Hamlet Religion Quotes

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1. Marcellus to Horatio about the Ghost leaving when the cock crows. He talks about the significance of the crowing of the cock in Christian tradition. At the celebration of the birth of Jesus the rooster is said to crow all night long, no ghost dares go wandering and the night is safe from fairies’ spells and witches.

‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
…but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool’d.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius mockingly labels Hamlet’s excessive grief for his father as “unmanly.” It goes against God’s wishes and demonstrates a soft heart and uneducated mind, he tells the prince.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. In Hamlet’s first soliloquy we learn that, following the death of his father and his mother’s hasty remarriage to his father’s brother, Hamlet believes his life is pointless. He wishes that God had not made suicide a sin. Even before he hears the shocking revelations about the manner of his father’s death, Hamlet is clearly deeply troubled. Note the use of a metaphor comparing Hamlet’s flesh to melting ice, indicating how depressed he feels.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. We first meet Ophelia in this scene. Laertes has been warning her not to trust Hamlet’s romantic declarations. Using a metaphor, Ophelia promises to keep Laertes’ lesson “as watchman to my heart.” But she also deftly turns her brother’s religious advice back on him. For he is about to depart for study in Paris, a city full of moral temptations for a young man. Ophelia tells him not to preach like a hypocritical pastor, showing her the “thorny way to heaven” while himself treading the “primrose path” of pleasures. After warning her to keep her chastity, she tells him not to be a “puffed and reckless libertine.”

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.

I am thy father’s spirit;
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. – List, list, O, list!

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. The Ghost speaking to Hamlet, claiming to be his recently dead father. He says he is destined to walk around the land of the living by night, and spend daylight hours in the holy fire of Purgatory for his unspecified "foul crimes." If he was not forbidden to do so, he would tell Hamlet what it is like in Purgatory, a tale that would make his hair stand on end.

‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. The Ghost reveals to Hamlet that his uncle Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father, by poisoning him while he was asleep. He invokes Biblical imagery from the Book of Genesis here, comparing Claudius to the snake in the garden of Eden that caused Adam and Eve’s fall from grace. The people of Denmark have been led to believe that King Hamlet was killed by a poisonous snake bite, this is the biggest lie of all in Hamlet and told so that Claudius could have the crown and Queen and not pay any consequences. The Ghost exposes the falseness and hypocrisy of King Claudius’ court at Elsinore.

With devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Polonius tells Ophelia that we use the appearance of religious devotion and piety to mask the evil within ourselves. He is giving a prayer book to Ophelia to read, demanding that she pretend to read it for an encounter with Hamlet. Claudius has sent for Hamlet, who will “accidentally” run into Ophelia. The plan is for Polonius and Claudius to hide behind a tapestry to spy on Hamlet, hoping to learn if his strange behavior is because he is sick with love. Polonius is at his hypocritical and deceitful best here, playing the misogynist who cynically uses his daughter for his own ends to ingratiate himself with the King. This is after earlier ordering Ophelia to end her relationship with Hamlet.

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.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do ‘t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3. Hamlet contemplates killing Claudius to exact revenge for his father’s murder, now that he has the opportunity. But he is overwhelmed by his indecisiveness and does what he does best – he procrastinates. Killing Claudius while he is praying and asking for forgiveness for his sins would send him to heaven, which is not his idea of revenge, Hamlet feels.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3. Claudius admits that he has not been praying in earnest, when asking God for forgiveness for his brother’s murder. His words reach to heaven, but his thought are in hell. Ironically Hamlet has just decided not to kill Claudius during prayer because he believes this would despatch his uncle straight to heaven. But he doesn’t realize Claudius’ prayer for forgiveness is false.
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