Hamlet Foreshadowing Quotes

BERNARDO: Who’s there?
FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. In the opening lines of Hamlet, on duty sentinel Francisco asks the sentinel coming to relieve him Bernardo to identify himself. The guards have been seeing apparitions of the dead king Hamlet on Elsinore Castle’s ramparts in Denmark. It is midnight and there is an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty. The lines speak to the theme of appearance vs reality. They also foreshadow the transfer of power after the death of a king and themes of deception and corruption found throughout the play.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. Horatio says this to the castle guards after the sighting of the Ghost. Emphasizing the seriousness of the event, he recalls that before the mighty Julius Caesar was assassinated the dead rose from their graves and ran squeaking through the streets of Rome. This foreshadows the revenge that Hamlet will embark upon, leading to the death of his uncle, mother and himself.

POLONIUS: I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment leisure,
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to ‘t, I charge you: come your ways.
OPHELIA: I shall obey, my lord.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. A bullying and overbearing Polonius gets his way when he orders his daughter not to spend another moment of her leisure time with Hamlet or even talk to him. Despite Ophelia’s assurances that Hamlet’s behavior to her has been completely honorable, she feels she must comply with her father’s command. We see a father who is completely insensitive to a daughter’s feelings. This is foreshadowing of how he will later be only too willing to use Ophelia as bait to spy on Hamlet for King Claudius.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4. On the third appearance of the Ghost, a confused Hamlet’s initial response is to pray to the heavenly angels for protection. He conjectures that it could be an evil spirit brandishing hell fire. But the Ghost dressed in full armor reminds him so much of his father, that he starts to trust it. He addresses it as Hamlet, King and father. He demands to know why the Ghost has burst from his father’s grave to terrify their night and shake them with thoughts beyond their understanding. Foreshadowed here is the considerable influence the Ghost will have on Hamlet in later scenes.

Oh, ’tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
O heavy burden!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. When Polonius says that people act as if they were devoted to God in order to hide their sins, this strikes a nerve with Claudius. This passage is Claudius’ first admission of guilt in the play, likely brought about by the lies piling up all around him. He admits his hypocrisy too, as he speaks of the terrible things he has done and hidden with his "painted word" – lies and deceptions. He has been trying to legitimize his rule by seeming honest, when he is really not. This foreshadows Claudius’ anguished soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 3, when he tries in vain to pray for repentance.

O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Ophelia says this when Hamlet leaves the stage after his "Get thee to a nunnery" speech. She is convinced that he is mad and she mourns the downfall of one of Denmark’s most promising young men. In bewailing the lost of such a "noble mind," her own descent into madness is being foreshadowed. Ophelia’s speech is poignantly ironic. Having no inkling of Hamlet’s true motivations for his cruelty, mocking and rejection of her, nor any idea of the real reason for his madness, she sings his praises as a soldier, scholar and courtier.
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