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Hamlet Quotes

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

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. The opening lines of Hamlet. The guards have been seeing apparitions of the dead king Hamlet on the castle rampards. It is midnight and there is an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty. The lines speaks to the themes of identity and appearance vs reality. They also foreshadow the occasions where characters are faced with the question – who is this person, who is really there?

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 to the guards after the sighting of the Ghost. He is pointing to the seriousness of the sighting, recalling that before Caesar died the dead rose from their graves and were in the streets. 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.

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 also misrepresents his marriage to Hamlet’s widow Gertrude by appearing to provide sound reasons and downplaying its awkwardness. The audience is unaware of the truth of King Hamlet’s murder (by Claudius it will be later revealed), and the hypocrisy of Claudius who is not actually morning 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 mocks Hamlet’s excessive grief for his father as "unmanly," and says it does not fit God’s desires and shows a soft heart and undisciplined mind.

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 speaks this after Hamlet promises his mother Gertrude that he will remain in Denmark and not go to Wittenberg. The King is uses flattery here and conveys a remorseful and sincere tone when speaking to Hamlet. But his tone is false, he is neither sincere nor feels any remorse for the murder of a brother or hasty marriage to his window.

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 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 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 old king, his father, was a far better king than his uncle. He was so loving towards his mother that he kept the wind from blowing too hard on her face. Using hyperbole, he compares old Hamlet to the Greek god Hyperion and Claudius to a satyr, a woodland horse-like creature that engaged in debauchery and revelry.
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