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No Fear Translations of Shakespeare’s plays (along with audio!) and other classic works
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Act 1, Scene 2
“Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.”
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,”
For they are actions that a man might play.
But I have that within which passeth show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
When Hamlet’s mother Gertrude asks him why he still seems so upset about his father’s death, he replies that he doesn’t just “seem” to be in mourning, he has feelings within himself that surpass what other people can see from the outside. This quote resonates with many other parts of the play that suggest Hamlet has an unusually rich inner life—that he has more going on inside him than outsiders can see or understand. At the same time, the distinction Hamlet draws between how he seems and how he really is also resonates with the theme of deception that runs throughout the play: both Hamlet and Claudius go to great lengths to hide the truth about their actions and intentions, but so do most of the other characters.
O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Hamlet’s first soliloquy shows us that his feelings run much deeper than the people around him realize. Not only is he grieving for his father and angry with his mother for remarrying, he is sick of life itself. This quote is the play’s first hint that Hamlet might be suicidal, and the lines make clear that Hamlet is extremely troubled even before he hears the Ghost’s story.
Act 2, Scene 2
What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her?
In Act 2, Scene 2, Hamlet has just watched a player from a visiting acting troupe perform a speech describing the slaughter of King Priam and the subsequent grief of his widow, Queen Hecuba, at the end of the Trojan War. Hamlet expresses amazement that the actor can shed real tears out of sympathy for Hecuba, a figure from ancient history, and he contrasts the actor’s emotiveness with his own inaction when confronted with this father’s murder. Throughout the play, Hamlet wrestles with the idea that performances can seem more real than “reality.”
I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks.
I'll tent him to the quick. If 'a do blench,
I know my course.
In a soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 2, Hamlet announces his intention to use the troupe of players to set a trap for Claudius. He will instruct the troupe to perform a scene that reenacts Claudius' murder of the king. During the performance Hamlet will spy (or, as it actually happens in Act 3, he will have Horatio spy) on Claudius to see if his reaction to the scene incriminates him. If Claudius "do blench" (i.e., flinch), Hamlet will know what to do next.
The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King
Hamlet cannot decide whether his uncle is guilty of killing his father, so he decides to gather more evidence before he acts. Hamlet’s plan is to stage a play about a similar murder and watch his uncle’s reaction to the action onstage. But Hamlet has already repeatedly expressed his doubts that external appearances can be trusted, so we have reason to think that Hamlet may be deceiving himself in thinking that this stratagem will solve his problem.
Act 3, Scene 1
To be, or not to be? That is the question
In this line—one of the most famous line in all of Shakespeare—Hamlet asks whether it is better to exist or not to exist (whether he should commit suicide or continue living). Hamlet’s central struggle is with his own uncertainty. In soliloquies like this, we see that his uncertainty extends way beyond practical matters such as whether he should believe the Ghost about his uncle’s guilt, to philosophical questions about the value of life and death. In the end Hamlet decides it’s better to live, but only because he can’t be certain what happens after death.
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on ’t. It hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.
Here, Hamlet claims that the deceitfulness of women who wear makeup to look like something they’re not, is what has driven him mad. Hamlet’s madness is one of the key ambiguous elements of the play. While at certain times he explicitly says he is only pretending to be mad, at other times he seems possibly sincere about admitting he’s lost his grip on sanity. Throughout the play, Hamlet does seem genuinely troubled by his feelings about women, heaping abuse on both Gertrude and Ophelia with no particular purpose.
Act 3, Scene 2
Do you think I meant country matters?
When the court assembles to watch Hamlet’s play, Hamlet is supposed to be watching King Claudius for signs of guilt. Instead, he seems preoccupied with his misogynistic feelings about women. When Ophelia tries to ask him polite questions about the play, he responds with an inappropriate sexual joke involving the word country that Shakespeare’s audience would have understood instantly.
Act 4, Scene 3
Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to feed us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.
Hamlet says this to Claudius in Act 4, Scene 3, after being escorted into Claudius’s presence by armed guards after killing Polonius. Hamlet must convince Claudius that he is insane so that he won’t be held accountable for the murder or be perceived as a threat to Claudius, and his plan mostly works. Claudius does think Hamlet is dangerous, but he also believes that he’s out of his mind.
Hamlet’s words literally mean that the worm has the most exclusive diet (because it eats humans after they’re buried). Humans fatten other animals to eat, but they also fatten themselves to be eaten by worms. The words can be taken as evidence of Hamlet’s morbid obsession with death and decay (or as a reminder that we are all mortal) but they have a menacing undertone as well. They subtly reminding Claudius that he is mortal and will at some point be food for worms.
Act 5, Scene 2
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will—
Hamlet makes this remark to Horatio while explaining how he woke up on board the ship to England and on an impulse snuck in and stole the king’s letter from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The point Hamlet is making is that sometimes when we act impulsively or rashly things turn out well, showing that there is a divine power shaping our lives.
The significance of Hamlet’s remark is that it shows how much he has changed since the first half of the play. In the early acts, Hamlet had been indecisive but also very preoccupied with knowing the truth and determining the best thing to do. After he kills Polonius, and through the end of the play, Hamlet acts much more recklessly and is prepared to do things and let the chips fall where they may. This attitude carries him into the last act, where Claudius and Laertes have laid a trap for him in the fencing match, but Hamlet is no longer particularly concerned with what happens to himself and gladly accepts, hoping the outcome will somehow fall in his favor.
