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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Quotes

Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Guildenstern says that dreams are a mark of ambition, after Hamlet speaks of having bad dreams. Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are testing Hamlet out to get him to confess to his ambition to the throne.

A dream itself is but a shadow.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet makes this reply to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who suggest that his dreams are signs of his ambition. His two childhood pals are pretending to be his friend and they inquire what’s troubling him. But Hamlet realizes that they are insincere. They have in fact been send by Claudius to find out why Hamlet is acting so strangely and report back to the King.

Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet is talking with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are trying to get Hamlet to talk about ambition. Hamlet says that only the beggars are real, and heroes and monarchs figments of the beggars’ imaginations. He suggests status is merely illusion and "shadows." Here he questions the fitness of Claudius to rule as King.

HAMLET: What make you at Elsinore?
ROSENCRANTZ: To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lie about their reason for coming to Elsimore. They didn’t come to visit him, but to do Claudius’ bidding.

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet thanks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for coming, in a kind of arrogant way. He wants to know the truth about why they are visiting, but they resist answering his questions. They are actually spying on Hamlet on behalf of the King.

Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come, deal justly with me.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet demands an answer from his schoolmates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as to their unexplained arrival. He knows they didn’t come to visit him, like they said, but were sent by the King.

O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Guildenstern says there has been a lot of debate over the child actors usurping the London stage and the traveling players visiting the castle who were compelled to go on the road.

I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Hamlet says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he is more often sane than mad, and that he knows a hawk from its prey – a heronshaw or heron. He is warning that he can distinguish his enemies from his friends, a pointed comment to "friends" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

He does confess he feels himself distracted.
But from what cause he will by no means speak.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Rosencrantz reports to Claudius that Hamlet admits to feeling confused, but won’t discuss the cause. The confusion is clearly a symptom of Hamlet’s depression.

For me to put him to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Hamlet says this after Guildenstern confides that Claudius is "distempered…with choler" (suffering from biliousness) after watching The Murder of Gonzago. Hamlet suggests his cure (exposing his crime) would make the King even sicker.

O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Guildenstern’s hypocritical profession of love to Hamlet. It comes after Hamlet openly accuses him and Rosencrantz – the creatures of Claudius – of hunting him on behalf of some undisclosed master.

‘Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. When Guildenstern says that he cannot play the recorder, Hamlet suggests that it’s as easy as lying – which Guildenstern already does. He means, ironically, that Rosencrantz’s and Guildenstern’s lies sound as ridiculour as a person trying to play a musical instrument without knowing how.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Hamlet is disgusted at the hypocrisy of his friends Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, and accuses Guildenstern of playing him like a recorder, using him and trying to learn all his secrets.

Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Hamlet believes that Guildenstern is trying to manipulate him and play him like a recorder.

They fool me to the top of my bent.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Hamlet says that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have treated him like a fool and now he is at breaking point.

The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What’s near it with it.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3. In a bid to flatter Claudius, Rosencrantz uses this simile to compare a king to a huge body of water, who, if he were to die, would bring many others along with him like a retreating wave pulling people out to sea.

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet trusts his schoolfriends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as much as he trusts poisoned snakes.

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet says it is good to see the engineer blown up by his own bomb. He knows Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are bearing a letter from evil King Claudius ordering Hamlet’s execution, but he has decided to foil this by replacing the letter with one ordering the letter bearers’ deaths.

Friends both, go join you with some further aid. Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain, and from his mother’s closet hath he dragged him. Go seek him out, speak fair, and bring the body to the into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 1. Claudius tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find Hamlet and retrieve the body of Polonius and take it to the chapel.

Take you me for a sponge.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 2. Spoken by Rosencrantz. Hamlet compares Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to sponges, saying Claudius is only using them and will discard them when he is done. They have been asking where Hamlet hid Polonius’ body.

A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 2. Hamlet is taunting a confused Rosencrantz, saying that he is glad he cannot understand what he is saying, because fools cannot understand sly words. Hamlet is aware that he is working for Claudius.

The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 2. Hamlet indulges in some "crazy" talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who want him to say where the body of Polonius is and also go with them to the King. What he says may sound like madness to them. But Hamlet is using legal jargon and wordplay: the King, in his own body, can enforce the King’s laws; you can’t stop obeying the King’s laws when the king is dead, because the King is not just a body, but a principle.

Such bugs and goblins in my life!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. Hamlet’s reaction when he discovered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were carrying a letter from Claudius to the English King, instructing him to cut off Hamlet’s head for the good of Denmark’s health.

He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allow’d.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. Hamlet shows his deadly deceptiveness when he recounts to Horatio how he had his two friends, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz executed. In the letter they bore from Claudius requesting Hamlet’s execution once in England, he changed his name to theirs so they would be executed instead.

They are not near my conscience; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. Hamlet feels no guilt over orchestrating the deaths of his old school friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as they had become untrustworthy and sided more with Claudius than with him.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. An ambassador from England arrives to make this blunt announcement about the demise of Hamlet’s disloyal schoolfriends.