| Now could I drink hot blood | Hamlet 3.2 (after play) |
| O Hamlet, what a falling off was there | Ghost 1.5 |
| What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? | Hamlet 2.2 (after player’s speech) |
| Oh what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! | Ophelia 3.1 (after “To be or not to be”!) |
| How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead. | Hamlet 3.4 Closet scene |
| I must be cruel only to be kind. | Hamlet 3.4 Closet scene |
| Still harping on my daughter. | Polonius 2.2 (to himself; about Ham; p.77) |
| Neither a borrower nor a lender be | Polonius 1.3 (to Laertes) |
| My lord, I came to see thy father’s funeral | Horatio 1.2 (to Ham) |
| I say we will have no mo marriages | Hamlet 3.1 (to Ophelia) |
| My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. | Claudius 3.3 Chapel scene |
| These words like daggers enter my ears. | Gertrude 3.4 Closet scene |
| When we have shuffled off this mortal coil . . . | Hamlet 3.1 “To be or not to be” |
| Seems madam? nay it is, I know not seems. | Hamlet 1.2 to Gertrude |
| Who’s there? | Barnardo 1.1 (first line of play) |
| The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king | Hamlet 2.2 (final sol. of Act) |
| The lady doth protest too much methinks. | Gertrude 3.2 (watching the play) |
| Oh heavy deed! / It had been so with us had we been there | Claudius 4.1 (on hearing of P’s murder) |
| Take you me for a sponge my lord? | Ros 4.2 (to Ham) |
| Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. | Ham 4.3 (to Claudius) |
| Do it England | Claudius 4.3 (to himself) |
| More matter, with less art | Gertrude 2.2 (to Polonius — he is being a windbag) |
| Witness this army of such mass and charge, / Led by a delicate and tender prince | Hamlet 4.4 soliloquy |
| When sorrows come, they come not single spies | Claudius 4.5 to Gertrude |
| That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard | Laertes 4.5 to Claudius/Gertrude |
| There is a willow grows askant a brook . . . | Gertrude 4.7 reporting O’s death |
| I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t | Ham 5.1 to Clown |
| I thank your lordship, it is very hot. | Osric 5.2 fawning around Ham |
| And yet it is almost against my conscience. | Laertes 5.2 aside |
| Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage | Fortinbras 5.2 last speech |
| A little more than kin and less than kind | Hamlet 1.2(after Claudius’ speech) |
| He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave | Polonius 1.2( telling Claudius he gives Laertes permission to go to France) |
Hamlet short quotes
September 3, 2019