Hamlet (1948)

Basil Sydney: Claudius, The King

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Quotes 

• 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.

• Claudius - The King : My words fly up. My thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

• Claudius - The King : Oh, my offense is rank. It smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon it: a brother's murder. Pray, can I not, though inclination be as sharp as will. What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with brother's blood? Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow? Oh, what form of prayer can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder? That cannot be, since I am still possessed of those effects for which I did the murder: my crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. Oh, wretched state. Oh, bosom black as death! Help, angels. All may yet be well.

• 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.

• 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.

• Claudius - The King : Prepare thyself. The bark is ready, the wind sets fair and everything is bent for England.

• Claudius - The King : Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

• Claudius - The King : Our sometimes sister, now our Queen, have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, in equal scale weighing delight and dole, taken to wife.

• Claudius - The King : Where the offense is, let the great axe fall.

  The Royal Court Of Denmark - Laertes,his Son : It shall be so.

• Claudius - The King : That we would do, we should do, when we would.

• Claudius - The King : Good Gertrude, do not drink!