Hamlet Quotes

Question 1

Hamlet’s first words - witty pun

Answer 1

‘A little more than kin, and less than kind.’

Question 2

Claudius’s comment about mourning - reducing the power of grief

Answer 2

‘With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.’

Question 3

Appearance vs. reality - seems? and Polonius

Answer 3

‘Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems’.’

“To thine own self by true”

Question 4

Claudius emasculating Hamlet

Answer 4

'’tis unmanly grief: it shows a will most incorrect with heaven’

Question 5

Hamlet’s description of Denmark/court

Answer 5

'’tis an unweeded garden’

Question 6

Greek allusion to compare OH and C

Answer 6

‘Hyperion to a satyr.’

Question 7

Women

Answer 7

‘Frailty, thy name is woman’

Question 8

Infidelity/incest

Answer 8

‘incestuous sheets’

Question 9

Denmark and disease

Answer 9

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’

Question 10

Ghost’s words to Hamlet - revenge

Answer 10

‘Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.’

Question 11

Method in Hamlet’s madness

Answer 11

‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t’

Question 12

Machiavellian figure - Claudius

Answer 12

‘Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!’

Question 13

Contemplating suicide

Answer 13

‘To be, or not to be; that is the question.’

Question 14

Claudius’s excuse to leave after the Mousetrap

Answer 14

‘Give me some light: away!’

Question 15

Weaponising his language

Answer 15

‘I will speak daggers to her but use none.’

Question 16

Claudius’s offence to heaven

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Madness is crafted

Answer 17

‘I essentially am not in madness/But mad in craft.’

Question 18

Claudius’s view on revenge

Answer 18

‘Revenge should have no bounds.’

Question 19

Laertes acknowledgement of his moral wrongdoing

Answer 19

‘I am justly killed with mine own treachery.’

Question 20

Fortinbras - Hamlet has ‘provd most royal’

Answer 20

‘Bear Hamlet like a solider to the stage.’

Question 21

Corruption and disorder in the Danish court

Answer 21

‘Our state to be disjoint and out of frame’

Question 22

Sycophants

Answer 22

“to lay our service freely at your feet”

Question 23

Ghost’s rallying cry to Hamlet

Answer 23

‘Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest.’

Question 24

What does Hamlet call his mother and claudius after listening to the ghost?

Answer 24

‘O most pernicious woman!’
‘O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!’

Question 25

Hamlet's appreciation for the supernatural

Answer 25

'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

Question 26

Hamlet realises that he has to set things right - disorder/chaos

Answer 26

'The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That I was ever born to set it right.'

Question 27

Ophelia being used as a tool for espionage

Answer 27

'I will loose my daughter to him.' control over his daughter

Question 28

Hamlet's self-deprecation

Answer 28

'O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!' 'Unpregnant of my cause.'

Question 29

Can you give an example of one of Claudius's and Gertrude's split lines?

Answer 29

'Do you think 'tis this?' 'It may be; very like.' Talking about the reasons for Hamlet's 'lunacy'

Question 30

What did Claudius do to Old Hamlet and Gertrude in Hamlet's words?

Answer 30

'hath kill'd my king and whor'd my mother'

Question 31

Fate and fortune - questioning what the honourable act to do is.

Answer 31

'Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.'

Question 32

The benefits of Sleep/death

Answer 32

'by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks.'

Question 33

What are Hamlet's incentives to finally take action?

Answer 33

Recognising 'That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd.'

Question 34

The effects of thought on Hamlet's revenge.

Answer 34

'And spur my dull revenge.'

Question 35

Thoughtless action versus cowardly restraint

Answer 35

'Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple.'

Question 36

What does Fortinbras embody?

Answer 36

'fortune, death and danger dare'

Question 37

Hamlet to Horatio about fate.

Answer 37

'There is more in heaven and earth Horatio are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

Question 38

Fate and divinity

Answer 38

'There is a divinity that shapes our ends.'

Question 39

Duty to Denmark

Answer 39

'Who's there?' 'Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself!' 'Long live the King!'

Question 40

Corruption of Denmark

Answer 40

'This bodes some strange eruption for our state.' - images of decay and issues within state - explosive - corruption of the head means corruption of the body

Question 42

Succession

Answer 42

'I do prophesy the election lights on Fortinbras: he has my dying voice.' - shows Hamlet is a good ruler in a fleeting moment of rule.

Question 43

Emotional and physical elements of Hamlet's suffering

Answer 43

'O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets It is not nor it cannot come to good: but break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.'

Question 44

Polonius and Duty

Answer 44

'I hold duty, as I hold my soul, both to my God and to my gracious king.' - Polonius is often ridiculed but is a character synonymous with duty. - Religious duty.

Question 45

Polonius's statement about Hamlet to Ophelia

Answer 45

'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star: this must not be.' - celestial imagery to conjure the theme of fate

Question 46

Hamlet's first soliloquy

Answer 46

'O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter!'

Question 47

Gender divide

Answer 47

'And with a larger tether may he walk.' - Hamlet has more

Question 48

Claudius's reasons

Answer 48

‘My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.’

Question 49

Laertes about what Ophelia should fear - reality of Elizabethan women

Answer 49

‘Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister’

Question 50

No sense of how Ophelia feels herself.

Answer 50

“I do not know, my lord, what I should think"

Question 51

Love is presented as a commercial transaction.

Answer 51

Laertes refers to Ophelia’s virginity as a ‘treasure’. Her father urges her to ‘tender’ herself ‘at a higher rate’

Question 52

Gertrude's heart being split.

Answer 52

'Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.'