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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Hamlet Character Quotes

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. These are Hamlet’s first words in the play where he uses an ironic pun. His play on words is a withering assessment of his relationship with the new king of Denmark, his uncle Claudius. Claudius is twice related to him, as uncle and stepfather, but he sees him as neither his kin or kind.

Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet replies to the King’s question on why he is so melancholic, “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” Hamlet is being ironic here and using a pun, Claudius having called him his “son” too often.

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not "seems."

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet gives this annoyed response when Gertrude asks him why his father’s death “seems” to be affecting him so much. Irritated by his mother’s use of the word, Hamlet is genuinely upset about his father’s death and doesn’t just “seem” to be.

But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet makes this reply when his mother asks him why he still seems to be upset about his father’s death. He says he doesn’t just seem to be in mourning, but he has feelings inside him that surpass what others can see on the outside with his black mourning clothes.

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! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. In Hamlet’s first soliloquy we learn that, following the death of his father and his mother’s hasty remarriage to his father’s brother, Hamlet believes his life is pointless. He wishes that God had not made suicide a sin. Even before he hears the shocking revelations about the manner of his father’s death, Hamlet is clearly deeply troubled. Note the use of a metaphor comparing Hamlet’s flesh to melting ice, indicating how depressed he feels.

‘Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet uses a metaphor to compare his world to a neglected garden filled with rotting weeds. He is depressed at the corruption that has overtaken the state of Denmark.

That it should come to this!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet is shocked and disgusted that his mother has remarried his uncle less than two months after his father’s death.

So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet says that the his father was a far superior king to his uncle. He was so caring and loving towards his mother that he kept the wind from blowing too roughly on her face. Using metaphor and allusion, he compares old Hamlet to the Greek god of light Hyperion and Claudius to a satyr, a woodland horse-like creature that engaged in debauchery and revelry.

Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet tortures himself with recollections of his mother’s deep devotion to his father when he was alive. She loved him so much that the more time she spent with him the more she wanted to be with him, he recalls.

Frailty, thy name is woman!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet’s most famous comment about Gertrude, Queen of Denmark and his mother, is a bitter condemnation of women in general. In this misogynistic outburst, he is lashing out at his mother’s quick remarriage to his uncle after his father’s death.

A little month.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet is furious that a month after his father’s funeral, before the shoes his mother wore to it were old and worn, she wed his father’s brother.

Like Niobe, all tears.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet, speaking about his mother after his father’s death, compares her in a simile to Niobe. Niobe was Queen of Thebes and because of her arrogance the gods slew her children. Feeling sorry for her, Zeus turned her to stone, but even after that her tears continued to flow from the rock. Unlike Niobe, however, Gertrude’s grief didn’t last long and she very quickly remarried Claudius.

My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet is voicing his intense dislike of and opposition to Claudius, whom he sees as embodying the very opposite virtues and values of his late father. He uses a simile comparison of Hercules and himself to show how unlike King Claudius is to King Hamlet.

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet is not only disgusted with his mother’s hasty remarriage soon after his father’s death, but also because he believes that she has committed “incest” by wedding his father’s brother. In Shakespearean times such a marriage of close relatives would have been regarded as incest. Personification is used to good effect in this passage, with sheets being described as “incestuous.”

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet believes his mother’s marriage to Claudius and the manner in which it came about is an ominous omen for Denmark. There is a hint of foreshadowing here of the bad things to come.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet makes a dark and bitter joke about his mother’s hasty remarriage following his father’s death. He says that she was able to save money furnishing the leftover funeral meats to her wedding guests. Hamlet is angry at the hypocrisy of the funeral baked meats being used as a cold lunch for his uncle and mother’s wedding dinner.

My father! – methinks I see my father…In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. When Horatio arrives to tell Hamlet of the sightings of his father’s ghost, Hamlet pre-empts the conversation by saying he thinks he sees him in his "mind’s eye" (in his memory or imagination).

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet says this in response to Horatio’s compliment about his late father being a “goodly king.” Hamlet clearly loved his father very much, as shown by this heartfelt tribute to the king and the unique role he played in the prince’s life. Hamlet’s comment that he will never see the like of him again is ironic, since he will meet his father’s Ghost in the next scene.

All is not well;
I doubt some foul play.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. After hearing about the Ghost, Hamlet suspects foul play and political corruption in the death of his father. This is foreshadowing of revelations and events to come.

Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet suspects that there was foul play and corruption involved in the death of his father. This follows Horatio’s revelation about the appearance of King Hamlet’s Ghost in the castle, wearing his armor. The lines foreshadow that foul deeds, despite being buried and hidden, will be exposed for all to see.

A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute; no more.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. Laertes plays the role of protective brother as he exhorts Ophelia to refuse Hamlet’s romantic advances. He dismisses the prince’s attentions as no more than a passing thing, claiming he is using her as a plaything – “a toy in blood” he describes it in the line before this passage. Using a metaphor, he compares Hamlet’s kind of love to a violet, sweet and perfumed, but only lasting a minute.

But you must fear,
His greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and health of this whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. Laertes tells Ophelia that Hamlet cannot marry who he wants to. He is bound by the requirements of the royal family and must marry with the safety and security of Denmark in mind. In other words a marriage between Ophelia and Hamlet is impossible.

The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. Laertes is warning his sister Ophelia away from her relationship with Hamlet and what he believes is his inappropriate behavior. Using metaphor, he compares Hamlet to a canker worm that will ruin the flower of Ophelia’s youthful chastity before it blossoms.

You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. The manipulative Polonius rails against Ophelia’s romantic relationship with Hamlet. Totally insensitive to his daughter’s feelings, he belittles her as an inexperienced girl unlearned in the ways of love. A controlling father, he treats his daughter like a child.

OPHELIA: My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable fashion.
POLONIUS: Ay, fashion you may bell it; to go, to go.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. After her father’s attack on her relationship with Hamlet, Ophelia tries to defend how Hamlet expressed his love to her “in honourable fashion.” But Polonius, having none of it, twists her words and reject Hamlet’s romantic overtures as just “fashion.”

Springes to catch woodcocks.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. Using the metaphor of a bird trap, Polonius tells his daughter Ophelia that Hamlet’s displays of affection to her are traps to ensnare woodcocks.

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. When a man is in the throes of passion, he is quick to make vows he doesn’t mean, Polonius warns daughter Ophelia. He is cautioning her about Hamlet’s false attentions towards her, suggesting that he is just out to satisfy his lust.

Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. Polonius instructs Ophelia to spend less time with Hamlet. He wants to control his daughter’s romantic relationships and doesn’t really want her seeing the prince. The unfortunate Ophelia is so under the control and rule of the men in her life, that her life is not her own.

HAMLET: The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
HORATIO: It is a nipping and an eager air.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4. These two lines are suggestive of an atmosphere of foreboding on the castle battlements. They foreshadow the imminent reappearance of the Ghost.

But to my mind, – though I am native here
And to the manner born, – it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4. Hamlet is talking about the King’s drinking party, during which he will stay up late carousing, dancing and drinking German wine. The prince feels that the custom of the Danes drinking excessively is one they would be better off abandoning than observing. The passage suggests an air of corruption hanging over the royal palace of Elsinore.

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