Hamlet
Hamlet
Notes on Hamlet
Video: To Be Or Not To Be
Read the NoteDavid Tennant as Hamlet in a film of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s award-winning production of Shakespeare’s greatest play.
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Hamlet’s Last Soliloquy
Read the NoteHamlet’s final soliloquy appears in earlier quarto versions of the play but is omitted from the First Folio. Scholars continue to debate reasons for this.
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Quotes spoken by the character Hamlet
But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son
Read the QuoteKing
But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son—
Hamlet, aside
A little more than kin and less than kind.Paronomasia
King
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet
Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.
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O that this too too solid flesh would melt
Read the QuoteO, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!Epizeuxis & Metaphor
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!Metonymy O God, God,
How Synonymiaweary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
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Thrift, thrift, Horatio
Read the QuoteHamlet
Thrift, thrift, Horatio.Epizeuxis The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.Alliteration
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father—methinks I see my father.
He was a man. Take him for all in all,
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But, to my mind, though I am native here
Read the QuoteBut, to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honor’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition. And, indeed, it takes
From our achievements,
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It will not speak. Then I will follow it
Read the QuoteHamlet
It will not speak. Then I will follow it.
Horatio
Do not, my lord.
Hamlet
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee.
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again.
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I am thy father’s spirit
Read the QuoteGhost
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul,
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Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me
Read the QuoteGhost
Adieu, adieu, adieu.Epizeuxis Remember me.
He exits.
Hamlet
O all you host of heaven! O Earth!Anapodotons & Apostrophes What else?
And shall I couple hell?Pysma O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
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O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Read the QuoteHoratio
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.
Hamlet
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
Words, words, words
Read the QuoteHamlet
Words, words, words.Epizeuxis
Polonius
What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet
Between who?
Polonius
I mean the matter Antanaclesisthat you read, my lord.
Though this be madness, yet there is
method in ‘t.
Hamlet
Slanders,
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My excellent good friends! How dost thou
Read the QuoteHamlet
My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do
you both?
Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Rosencrantz
As the indifferent children of the earth.
Guildenstern
Happy in that we are not overhappy.
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