes,
is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. (2.2.179)
Still harping on my daughter. (2.2.190)
Pol. What do you read, my lord?
Ham. Words, words, words. (2.2.195)
They have a plentiful lack of wit. (2.2.200)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. (2.2.211)
Pol. My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that
I will more willingly part withal; except my life,
except my life, except my life. (2.2.222)
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. (2.2.259)
A dream itself is but a shadow. (2.2.261)
O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell,
and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. (2.2.263)
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden
fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and
moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a
god! (2.2.316)
He that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me. (2.2.341)
There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out. (2.2.392)
I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
(2.2.405)
One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well. (2.2.435)
Come, give us a taste of your quality. (2.2.460)
The play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general. (2.2.465)
Will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the
abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph
than their ill report while you live. (2.2.553)
Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? (2.2.561)
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I:
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her? (2.2.584)
I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing. (2.2.601)
Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? (2.2.606)
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! (2.2.613)
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. (2.2.622)
The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape. (2.2.640)
The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. (2.2.641)
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself. (3.1.47)
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. (3.1.56)
Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered. (3.1.89)
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. (3.1.101)
I am myself indifferent honest. (3.1.122)
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
nunnery, go. (3.1.142)
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face and you make
yourselves another. (3.1.150)
I say, we will have no more marriages. (3.1.156)
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh. (3.1.158)
O! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown:
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite, down! (3.1.160)
Do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent,
tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a
temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,
who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would
have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. (3.2.4)
I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they
imitated humanity so abominably. (3.2.34)
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. (3.2.63)
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks. (3.2.69)
Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. (3.2.76)
It is a damn'd ghost we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. (3.2.87)
Here 's metal more attractive. (3.2.117)
That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. (3.2.127)
Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I 'll have a suit of sables. (3.2.129)
For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot. (3.2.135)
Oph. 'Tis brief, my lord.
Ham. As woman's love. (3.2.151)
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. (3.2.242)
We that have free souls, it touches us not:
let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung. (3.2.256)
What! frighted with false fire? (3.2.282)
The proverb is something musty. (3.2.366)
You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass.
(3.2.387)
By and by is easily said. (3.2.380)
Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. (3.2.393)
They fool me to the top of my bent. (3.2.409)
'T is now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. (3.2.413)
Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none. (3.2.420)
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murder. (3.3.37)
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engag'd! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe! (3.3.70)
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying. (3.3.73)
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? (3.3.80)
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. (3.3.97)
How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! (3.4.24)
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother. (3.4.29)
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow:
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill, —A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man. (3.4.53)
At your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it 's humble. (3.4.68)
Speak no more;
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul. (3.4.89)
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseam'd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty. (3.4.91)
A cut-purse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket! (3.4.100)
A king of shreds and patches. (3.4.103)
For in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg. (3.4.154)
I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. (3.4.179)
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar. (3.4.206)
Diseases desperate grown,
By desperate appliances are relieved,
Or not at all. (4.2.9)
A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for
diet. (4.2.22)
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that
worm. (4.2.29)
We go to gain a little patch of ground,
That hath in it no profit but the name. (4.4.18)
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. (4.4.33)
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. (4.4.53)
To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime. (4.5.46)
Lord! we know what we are, but know not what we may be. (4.5.43)
Come, my coach! Good-night, ladies; good-night, sweet ladies; good-night, good-night.
(4.5.72)
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions. (4.5.78)
We have done but greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him. (4.5.83)
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would. (4.5.123)
They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rained many a tear. (4.5.164)
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. (4.5.174)
You must wear your rue with a difference.
There 's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered. (4.5.170)
And where the offence is let the great axe fall. (4.5.219)
A very riband in the cap of youth. (4.7.78)
That we would do
We should do when we would. (4.7.119)
No place, indeed should murder sanctuarize. (4.7.128)
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet
It is our trick, nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will. (4.7.186)
Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation? (5.1.1)
There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's
profession. (5.1.32)
Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.
(5.1.62)
The houses that he makes last till doomsday. (5.1.64)
Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his
cases, his tenures, and his tricks? (5.1.98)
How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.
(5.1.147)
The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier,
he galls his kibe. (5.1.150)
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He
hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!
my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be
your gibes now; your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set
the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen? Now get
you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come. (5.1.201)
To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of
Alexander, till we find it stopping a bung-hole? (5.1.222)
Imperious Caesar, dead, and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. (5.1.235)
Lay her i' the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! (5.1.261)
Sweets to the sweet: farewell! (5.1.265)
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,
And not have strewed thy grave. (5.1.268)
I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. (5.1.292)
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will. (5.2.10)
I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair. (5.2.33)
The bravery of his grief did put me
Into a towering passion. (5.2.85)
Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all. (5.2.209)
I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
And hurt my brother. (5.2.233)
A hit, a very palpable hit. (5.2.271)
Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;
I am justly killed with my own treachery. (5.2.296)
The point envenomed too!Then, venom, to thy work. (5.2.311)
This fell sergeant, death,
Is swift in his arrest. (5.2.326)
Report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied. (5.2.328)
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. (5.2.331)
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story. (5.2.335)
The rest is silence. (5.2.348)
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! (5.2.349)
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him his commandment is fulfilled,
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. (5.2.359)