Hamlet (1948)

Laurence Olivier: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

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Quotes 

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : To be, or not to be: that is the question: 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? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: 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: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape like a camel?

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : By the mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Methinks it's like a weasel.

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : It is backed like a weasel.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Or like a whale?

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : Very like a whale.

• [first lines] 

  Narrator : So oft it chances in particular men / That through some vicious mole of nature in them, / By the o'ergrowth of some complexion / Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, / Or by some habit grown too much; that these men - / Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, / Their virtues else - be they as pure as grace, / Shall in the general censure take corruption / From that particular fault... This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

  Ophelia - and Daughter : No, my lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : I mean my head upon your lap.

  Ophelia - and Daughter : Aye, my lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Do you think I meant country matters?

  Ophelia - and Daughter : I think nothing, my lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs.

  Ophelia - and Daughter : What is, my lord?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Nothing

  Ophelia - and Daughter : You are merry, my lord.

• Ophelia - and Daughter : My lord, I have remembrance of yours that I have longed long to re-deliver. I pray you now receive them.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : No, not I. I never gave you aught.

  Ophelia - and Daughter : My honoured lord, you know right well you did. And with them words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, take these again. For, to the noble mind, rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Are you honest?

  Ophelia - and Daughter : My lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : I did love you once.

  Ophelia - and Daughter : Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : You should not have believed me. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not born me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck then I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

• [last lines] 

  The Royal Court Of Denmark - Laertes,his Son : Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, nor thine on me.

  [dies] 

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio.

  [to poisoned Gertrude] 

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Wretched Queen... adieu.

  [to all present, keeling and bowing] 

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : You that look pale and tremble at this chance, that are but mutes or audience to this act, had I but time - as this fell sergeant Death is strict in his arrest - O, I could tell you... But let it be.

  [helped by Horatio to his seat, the throne he's been denied of] 

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : I die, Horatio. The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit. If thou didst ever hold me in they heart, absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world... draw thy breath in pain to tell my story. The rest... is silence.

  [dies] 

  Horatio : Let four captains bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage, for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royal. And for his passage, the soldiers' music and the rites of war speak loudly for him. Go. Bid the soldiers shoot.

  [to dead Hamlet] 

  Horatio : Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

  [kisses Hamlet's forehead] 

• Horatio : Oh, day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : And therefore, as a stranger, give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

• Claudius - The King : Where is Polonius?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him in the other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!

• Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : My lord, put your discourse into some frame and start not so wildly from my affair.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : I am tame sir; pronounce.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Marriage with my uncle. My fathers brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules. Within a month, she married. Oh, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Frailty, thy name is woman.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : My father. Methinks I see my father.

  Horatio : Where, my lord?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : In my minds eye, Horatio.

  Horatio : I saw him once. He was a goodly king.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : He was a man. Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

  Horatio : My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : The time is out of joint.

• King Hamlet's Ghost : Know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy fathers life - now wears his crown.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Oh, my prophetic soul. My uncle.

  King Hamlet's Ghost : Aye, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with traitorous gifts, won to his shameful lust, the will of my most seeming virtuous queen.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain.

• King Hamlet's Ghost : Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Murder?

  King Hamlet's Ghost : Murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul, strange and unnatural.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : You yourself, sir, shall be old as I am; if, like a crab, you could go backward.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : My lord, you played once in the university, you say?

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : What did you enact?

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed in the Capitol. Brutus killed me.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : The play's the thing. Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king!

• Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : My lord, I have news to tell you. The actors are come hither, my lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : He that plays the king shall be welcome.

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral. Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Is this a prologue or the posy of a ring?

  Ophelia - and Daughter : Tis brief, my lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : As woman's love.

  Ophelia - and Daughter : You are keen, my lord. You are keen.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : O heavens! Died two months ago - and not forgotten yet? Why then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year!

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Farewell, dear Mother.

  Claudius - The King : Thy loving father, Hamlet.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : My mother. Father and mother is man and wife. Man and wife is one flesh. And so - my mother.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Why was he sent into England?

  Gravedigger : Why? Because he was mad. He shall recover his wits there. Or if he do not, tis no great matter there.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Why?

  Gravedigger : It will not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he.

• Claudius - The King : Now Hamlet, where's Polonius?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : At supper.

  Claudius - The King : At supper? Where?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain complication of politic worms are even at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves - for worms. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table. That' s the end.

  Claudius - The King : Alas, alas.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of a fish that hath fed of that worm.

  Claudius - The King : What dost thou mean by this?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Nothing. But to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : This man shall send me packing. I'll lug the guts into the neighbor room. Indeed, this counselor is now most still, most secret and most grave, that was in life a foolish, prating knave.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : This is I, Hamlet the Dane!

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do: Would weep, would fight, would fast, would tear thyself, would drink up poison? Eat a crocodile? I'll do it!

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : 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. Theres a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will. Let be.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : What I have done, that might your nature, honor and exception roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. Was't Hamlet wronged, Laertes? Never Hamlet. If Hamlet from himself be taken away and when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it then? His madness? If it be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged. His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.

• Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : My honourable lord... I will most humbly take my leave of you.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal. Except my life. Except my life. Except my life.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : I'll follow it!

  Horatio : What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o'er his base into the sea, and there assume some other horrible form, which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness? Think of it!

• Horatio : Look, my Lord, it comes!

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, thou comest in such a questionable shape... that I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet, King, Father. Royal Dane, oh, answer me!

• Gertrude - The Queen : Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee, stay with us. Go not to Wittenberg.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : All is not well. I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come! Till then, sit still my soul. Foul deeds will rise.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Oh, God. God! How weary, stale flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world. Fie ont, ah, fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely. That it should come to this.

• Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : Do you know me, my lord?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : Not I, my lord.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Then I would you were so honest a man.

  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain : Honest, my lord?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Aye, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature; to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Oh, horrible. Horrible! Most horrible!

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Be the players ready?

• Gertrude - The Queen : Come, come. You answer with an idle tongue.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Go, go. You question with a wicked tongue.

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.

• Gertrude - The Queen : Why, how now, Hamlet?

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : What's the matter now?

• Gertrude - The Queen : Oh, Hamlet! Speak no more. Thou turnst mine eyes into my very soul, and there I see such black and grained spots as will not lose their stain.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Nay! But to live in the rank sweat of a lascivious bed, stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty.

  Gertrude - The Queen : Speak to me no more. These words like daggers enter into mine ears! No more, sweet Hamlet!

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Once more, good night. And when you are desirous to be blessed, I'll blessing beg of you. I must be cruel only to be kind.

• Gravedigger : This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull. The king's jester.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : This?

  Gravedigger : E'en that.

  Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Let me see. 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. But now how abhorred in my imagination it is. My gorge rises it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your jibes now? Your songs? Your gambols? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning?

• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark : Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core. Aye, in my heart of hearts.