Hamlet

In words

Listed below are some of the most famous lines from the play, each linked to their context in the full script.

• O, That this too too solid flesh would melt,
• Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.
• Hamlet, act I, scene 2
• How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
• Seem to me all the uses of this world!
• Hamlet, act I, scene 2
• Frailty, thy name is woman!
• Hamlet, act I, scene 2
• Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
• For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
• Lord Polonius, act I, scene 3
• This above all: to thine ownself be true;
• And it must follow, as the night the day,
• Thou canst not then be false to any man.
• Lord Polonius, act I, scene 3
• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
• Marcellus, act I, scene 4
• There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
• Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
• Hamlet, act I, scene 5
• Doubt thou the stars are fire;
• Doubt that the sun doth move;
• Doubt truth to be a liar;
• But never doubt I love.
• Lord Polonius, quoting Hamlet's words, act II, scene 2
• There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
• Hamlet, act II, scene 2
• To be, or not to be: that is the question.
• Hamlet, act III, scene 1
• Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
• Hamlet, act III, scene 1
• I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
• Hamlet, act III, scene 2
• When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
• But in battalions.
• King Claudius, act IV, scene 5
• The rest is silence.
• Hamlet, act V, scene 2
• Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
• And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
• Horatio, act V, scene 2

In pictures

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, around 1885.

Mattia Battistini, 1911.

Laurence Olivier, 1948.

David Warner, 1965.

Derek Jacobi, 1979.

Mel Gibson, 1990.

Val Kilmer, 1988.

Kenneth Branagh, 1996.

The gravedigger's scene, drawing by Henry Courtney Selous, circa 1868. Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get yet to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. Hamlet, act V, scene 1

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Read more on Hamlet and the visual arts by Alan R. Young, 2002, enjoy Hamlet rewritten in L33t by Chris Coutts, circa 2004, or see a map of Elsinore.