Table with key quotes from every scene of Hamlet for revision, with speaking characters indicated. Created by a student who got an A* in OCR A Level English Literature but is suitable for any board!
Guards, Horatio, Scene “Who’s there?” B
setting, politics about the “Tis bitter cold and I am sick at heart” Fr
1.1
impending attack from “Unimproved mettle hot and full … sharked up a list of landless resolutes” Ho
Norway (F) “Foresaid lands so by his father lost” Ho
“Our dear brother’s death the memory be green” C
“Our sometimes sister now our queen” C
“With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage” C
“A little more than kin and less than kind” H
“Thou know'st tis common - all that lives must die” G
“Our chiefest courtier cousin and our son” C
C speech, Hamlet ‘nay it is
“O that this too too solid flesh would melt” H
speech’, ‘Too too solid flesh’
1.2 “Or that they everlasting had not fixed his canon gainst self-slaughter” H
soliloquy, Horatio tells him
“Tis an unweeded garden” H
about the ghost
“Hyperion to a satyr” H
“Frailty thy name is woman … like niobe all tears … unrighteous tears” H
“To post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets” H
“But break my heart for I must hold my tongue” H
“The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” H
“All is not well … foul deeds will rise” H
“His will is not his own, for he himself is subject to his birth” L
“Your honour … chaste treasure” L
Laertes advises O against “Fear it Ophelia, fear it … best safety lies in fear”L
trusting H, P gives Laertes life “I shall the effect of this good lesson keep as watchman to my heart” O
advice, O says by to L by “This above all - to thine own self be true … thou canst not then be false to any
1.3
mentioning the agreement, P man” P
questions her and tells her to “Tis in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it” O
reject Hamlet’s love “Affection Pooh! You speak like a green girl” P
“And with a larger tether may he walk than may be given to you” P
“I shall obey my lord” O
“Spirit of health or a goblin damned” H
“I do not set my life at a pin's fee” H
Hamlet and Horatio see the
“What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord or to the dreadful summit of the
1.4 ghost, Horatio warns Hamlet
cliff” Ho
not to follow it
“My fate cries out” H
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” M
“Sulph’rous and tormenting flames … Doomed for a certain term to walk the
night” OH
“If thou didst ever thy dear father love” OH
“His foul and most unnatural murder” OH
“With wings as swift … may sweep to my revenge” H
“O my Prophetic soul!” H
H speaks to the ghost, ghost
“That incestuous that adulterate beast” OH
criticises C and G and
“Seeming-virtuous queen … will sate itself in a celestial bed and prey on
demands 'remember me’, H
garbage” OH
1.5 makes Horatio and Marcellus
“Of life of crown of queen at once dispatched” OH
swear to secrecy, plots antic
“Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest”
disposition, “time is out of
OH
joint”
“O most pernicious woman! O Villain, villain, Smiling damned villain … that one
may smile and be a villain” H
“There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in our
philosophy” H
“Perchance hereafter think meet to put and antic disposition on” H
“The time is out of joint. O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right!” H
, “Drabbing/ My lord that would dishonour him” P/R
P tells Reynoldo to spy on “Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth” P
Laertes, O tells P about H “With a look so piteous in purport … looséd out of hell” O
2.1
coming to her in the closet, P “Raised a sigh so piteous and profound” O
says they must tell the king “Come go with me. I will go seek the king” P
“But as you did command I did repel his letters” O
“Hamlet’s transformation - so I call it” C
“To gather … glean” C
“Shall receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance” G
“I Hold my duty as I hold my soul, both to my God and to my gracious
king” P
“The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy” P
C tells R&G to spy on H “We shall sift him” C
P tells C&G he has the ‘cause’ “Appeared to be a preparation ‘gainst the polack … it was against your
of H’s ‘lunacy’ highness” V
Voltemand says F had “Since brevity is the soul of wit … I shall be brief your noble son is mad” P
intentions of attacking “That’s an ill phrase a vile phrase” P
Denmark but was stopped “Doubt truth to be a liar but never doubt I love” H (P)
by uncle “I will find where truth is hid” P
P reads H’s letter to O, they “You’re a fishmonger” H
plot to listen in on H later. “For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion”
2.2 H
H calls P a fishmonger “Though this be madness yet there is method in’t” P
R&G greet H but he sees “The world’s grown honest/ then doomsday is near” H
through their intentions, “Denmark's a prison” H
‘quintessence of dust’, “Were you not sent for? … there is a kind of confession in your looks” H
players are coming “What a piece of work is a man … and yet to me what is this quintessence
of dust” H
H joins in with players and
gives them the script, H “My uncle-father and aunt-mother” H
compares himself to the “I am but mad north-north-west” H
actors and feels anger, plots “At each ear a hearer” H
to catch Claudius “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” H
“What’s hecuba to him or he to hecuba … yet I … like john-a-dreams
unpregnant of my cause and can say nothing” H
“Am I a coward?” H
“I am pigeon-livered and lack gall … Bloody bawdy villain!” H
“The spirit that I have seen may be the devil and the devil hath power to
assume a pleasing shape” H
“The plays the thing wherein i’ll catch the conscience of the king” H
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