Hamlet Quote Test

Front 1

"The head is not more native to the heart,/The hand more instrumental to the mouth,/Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father."

Back 1

Claudius to Laertes about Polonius.

Front 2

"A little more than kin, and less than kind."

Back 2

Hamlet to Hamlet about Claudius.

Front 3

"Tis unmanly grief./It shows a will most incorrect to heaven."

Back 3

Claudius to Hamlet about the King's death.

Front 4

"O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,/Thaw, and resole itself into a dew!/Or that Everlasting had not fixed/His canon 'against self-slaughter."

Back 4

Hamlet to Hamlet about suicide.

Front 5

"That it should come to this!"

Back 5

Hamlet to Hamlet about marriage.

Front 6

"...frailty, they name is woman!"

Back 6

Hamlet to Hamlet about Gertrude.

Front 7

"I doubt some foul play. Would the night were to come!/Till then sit still, my sou;l. Foul deeds will rise,/Though all the earth overwhelm them, to men's eyes."

Back 7

Hamlet to Hamlet about his father.

Front 8

"Neither a borrower not a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."

Back 8

Polonius to Laertes about politics.

Front 9

"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 ant man."

Back 9

Polonius to Laertes about politics.

Front 10

"I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth/Have you so slander any moment leisure/As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet."

Back 10

Polonius to Ophelia about Hamlet.

Front 11

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Back 11

Marcellus to Horation about Hamlet.

Front 12

"Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder."

Back 12

Ghost to Hamlet about revenge.

Front 13

"Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,/With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts-/O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power/So to seduce!-won to his shameful lust/The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen."

Back 13

Ghost to Hamlet about the marriage of Gertrude and Claudius.

Front 14

"But come;/Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,/How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself--/As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/To put an antic disposition on."

Back 14

Hamlet to Horatio about his madness.

Front 15

"This is the very ecstasy of love."

Back 15

Polonius to Ophelia about Hamlet.

Front 16

"That hath made him mad!"

Back 16

Polonius to Ophelia about Hamlet.

Front 17

"Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,/And tediousness the limbs and onward flourishes,/I will be brief, your noble son is mad."

Back 17

Polonius to Gertrude about Hamlet.

Front 18

"Doubt thou the stars are fire,/Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth be a liar, but never doubt I love."

Back 18

Hamlet to Ophelia about his love.

Front 19

"But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading."

Back 19

Gertrude to Claudius aout Hamlet.

Front 20

"For if the son breed maggots in a dead dog,/ Being a good kissing carrion-Have you a daughter?"

Back 20

Hamlet to Polonius about Ophelia.

Front 21

"Though this be madness, yet there us method in't."

Back 21

Polonius to Polonius about Hamlet.

Front 22

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Back 22

Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstrern about politics.

Front 23

"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and/count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that/I have bad dreams... A dream itself is but a shadow."

Back 23

Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about the ghost.

Front 24

"What a piece of work is man! how noble is 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!"

Back 24

Hamlet to Rosencrantz about life.

Front 25

"I am mad north-north-west. When the/wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."

Back 25

Hamlet to Rosencrantz about his madness.

Front 26

"The best actors in the world, either for/Tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical/Historical-comical, tragically-comical, tragically-comical-historical,/Scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy,/Nor Plato too light. For the law of writ and liberty, these are the only men."

Back 26

Polonius to Hamlet about the players.

Front 27

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"

Back 27

Hamlet to Hamlet about action.

Front 28

"The play's the thing/wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

Back 28

Hamlet to Hamlet about the play.

Front 29

"To be, or not to be: that is the qestion:/Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slips and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by opposing end them...To die, to sleep;/ To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay there's the rub."

Back 29

Hamlet to Ophelia about action.

Front 30

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;/And thus the native hue of resolution/Is sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought,/And enterprises of great pitch and moment/With this regard their currents turn awry/And lose the name of action."

Back 30

Hamlet to Hamlet about action.

Front 31

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove

Back 31

Ophelia to Hamlet about Hamlet.

Front 32

"Madness in great ones must not unwatched go."

Back 32

Claudius to Polonius about Hamlet.

Front 33

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Back 33

Gertrude to Hamlet about the play.

