Name Period

William Shakespeare April 23(?), 1564 – April 23(?), 1616

Hamlet • written around 1600 • first published as a quarto in 1603- “bad quarto” • second quarto published in 1604- “good quarto” • published in 1623 in the First Folio

o First Folio- the first published collection of Shakespeare’s plays

Sources for the play • Historiae Danicae (12th century) by Danish historian Saxo

Grammaticus o Shakespeare and his contemporaries were very familiar with

Danish history and culture. • François de Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques (16th-century French

prose work) o Shakespeare and his contemporaries found many plot

suggestions here. • Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1587)

• Remember: importance of language, something for everyone, no female actors

Terms to review: Themes. Remember the guidelines. antagonist aside allusion climax characterization external conflict foreshadowing foil irony

dramatic irony situational irony verbal irony imagery interior monologue internal conflict in medias res monologue motif

metaphor mood pun protagonist simile soliloquy tragedy tragic flaw theme

appearance vs. reality life as theatre corruption, disease, and death parents and children revenge thought vs. action add more

Harris, H English IV

Act I Quotations The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 1 “A little more than kin, and less than kind!” (I.ii) 2 “Not so, my lord. I am too much i’ the sun.” (I.ii) 3 “O that this too too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” (I.ii) 4 “Within a month, / Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears / Had left the flushing in

her galléd eyes, / She married.” (I.ii) 5 “This above all, to thine ownself be true, / And it must follow as the night the day /

Thou canst not then be false to any man. / Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!” (I.iii)

6 “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” (I.iv) 7 “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” (I.v)

Harris, H English IV

Act I Quotations cont. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 8 “O my prophetic soul!” (I.v) 9 “(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on) / That you,

at such times seeing me, never shall, / With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake . . .” (I.v)

10 “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!” (I.v)

Act II Quotations Hamlet

1 “As if he had been loosed out of hell / To speak of horrors—he comes before me.” (II.i) 2 “No, my good lord; but, as you did command, / I did repel his letters and denied / His

access to me.” (II.i) 3 “I doubt it is no other but the main, / His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage.”

(II.ii)

4 “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t. Will you walk out of the air, my

lord?” (II.ii) 5 “You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my

life, except my life, except my life.” (II.ii)

Act II Quotations cont. Hamlet

Harris, H English IV

6 “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.” (II.ii)

7 “Now what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” (II.ii) 8 “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” (II.ii)

Harris, H English IV

Act III Quotations The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 1 “The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plast’ring art, / Is not more ugly to the thing that

helps it / Than is my deed to my most painted word. / O heavy burden!” (III.i) 2 “To be, or not to be, that is the question” (III.i) 3 “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” (III.i) 4 “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! / The courtier’s, solider’s, scholar’s, eye,

tongue, sword, / The expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion and the mold of form, / The observed of all observers—quite, quite down! / And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, / That sucked the honey of his music vows, / Now see that noble and most sovereign reason / Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; / That unmatched form and feature of blown youth / Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me / T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!” (III.i)

5 “It shall be so. / Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” (III.i) 6 “None wed the second but who killed the first.” (III.ii)

Harris, H English IV

Act III Quotations cont. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 7 “Let me be cruel, not unnatural; / I will speak daggers to her, but use none.” (III.ii) 8 “The single and peculiar life is bound / With all the strength and armor of the mind / To

keep itself from noyance; but much more / That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests / The lives of many.” (III.iii)

9 “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; / Words without thoughts never to to heaven go.” (III.iii) 10 “O, speak to me no more! / These words, like daggers, enter in my ears. / No more,

sweet Hamlet!” (III.iv)

Harris, H English IV

Act IV Quotations The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 1 “And, England, if my love thou hold’st at aught, — / As my great power thereof may

give thee sense, / Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red / After the Danish sword, and thy free awe / Pays homage to us—thou mayst not coldly set / Our sovereign process, which imports at full, / By letters congruing to that effect, / The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England; / For like the hectic in my blood he rages, / And thou must cure me. Till I know ‘tis done, / Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.” (IV.iii)

2 “How all occasions do inform against me / And spur my dull revenge! / What is a man,

/ If his chief good and market of his time / Be but to sleep and feed?” (IV.iv) 3 “He is dead and gone, lady, / He is dead and gone; / At his head a grass-green turf, /

At his heels a stone.” (IV.v) 4 “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is

pansies, that’s for thoughts. . . . There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays.” (IV.v)

5 “My lord, I will be ruled; / The rather, if you could devise it so / That I might be the

organ.” (IV.vii)

Harris, H English IV

Act V Quotations The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 1 “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the

ground, as if ‘twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder!” (V.i) 2 “O, treble woe / Fall ten times treble on that cursed head / Whose wicked deed thy

most ingenious sense / Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile, / Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.” (V.i)

3 “No, no! the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet! / The drink, the drink! I am poisoned.”

(V.ii) 4 “Lo, here I lie, / Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poisoned. / I can no more. The King,

the King’s to blame.” (V.ii) 5 “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee

to thy rest.” (V.ii)