Four tragedies - Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Othello, the Moor of Venice, Macbeth and King Lear - David Bevington and David Scott Kastan 1988, 2005

Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark
Memorable lines

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

(HAMLET 1.2.65)

Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would melt …

(HAMLET 1.2.129)

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

(HAMLET 1.2.133—4)

Frailty, thy name is woman!

(HAMLET 1.2.146)

’A was a man. Take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

(HAMLET 1.2.187—8)

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

(POLONIUS 1.3.75)

This above all: to thine own self be true.

(POLONIUS 1.3.78)

But to my mind, though I am native here

And to the manner born, it is a custom

More honored in the breach than the observance.

(HAMLET 1.4.14—16)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

(MARCELLUS 1.4.90)

Murder most foul, as in the best it is …

(GHOST 1.5.28)

Oh, my prophetic soul!

(HAMLET 1.5.42)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

(HAMLET 1.5.175—6)

The time is out of joint. Oh, cursèd spite

That ever I was born to set it right!

(HAMLET 1.5.197—8)

Brevity is the soul of wit …

(POLONIUS 2.2.90)

More matter, with less art.

(QUEEN 2.2.95)

That he’s mad, ’tis true; ’tis true ’tis pity,

And pity ’tis ’tis true.

(POLONIUS 2.2.97—8)

Words, words, words.

(HAMLET 2.2.193)

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

(POLONIUS 2.2.205—6)

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

(HAMLET 2.2.250—1)

What a piece of work is a man!

(HAMLET 2.2.304—5)

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her?

(HAMLET 2.2.559—60)

The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

(HAMLET 2.2.605—6)

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

(HAMLET 3.1.57)

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.

(HAMLET 3.1.58—61)

To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub …

(HAMLET 3.1.65—6)

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

(HAMLET 3.1.84)

Get thee to a nunnery.

(HAMLET 3.1.122)

The glass of fashion and the mold of form,

Th’observed of all observers …

(OPHELIA 3.1.156—7)

I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant.

It out-Herods Herod.

(HAMLET 3.2.12—14)

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this

special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature.

(HAMLET 3.2.17—19)

… the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now,

was and is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature …

(HAMLET 3.2.20—2)

… for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,

A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards

Hast ta’en with equal thanks.

(HAMLET 3.2.64—7)

OPHELIA ’Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET As woman’s love.

(3.2.151—2)

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

(QUEEN 3.2.228)

’Tis now the very witching time of night.

(HAMLET 3.2.387)

The cess of majesty Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw

What’s near it with it.

(ROSENCRANTZ 3.3.15—17)

For ’tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petard …

(HAMLET 3.4.213—14)

How all occasions do inform against me

And spur my dull revenge!

(HAMLET 4.4.33—4)

Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honor’s at the stake.

(HAMLET 4.4.54—7)

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions.

(KING 4.5.79—80)

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance … And there is pansies;

that’s for thoughts.

(OPHELIA 4.5.179—81)

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest,

of most excellent fancy.

(HAMLET 5.1.183—5)

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

(HAMLET 5.1.295)

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

(HAMLET 5.2.10—11)

Not a whit, we defy augury. There is 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.

(HAMLET 5.2.217—20)

A hit, a very palpable hit.

(OSRIC 5.2.282)

Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

(HORATIO 5.2.361—2)