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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > English > Hamlet Quotes by Themes

HAMLET

On Claudius

• “A little more than kin, and less than kind”
• “Smiling, damned villain!”
• “Keeps wassail” “drains his draughts of Rhenish down”
• “Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!”
• “what, frighted with false fire!”

On Polonius

• “these tedious old fools”
• “i’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room”
• “you are a fishmonger”
• “thou wretched rash, intruding fool, farewell.”

On Gertrude/Ophelia/Women

• “i shall in my best obey you madam”
• “Like Niobe, all tears”
• “incestuous sheets”
• “the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables”
• “Frailty, thy name is Woman”
• “Get thee to a nunnery”
• “Wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them”
• “I have heard of your paintings too,God has given you one face and you paint yourself another”
• “Mother, you have my father much offended”
• “you jig, you amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures”
• “I will speak daggers to her, but i shall use none”

Self loathing/suicide/death

• “O that this too too solid flesh would melt”
• “Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter”
• “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”
• “To be or not to be”
• “I am pigeon-livered and lack gall”
• “Denmark’s a prison”
• “contagion to this world”
• “'tis an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature/ Possess it merely”
• “That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once”
• “Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,/Might stop a hole to keep the wind away”

Revenge/Action/Inaction/Ruthlessness

• “I am pigeon-livered and lack gall”
• “Am I a coward?”
• “proud, revengeful, ambitious”
• “the play’s the thing/ Wherein i’ll catch the conscience of the king”
• “thinking too precisely on the event”
• “a thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom, And ever three parts coward”
• “O from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth”
• “they are not near my conscience” (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern)

Madness

• “to put an antic disposition on”
• “mad in craft”
• “we”
• “i am but mad north-north west, when the wind is southerly i know a hawk from a handsaw”
• “O What a noble mind is here o’erthrown!”
• “I will be brief; your noble son is mad.”
• “Madness in great ones shall not unwatched go”
• “i did love you once”...”i loved you not”
• “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”
• Gertrude - "Alas, he is mad"
• “this is the very coinage of your brain”
• Polonius - "The ecstacy of love" (The cause of Hamlets madness)
• Claudius - "his easily excitable mind"
• Ophelia - "A great mind o'erthrown"

Revenge

Hamlet

• “I am pigeon-livered and lack gall”
• “Am I a coward?”
• “proud, revengeful, ambitious”
• “the play’s the thing/ Wherein i’ll catch the conscience of the king”
• “A villain kills my father, and for that i his sole son do this same villain send/ To heaven”
• “thinking too precisely on the event”
• “a thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom, And ever three parts coward”
• “O from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth”
• “O cursed spite/ That ever i was born to set it right”

Laertes

• “I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father”
• “But my revenge will come”
• “O treble woe, fall ten times treble on that cursed head”
• “the devil take thy soul”
• “to cut his throat i’ th’ church”
• “Exchange forgiveness with me noble Hamlet”

Fortinbras

• “We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name”
• “delicate and tender prince”
• “To all that fortune, death and danger dare, And for an egg shell”

Pyrrhus and Priam

• “Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide.”
• “and never did the Cyclop’s hammers fall,
• On Mars’ armour forged for proof eterne,
• With less remorse than Pyrrhus’s bleeding sword,
• Now falls on Priam”

Filial Feelings

• “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.”
• “That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard”
• “I a noble father lost”

Women

Hamlet’s views

• “Like Niobe, all tears”
• “incestuous sheets”
• “the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables”
• “Frailty, thy name is Woman”
• “i did love you once”
• “Get thee to a nunnery”
• “Wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them”
• “I have heard of your paintings too,God has given you one face and you paint yourself another”
• “Mother, you have my father much offended”
• “you jig, you amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures”
• “I will speak daggers to her, but i shall use none”
• “’tis brief my lord...” “as woman’s love”
• “did you think i meant country matters?”

Ophelia

• “you speak like a green girl”, “I will obey my lord”
• “the fair Ophelia”
• “i was the more deceived”
• “Sucked the honey of his musicked vows”
• “t’have seen what i have seen, see what i see”
• “there’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you and here’s some for me”
• “i would offer you violets but they withered all when my father died”
• “For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy”
• “i hop’d thou shouldst have been Hamlet’s wife”
• “I loved Ophelia, forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum”
• “chaste treasure”

Gertrude

• “She is so conjunctive to my life and soul”
• “my too much changed son”
• “i hop’d thou shouldst have been Hamlet’s wife”
• Player Queen: “A second time i kill my husband dead, when second husband kisses me in bed”
• “the lady doth protest too much” - Irony

Polonius

Father

• “i would give you violets but they withered all when my father died”
• “take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgement”
• “Give thy thoughts no tongue”
• “I’ll loose my daughter to him”
• “green girl”

Fool (continued by Osric)

• Therefore since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief”
• “That i have positively said ‘Tis so when it proved otherwise?

