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HAMLET STUDY GUIDE (to prepare you for your FINAL EXAM)
Complete your notes for each Act by the day we begin that Act.
For each quote, below, identify the speaker, addressee, and context, and—if you can—explain the quotation’s
significance. Is it ironic? If so, how? What does it tell us about character and theme? (You can fill in the
“significance” parts during class discussion if you prefer).
ACT 1 (x14)
1.
A little more than kin and less than kind. (1.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
2.
“Seems,” [addressee]? Nay, it is. I know not "seems." (1.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
3.
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world! (1.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
4.
…frailty, thy name is woman! (1.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
5.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. (1.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
6.
Thrift, thrift, [addressee]. The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. (1.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
7.
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. (1.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
8.
This above all: To thine own self be true. (1.3)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
9.
…it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance. (1.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
10.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (1.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
11.
Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge. (1.5)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
12.
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest. (1.5)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
13.
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught. Leave her to Heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge.
To prick and sting her. (1.5)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
14.
The time is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right! (1.5)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
ACT 2 (x7)
1.
By indirections find directions out. (2.1)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
2.
I doubt it is no other than the main—
His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage. (2.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
3.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. (2.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
4.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. (2.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
5.
Why, then 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad
but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison. (2.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
6.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, 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--and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me…. (2.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
7.
…Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your
bounty. Take them in. (2.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
ACT 3 (x13)
1.
The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word. (3.1)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
2.
…Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. (3.1)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
3.
God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. (3.1)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
4.
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go. (3.1)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
5.
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep
not the modesty of nature. (3.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
6.
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. (3.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
7.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. (3.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
8.
…do you think I am easier to play on than a pipe? (3.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
9.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none. (3.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
10.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. (3.3)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
11.
Oh, shame, where is thy blush? (3.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
12.
O [addressee], speak no more.
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct. (3.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
13.
Do not forget. This visitation
Is to whet thy almost blunted purpose. (1.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
14.
I must be cruel only to be kind. (3.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
15.
I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room. (3.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
ACT 4 (x7)
1.
…A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. (4.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
2.
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at
him. (4.3)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
3.
…What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. (4.4)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
4.
…O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth! (4.4)
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Significance:
5.
There’s such divinity that hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would… (4.5)
Speaker:
Addressee:
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Significance:
6.
Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father. (4.5)
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Addressee:
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Significance:
7.
[Addressee], was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart? (4.7)
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Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
ACT 5 (x9)
1.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, [addressee] (5.1)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
2.
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick,
to this favor she must come. (5.1)
Speaker:
Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
3.
Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. (5.1)
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Addressee:
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Significance:
4.
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. (5.1)
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Addressee:
Context:
Significance:
5.
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will… (5.2)
Speaker:
Addressee:
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Significance:
6.
Why, man, they did make love to this employment.
They are not near my conscience. (5.2)
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Addressee:
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Significance:
7.
He did comply, sir, with his dug before he sucked it… (5.2)
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Addressee:
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8.
…We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now,
yet it will come. The readiness is all. (5.2)
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Addressee:
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Significance:
9.
…the rest is silence. (5.2)
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