Hamlet Quotes

“Frailty, thy name is woman!”

Hamlet; Hamlet is angry with his his mother for re marrying as quickly as a he did. He is saying that a woman changes her mind quickly​.
“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” ​Hamlet; it was right after they buried his father that his mother married his uncle. It happened in such a short time that Hamlet feels like the food from the funeral could have been used for the wedding tables. “Perhaps he loves you now, / …but you must fear, / His greatness weighed, his will is not his own; / For he himself is subject to his birth: / He may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself; for on his choice depends / The safety and health of this whole state….” Laertes; Hamlet is not allowed to make choices just for himself, he has to think of the kingdom since he is next to be king. “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, / Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel….” ​

Polonius; he is telling his son to hold onto the old friends he has made “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; / For loan oft loses both itself and friend, / And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.” ​

Polonius; he is telling his son to not borrow anything or lend anything because borrowing can ruin your name and lending can ruin friendships. “This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Polonius; If you are true to yourself, you won’t be false to anyone else. “Murder most foul, as in the best it is; / But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.” ​ Dead King Hamlet; he is telling Hamlet that all murder is bad, but his was foul, strange, and unnatural because it was his brother who killed him in a sneaky way. “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown.”

Dead King Hamlet; The snake that took his life is now king, his brother​ . “No reck’ning made, but sent to my account / With all my imperfections on my head….” ​ Dead King Hamlet; he is telling his son he did not get to amend things with the Lord before he does and now all of his mistakes are being held against him in the afterlife​ . “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!” ​ Hamlet; he is cursing the day he was born because of all the things he is supposed accomplish. …brevity is the soul of wit….”

Polonius; to speak well, you need to use as few words as possible but still be precise. “…for yourself, sir, should be as old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.” “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t.” ​ Polonius; he suspects that Hamlet isn’t just mad that there is something else behind it​ . “Polonius:​

My honored lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. Hamlet:​ You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal — except my life — except my life — except my life.” ​ Polonius is saying that he will leave Hamlet alone, but Hamlet tells him that his presence  will always be around and that the only thing that Polonius can take from him unwillingly is his life. “…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so….” ​ Over thinking can cause something to be bad or good “The spirit that I have seen / May be the devil: and the devil hath power / T’ assume a pleasing shape….” Hamlet; He starts to wonder if the devil took on the shape of his father so the devil could convince him to kill his uncle so he could have Hamlet’s soul. “I’ll have grounds / more relative than this: the play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

Hamlet; He plans on getting more proof to know if his uncle is guilty or not by having his father’s real death acted out by players in front of his uncle. “To be or not to be: that is the question: / Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them?” Hamlet; Hamlet is contemplating suicide here. He thinks if people were not so scared of what would happen afterwards, everyone would. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all….” ​ Hamlet; the voices in our heads, the moral compass, can make a coward of every one. He is referring to the fact that he hasn’t killed his uncle yet. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Gertrude; the actor kept saying she wouldn’t remarry. Gertrude feels guilty because she married so fast after her husband’s death. “…do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?” Hamlet; Hamlet is speaking to his fake friends. He asked them if they could play a pipe and they replied no. He asked them this, meaning do you think you can fool me? “ill speak daggers to her, but use none….”