‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.’Īnother of the most famous quotations from the play, and worth explaining. But to Hamlet, who has ‘lost all mirth’, he can find no joy in this wonderful creation – in himself or in other human beings – because he is feeling down. In another of Hamlet’s celebrated speeches, he marvels at the remarkable work of nature that is a human being. ‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!’ We discuss the quotation in more detail here. Indeed, the First Folio printed ‘our philosophy’ rather than ‘your’, and even if Hamlet did say ‘your’, he may have been using it in a colloquial sense (i.e., ‘your’ = ‘your average human understanding’). Horatio tells him that the whole appearance of the Ghost is ‘wondrous strange’, and Hamlet responds with these famous lines, which mean (roughly) that ‘there is more out there than we were mortals can possibly conceive or imagine’.īut it’s far from clear that Hamlet is attacking his friend for his narrow-mindedness here. One of the most widely debated (and misunderstood) quotations in Hamlet, this one is spoken by the title character, during Act 1 Scene 5 just after Hamlet has met with the Ghost. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ It means, of course, that something isn’t right: something in the state or kingdom is amiss. ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’.Ī minor character named Marcellus speaks this famous line in Act 1 of Hamlet. However, as so often with famous quotations from Hamlet, there are several ways to interpret this line we’ve discussed them here. When Hamlet asks his mother, Gertrude, what she think of the play, she responds, ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’, referring to the Queen in the play and her claims that she loves the King and would remain loyal to him even after his death. At Hamlet’s request, they agree to perform a play he himself has given them, whose plot closely mirrors what the Ghost reported happened (i.e., Hamlet’s father was murdered by his uncle). In Act 3 Scene 2, the Players or actors visiting the castle put on a play for the royal court. ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’.
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