Key Quotes From Hamlet – Acts 4 and 5
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His liberty is full of threats to all…
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…[a sponge] that soaks up the king’s countenance, his
rewards, his authorities: but such officers do the king
best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape
doth nuts, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to
be last swallowed: when he needs what you have
gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall
be dry again.
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A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
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king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
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…Do it England;
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For like the hectic in my blood he rages,
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And thou must cure me…
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…he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.
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Witness this army, of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths of the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell….
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…How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy an trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds…
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…O, from this time forth,
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My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
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Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss…
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Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.
He answers:
So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
And thou hadst not come to my bed.
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…poor Ophelia,
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Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
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Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts.
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Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.
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How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with;
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation…
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O heavens! Is’t possible a young maid’s wits
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Should be as mortal as an old man’s life?
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High and mighty, You shall know, I am set
naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave
to see your kingly eyes…
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…To cut his throat i’ the church.
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Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not
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been a gentlewoman, she would have been buried
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out o’ Christian burial.
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Dos’t thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion
I’ the earth?...
To what base uses we may return, Horatio!
Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of
Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
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I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum….
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Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
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They are not near my conscience…
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But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself;
For by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his: I’ll court his favours…
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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… Let be.
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I am more an antique Roman than a Dane…
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