Front 34

"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing/You make of me! You would play upon me, you would/Seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart/Of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest/Note to the top of my compass, and there is much/Music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot/You make it speak. 'Blood, do you think I am easier/To be played on than a pipe?Call me what instrument/You will, though you can fret me, you cannot play/Upon me."

Back 34

Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about politics.

Front 35

"I will speak daggers to her, but use none."

Back 35

Hamlet to Hamlet about Gertrude.

Front 36

"O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;/ It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,/A brother's murder. Pray can I not,/Though inclination be as sharp as will;/My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,/And like a man to double business bound/I stand in pause where I shall first begin,/And both neglect."

Back 36

Claudius to Claudius about murder.

Front 37

"And so 'a goes to heaven/And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:/A villain kills my father, and for that/I, his sole son, do this same villain send/To heaven."

Back 37

Hamlet to Hamlet about Claudius.

Front 38

"Such an act/That blurs the grace and blush modesty ,/Calls virtue hypocrite, takes the rose/From the fair forehead of an innocent love/And sets a blister there, makes marriage vow/As false as dicers' oaths. O, such a deed/As from the body of contraction plucks/The very soul, and sweet religion makes/A rhapsody of words. Haven's face does glow/O'er this solidity and compound mass/With trustful visage, as against the doom,/Is thought-sick at the act."

Back 38

Hamlet to Gertrude about marriage.

Front 39

Though turn'st my eyes into my very soul,/And there I see such black account and grained spots/As will not leave their tinct."

Back 39

Gertrude to Hamlet about marriage.

Front 40

"O, speak to me no more!/These words like daggers enter in my ears."

Back 40

Gertrude to Hamlet about Hamlet.

Front 41

"Be though assured, if words be made of breath,/And breath of life, I have no life to breathe/What thou has said to me."

Back 41

Gertrude to Hamlet about marriage.

Front 42

"The body is with the King, but the King is not/With the body. The King is a thing-of nothing."

Back 42

Hamlet to Rosencrantz about Polonius.

Front 43

"In heaven. send hither to see. If your messenger/Find him not there, seek him i' th' other places yourself./But if indeed you find him no within this month,/You shell nose him as you go up the stairs into the/Lobby."

Back 43

Hamlet to Claudius about Polonius.

Front 44

"How all occasions do inform against me/And spur my dull revenge."

Back 44

Hamlet to Hamlet about revenge.

Front 45

"O, from this time forth/My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!"

Back 45

Hamlet to Hamlet about revenge.

Front 46

"Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a/Baker;s daughter. Lord we know what we are, but/Know not what we may be. God be at your table."

Back 46

Ophelia to Gertrude about Polonius.

Front 47

"That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,/Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot/Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow/Of my true mother."

Back 47

Laertes to Claudius about revenge.

Front 48

"O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times said/Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye! by heaven, they madness shall be paid with weight/Till our scale turn the beam."

Back 48

Laertes to Ophelia about madness.

Front 49

"I would give/you some violets, but they withered all when my father/died. They say 'a made a good end."

Back 49

Ophelia to Laertes about Polonius.

Front 50

"I will work him/To an exploit, now ripe in my device,/Under the which he shall not choose but fall;/And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe,/But even his mother shall uncharged the practice/And call it accident."

Back 50

Claudius to Laertes about Hamlet.

Front 51

Give me leave. Here lies the water. Good. Here stands the man. Good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

Back 51

Clown to clown about Ophelia.

Front 52

That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches, one that would circumvent God, might it not?

Back 52

Hamlet to Horatio about death.

Front 53

"Alas, poor Yor-/ick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of/most excellent fancy."

Back 53

Hamlet to Horatio about death.

Front 54

"I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/Could not with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?"

Back 54

Hamlet to Laertes about Ophelia.

Front 55

"I'll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance/Your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night,/Stuck fiery off indeed."

Back 55

Hamlet to Laertes about Laertes.

Front 56

"The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,/Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice/Hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie,/Never to rise again."

Back 56

Laertes to Hamlet about revenge.

Front 57

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Back 57

Horatio to Hamlet about Hamlet.

Front 58

"Of what I shall have also cause to speak,/And from this mouth hose cove will draw on more./But let this same be presently performed./Even while men's minds are wild, less more mischance/On plots and errors happen."

Back 58

Horatio to Fortinbras about death.