Hamlet/Quotes

"Did Ophelia ask Hamlet to bed? Was Gertrude incestuously wed? Is anything certain? By the fall of the curtain Almost everyone's certainly dead."

- A. Cinna, found in The Penguin Book of Limericks

"Naomi: Hamlet's basically a teenage boy. He's got all these desires, but he doesn't have the bottle to reach out for them. So, he goes mad, and wanks off about Ophelia, and ends up so boring, somebody has to kill him!

Josie: I'm not sure that's right. There's no wanking in Hamlet.

Naomi: Yeah, there is. Loads. Only they call it "soliloquising"."

- Skins

"Cheer up, Hamlet; chin up, Hamlet; buck up, you melancholy Dane!

So your uncle is a cad who murdered Dad and married Mum?

That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become!

So wise up, Hamlet; rise up, Hamlet; perk up and sing a new refrain!

Your incessant monologuing fills the castle with ennui.

Your antic disposition is embarrassing to see.

And by the way, you sulky brat, the answer is 'to be'!

You're driving poor Ophelia insane.

So shut up, you rogue and peasant; grow up, it's most unpleasant; cheer up, you melancholy Dane!"

- Slings and Arrows

""Half of what he says means something else, and the other half means nothing at all!""

- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

"''Higgeldy Piggeldy, Hamlet of Elsinore Ruffled the critics by Dropping this bomb: "Phooey on Freud and his Psychoanalysis -- Oedipus, Shmoedipus, I just loved Mom."''"

"Are the commentators on Hamlet really mad or only pretending to be mad?"

"I like to think that there's a little Hamlet in all of us. Not that melancholy stuff. Or being a prince. But I've always believed that we should have a little Danish in us. Especially in the morning."

- -- Leslie Nielsen

"An interesting anagram: "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." becomes.... "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.""

"''Green Eggs and Hamlet by Tim Hnetka

I ask to be, or not to be. That is the thing, I ask of me. This sullied life, it makes me shudder. My unc' is boffing my dear mother. Would I, could I take my life? Could I, should I, end this strife? Should I jump out of a plane? Or lie down in front of a train? Should I from a cliff just leap? Could I put myself to sleep? Shoot myself, or take some poison? Maybe try self immolation? To shudder off this mortal coil, I could stab myself with a foil, Or slash my wrists while in the bath? Would it help to end my wrath? To sleep, to dream, aye, there's the rub. I'd drop a toaster in my tub. Would they be happy, with me dead? Could I murder them instead? These thoughts take much consideration, I'm the prince of procrastination.''"

"Prince Hamlet thought uncle a traitor For having it off with his mater. "Revenge Dad or not?"'s The gist of the plot. He did -- nine soliloquies later."

- Stanley J. Sharpless

"Will you kill him in his bed? Stick a dagger in his head? I would not, could not kill the king. I would not do this evil thing. I will not wed this girl, you see. So get her to a nunnery."

- Green Eggs and Hamlet