Hamlet

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--

Frailty, thy name is woman!

To give these mourning duties to your father

that this too too solid flesh would melt. Thaw and resolve itself into a dew

to suppress
His further gait herein

keep pestering us with message

Hamlet is an embarrassment to the new regime: why won't he forget? He is suicidal, melancholy, juvenile, misogynistic and rapidly losing touch with reality

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Hyperion to a satyr

a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

A truant disposition

Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled. Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

grizzled beard

And, sister, as the winds give benefit
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.

For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,

And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch .The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth

Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd importunity.

your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd importunity.

Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,

The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed

Contagious blastments are most imminent.

Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence

Believe so much in him, that he is young
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you

Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,

Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,

Hamlet is established as (1) suicidally reckless, not valuing his life above a pin, (2) prudish, disliking drunkenness, (3) philosophical, drifting easily into a disquisition on character from the discussion of drinking.

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,

My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

purgatory is so terrible that the merest detail would freeze Hamlet's blood,

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me;

O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,--
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!

to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!

So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.

So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.

So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.

With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment

whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught

O most pernicious woman!

There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant knave.

There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant knave.

As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!

he seems to be allowing his feelings free rein: fear of death and the inevitable disloyalty of women are strikingly stated.

Hamlet's act of madness has failed in half of its purpose: he has hardly managed to avert others' suspicion. But it does allow him to vent feelings that would otherwise "break [his] heart" (I.ii).

I have found
The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.

My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,

Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves,
And all we mourn for.

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion

A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

I hold ambition of so airy and light a
quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

there is a kind of confession in your looks
which your modesties have not craft enough to colour

this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither

that great baby you see there is not yet
out of his swaddling-clouts

that great baby you see there is not yet
out of his swaddling-clouts

With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,

With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,

With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,

In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.'

after your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit

He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!

That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!

The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,

Hamlet has fascinated audiences and readers for centuries, and the first thing to point out about him is that he is enigmatic.

When Hamlet speaks, he sounds as if there’s something important he’s not saying, maybe something even he is not aware of. The ability to write soliloquies and dialogues that create this effect is one of Shakespeare’s most impressive achievements.

Hamlet is extremely philosophical and contemplative

Hamlet becomes obsessed with proving his uncle’s guilt before trying to act.

He is equally plagued with questions about the afterlife, about the wisdom of suicide, about what happens to bodies after they die—the list is extensive.

He seems to step very easily into the role of a madman, behaving erratically and upsetting the other characters with his wild speech and pointed innuendos.

He is extremely disappointed with his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he repudiates Ophelia, a woman he once claimed to love, in the harshest terms.