Hamlet Quotes

Question 1

Hamlet: betrayal (act one)

Answer 1

‘A little more kin, and less than kind’

‘things rank and gross in nature’

Question 2

Claudius: betrayal (act one)

Answer 2

‘Our sometime sister, now our queen’

‘With dirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage’

Question 3

Hamlet: suicide (act one)

Answer 3

‘This too too solid flesh would melt’

‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable this seems to me’

Question 4

Hamlet: religion (act one)

Answer 4

‘His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God!’
‘Heaven and earth!’
‘Angels and minsters of grace defend us!’

Question 5

Horatio: revenge (act one)

Answer 5

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’

Question 6

Ghost: revenge (act one)

Answer 6

‘Revenge his most foul and unnatural murder’

Question 7

Hamlet: revenge (act one)

Answer 7

‘antic disposition’

Question 8

Gertrude: women (act one)

Answer 8

‘All that lives must die’

‘The funeral bakes meats did coldly furnish the marriage tables’ (Hamlet)

Question 9

Ophelia: women (act one)

Answer 9

‘Show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven […] like a puff’d and reckless libertine’
‘I shall obey, my lord’
‘green girl’ (Lord Polonius)

Question 10

Polonius: truth vs lie (act two)

Answer 10

‘This is the very ecstasy of love’
‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it’
‘More grief to hide than to utter love’

Question 11

Hamlet: betrayal (act two)

Answer 11

‘my uncle-father and aunt-mother are decieved’

Question 12

Hamlet: truth vs lie (act two)

Answer 12

‘Denmark is a prison’
‘I have of late […] lost all my mirth’
‘I am but mad north-northwest when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw’
‘You are a fishmonger’ (Hamlet to Polonius)

Question 13

Gertrude: betrayal (act two)

Answer 13

‘His father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage.’

Question 14

Hamlet: revenge (act two)

Answer 14

‘Am I a coward?’

‘These tedious old fools’

Question 15

Hamlet: suicide (act two)

Answer 15

‘The earth, seems to me a sterile promontory’

‘O what a rogue and peasant slave I am’

Question 16

Claudius: truth vs lie (act three)

Answer 16

‘Madness in great ones must not unwatched go’

Question 17

Hamlet: truth vs lie (act three)

Answer 17

‘I’ll take the ghosts’ word for a thousand pound’

‘Call me what instrument you will, […] you cannot play upon me’

Question 18

Hamlet: revenge (act three)

Answer 18

‘I will speak daggers but use none’ (Hamlet to Gertrude)

Question 19

Claudius: guilt (act three)

Answer 19

(praying) ‘Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven.’

‘My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent’

Question 20

Hamlet: suicide (act three)

Answer 20

‘whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’
‘death the undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveller returns’

Question 21

Ophelia: truth vs lie (act three)

Answer 21

‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!’

Question 22

Hamlet: women (act three)

Answer 22

‘Get thee to a nunnery!’

Question 23

Gertrude: women (act three)

Answer 23

‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’