Hamlet Quotes

BERNARDO: Who’s there?
FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. In the opening lines of Hamlet, on duty sentinel Francisco asks the sentinel coming to relieve him Bernardo to identify himself. The guards have been seeing apparitions of the dead king Hamlet on Elsinore Castle’s ramparts in Denmark. It is midnight and there is an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty. The lines speak to the theme of appearance vs reality. They also foreshadow the transfer of power after the death of a king and themes of deception and corruption found throughout the play.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. Horatio says this to the castle guards after the sighting of the Ghost. Emphasizing the seriousness of the event, he recalls that before the mighty Julius Caesar was assassinated the dead rose from their graves and ran squeaking through the streets of Rome. This foreshadows the revenge that Hamlet will embark upon, leading to the death of his uncle, mother and himself.

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. Marcellus to Horatio about the Ghost leaving when the cock crows. He talks about the significance of the crowing of the cock in Christian tradition. At the celebration of the birth of Jesus the rooster is said to crow all night long, no ghost dares go wandering and the night is safe from fairies’ spells and witches.

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. Horatio uses figurative language and vivid imagery to signal that it is daybreak and the sun is coming up. He uses the metaphor of “in russet mantle clad” to describe the dawn and its reddish-brown color. The morn is personified as having feet to walk over the dew of a high hill. The quote comes just after the exit of the Ghost, which has made another appearance on the castle battlements.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe…
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, –
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole, –
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barr’d
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius’ first appearance depicts him giving a speech to Queen Gertrude, Hamlet, Polonius and other attendants, that is full of startling hypocrisy. He orders everyone to mourn deeply the death of his brother, the former King Hamlet. He justifies his marriage to his “sometime sister” and King Hamlet’s widow Gertrude and downplays any immorality people may see in it. The audience is not yet aware of the truth of King Hamlet’s murder (by Claudius it will be revealed), and the hypocrisy of Claudius who is not actually mourning King Hamlet’s death. It is an irony to hear him refer to "our dead brother", when he in fact killed him.

‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
…but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool’d.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius mockingly labels Hamlet’s excessive grief for his father as “unmanly.” It goes against God’s wishes and demonstrates a soft heart and uneducated mind, he tells the prince.

Why, ’tis a loving and a fair reply:
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king’s rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius says this after Hamlet promises his mother Gertrude that he will remain in Denmark and not go back to school in Wittenberg. The King undertakes to celebrate Hamlet’s decision to stay with festivities, drinking toasts and canon fire. Happy that he can keep a close eye on Hamlet, Claudius is good at hiding his villainy behind a mask of false sincerity and flattery, as he does in this passage.

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.

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.
Close