Advisor/Self Advancement

• “my lord”
• “I’ll loose my daughter to him”
• “methinks it’s like a weasel/camel/whale”.. “It is backed like a weasel”, “Very like a whale”, “like a camel indeed”
• QUEEN: “More matter with less art”
• “That we find out the cause of this effect, Or rather say, the cause of this defect, For this effect defective comes by cause.”
• First person pronoun repetition “I”

Hamlet On Polonius

• “these tedious old fools”
• “i’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room”
• “you are a fishmonger
• “thou wretched rash, intruding fool, farewell”

Claudius

Hamlet’s view

• “A little more than kin, and less than kind”
• “Smiling, damned villain!”
• “Keeps wassail” “drains his draughts of Rhenish down”
• “Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!”
• “what, frighted with false fire!”

Worry/Guilt

• “he shall with speed to England”
• “i like him not, nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range”
• “O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven”
• “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below/ Words without thoughts never to heaven go”
• “what should this mean? Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
• PLAN A: “You may choose a sword unbated”
• PLAN B: “I’ll anoint my sword”
• PLAN C: “A Chalice for the nonce” “If he by chance escape your venomed stuck, our purpose may hold there”

Cleverness/Shrewdness

• “Love? His affections do not way tend”
• “what he spake...was not like madness”
• PLAN A: “You may choose a sword unbated”
• PLAN B: “I’ll anoint my sword”
• PLAN C: “A Chalice for the nonce” “If he by chance escape your venomed stuck, our purpose may hold there”

Love

• “my crown, mine own ambition and my queen”
• “she is so conjunctive to my life and soul”

Love

Hamlet and Ophelia

• “i did love you once”...”i loved you not”
• “I loved Ophelia, forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum”
• “he hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion”
• “with almost all the holy vows of heaven”

Claudius and Gertrude

• “my crown, mine own ambition and my queen”
• “she is so conjunctive to my life and soul”

Hamlet and Gertrude

• “i shall in my best obey you madam”
• “I shall speak daggers to her, but i will use none”
• “my too much changed son”
• “i hoped thou shouldst have been Hamlet’s wife”
• “Incestuous sheets”
• “You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife.”

Polonius

• “i would give you violets but they withered all when my father died”
• “take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgement”
• “Give thy thoughts no tongue”
• “you speak like a green girl”
• “I’ll loose my daughter to him”

Laertes and Ophelia

• “From her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring”
• “watchman of my heart”
• “I tell thee churlish priest, A minist’ring angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling

Filial Feelings

• “i shall obey, my lord”
• “i shall in my best obey you madam”
• “Mother, you have my father much offended”
• “O cursed spite, that ever i was born to set it right”
• “I’ll be most thoroughly avenged for my father”
• “I a noble father lost”

State of Denmark

• "tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed things rank and gross in nature
• "something rotten in the state of denmark"
• “so the whole ear of Denmark  is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused”
• “O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!” 
• "sick at heart"
• "many a pocky corpse"
• "dont throw manure onto the weeds to make them ranker"
• “Denmark’s A Prison”
• “the air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.”
• “i think it lacks of twelve”
• “who there?”
• “contagion to this world”

Betrayal/Espionage

• “It shall be so. Madness in great ones shall not unwatched go.”
• “i’ll loose my daughter to him”
• “Your visitations shall receive such thanks as fits the King’s remembrance”
• “intruding fool”
• “my two schoolfellows, whom i will trust as i will adders fanged”

Death

Suicide

• “O that this too too solid flesh would melt”
• “Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter”
• “stale, flat and unprofitable”
• “to be or not to be”
• “contagion to this world”
• “Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her”
• “is she to be buried in a christian burial when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?”
• “I am more an antique roman than dane, here’s yet some liquor left”

Hamlet’s obsession

• “That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once”
• “Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away”
• “Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
• Alexander returned into dust; the dust is earth; of ear th we make loam:

and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop at a beer-barrel?”

• “a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar”
• “Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be.”

Death of characters

• LAERTES: “I am justly killed with my own treachery”
• HAMLET: “Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage”, “Now cracks a noble heart”
• CLAUDIUS: “He is justly served, it is a poison tempered by himself”
• QUEEN: “The king, the king’s to blame”
• OPHELIA: “is she to be buried in a christian burial when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?”
• POLONIUS: “I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room”

Comments

Originally collected by thischarmlessman on TSR Forums.