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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Gertrude Quotes

All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Gertrude has moved on after the death of her husband King Hamlet and she is asking her son to do the same. She speaks these words about human mortality as a concerned mother trying to bring comfort to Hamlet and get him to end his grieving.

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not "seems."

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet gives this annoyed response when Gertrude asks him why his father’s death “seems” to be affecting him so much. Irritated by his mother’s use of the word, Hamlet is genuinely upset about his father’s death and doesn’t just “seem” to be.

Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet tortures himself with recollections of his mother’s deep devotion to his father when he was alive. She loved him so much that the more time she spent with him the more she wanted to be with him, he recalls.

A little month.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet is furious that a month after his father’s funeral, before the shoes his mother wore to it were old and worn, she wed his father’s brother.

Like Niobe, all tears.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet, speaking about his mother after his father’s death, compares her in a simile to Niobe. Niobe was Queen of Thebes and because of her arrogance the gods slew her children. Feeling sorry for her, Zeus turned her to stone, but even after that her tears continued to flow from the rock. Unlike Niobe, however, Gertrude’s grief didn’t last long and she very quickly remarried Claudius.

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet is not only disgusted with his mother’s hasty remarriage soon after his father’s death, but also because he believes that she has committed “incest” by wedding his father’s brother. In Shakespearean times such a marriage of close relatives would have been regarded as incest. Personification is used to good effect in this passage, with sheets being described as “incestuous.”

It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet believes his mother’s marriage to Claudius and the manner in which it came about is an ominous omen for Denmark. There is a hint of foreshadowing here of the bad things to come.

O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. The Ghost of old King Hamlet, expressing shock and disappointment in his wife for not taking her marriage vows to him seriously and marrying his brother.

Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. The Ghost tells Hamlet to leave his mother Gertrude out of his revenge plans and not to seek retribution on her. Rather he should leave her to the torment of her own conscience and let heaven and God judge her fate.

O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables, – meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain:
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. Hamlet is enraged after the Ghost’s revelation that his father was murdered by his own brother Claudius, who took the crown and Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, as his Queen. He describes his mother as wicked, and Claudius as a smiling villain. Hamlet’s comment of how one can smile and be a villain is a perfect example of how people can be two-faced and hypocritical and hide their true nature from the world.

More matter, with less art.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Queen Gertrude interrupts the long-winded Polonius to tell him to stop embroidering things and get to the point, when he begins speaking about Hamlet’s madness.

No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Hamlet says this to Ophelia as she attempts to return his love letters and "remembrances." Although Hamlet is speaking to Ophelia, his anger in this Nunnery Scene is at his mother following her "incestuous" and hasty marriage to Claudius. He now distrusts all women because of what he believes is his mother Gertrude’s adultery and he directs his cruel remarks to the innocent Ophelia.

Are you honest?…
Are you fair?…
For the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to be a bawd…
I did love you once.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Hamlet to Ophelia, asking her if she is pure and beautiful. He says that the power of beauty is more likely to change a good girl into a whore, and adds that he used to love her. He is very insulting to Ophelia’s chastity. This is an example of dramatic irony, as Hamlet is really venting his anger towards his mother Gertrude, being disgusted by the process of love and marriage, and believing that beauty corrupts virtue. The cruel and cynical outburst to Ophelia is misdirected here, she is being used by all the men in the scene, her father Polonius, Claudius and by Hamlet to vent his frustrations towards his mother.

I say we will have no more marriages.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Hamlet is probably referring to any promise of marriage he made to Ophelia, and to his disgust at the "incestuous" and hasty marriage of his mother Gertrude to Claudius.

Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Hamlet is speaking ironically about his mother looking so cheerful, despite the fact that his father died only a short time ago.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Gertrude to Hamlet, asked how she is enjoying the play created by Hamlet. Gertrude criticizes the overacting of the Player Queen, claiming as excessive her promises of love to the Player King and vow never to remarry – which she does. She believes the Player Queen appears hypocritical. Ironically Queen Gertrude in real life also remarries after King Hamlet’s death.

By and by is easily said.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. After the play Polonius tells Hamlet that the Queen wishes to speak to him. Hamlet says he’ll be there soon, then adds that it is easy to say soon.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Hamlet is angry that his mother married before the mourning period for his father’s death was over. But even more furious that she married his uncle, now outed as the murderer of his father. Speaking metaphorically, he says that he will stab his mother, not with daggers, but with words.

I will speak daggers to her.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. Hamlet will attack his mother with words, but he will not hurt or kill her. He uses a metaphor to compare the sharp words he will use to daggers.

GERTRUDE: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET: Mother, you have my father much offended.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet’s mother rebukes Hamlet for offending his father (step-father Claudius). But Hamlet turns her words back on her by accusing her of offending his real father (old Hamlet).

You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife;
And – would it were not so! – you are my mother.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. In the showdown between Hamlet and his mother over her marrying Claudius and sharing his bed, he tells Gertrude to her face that he wishes she were not his mother.

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. When Gertrude accuses Hamlet of a bloody deed in killing Polonius, he retorts back with these jeering words about Claudius’ crime and her own shame.

Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. In marrying her dead husband’s brother, Hamlet says that his mother has turned virtue into hypocrisy. He accuses her of removing the metaphorical rose on the face of true love and replacing it with a metaphorical blister.

Marriage vows
As false as dicers’ oaths.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet tries to make Gertrude feel guilty, brands his mother’s marriage vows with Claudius as fake.

A rhapsody of words.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet accuses his mother Gertrude, by her marrying Claudius, of turning religion into a bunch of words.

You cannot call it love, for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet says his mother could not have married Claudius out of love, because at her age romantic passion is weak and the heart obeys reason.

Speak no more;
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul.
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Gertrude pleads with her son to stop, as he is making her look into her soul and she is frightened by what she sees.

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an unseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet paints a crude picture of his mother Gertrude and Claudius having physical relations, labeling it as dirty and gross.

These words like daggers enter in mine ears.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Learning for the first time from Hamlet that Claudius murdered her first husband, Gertrude realizes what she has done. She is caught between her powerful husband and bitter son. In a simile, she describes Hamlet’s words as being like daggers piercing her.

A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet unmasks Claudius to Gertrude as a murderer who stole the crown and kingdom and is not worth a fraction of her previous husband. He is trying to torture his mother with guilt.

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