Hamlet Quotes in Last Action Hero (1993)

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Hamlet Quotes:

  • [Jack Slater is Hamlet]

    Hamlet: Hey Claudius! You killed my father! Big mistake!

    Narrator: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet is taking out the trash.

    Old Man: Stay thy hand, fair prince.

    Hamlet: [shooting him] Who said I'm fair?

    Narrator: No one is going to tell this sweet prince good night.

    Hamlet: To be or not to be? Not to be.

  • Hamlet: Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.

    Ramirez: Sir... whatever you gentlemen felt for each other when your friend was still alive... is certainly none of my affair.

    Hamlet: [breaks character, turns] What's your fucking game, shithead?

    Ramirez: Shithead? What's a shithead?

  • [Ramirez has been resurrected on stage in the middle of a performance of Hamlet. The actor playing Hamlet tries to continue]

    Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorrick. I knew him Horatio...

    Ramirez: Actually, it's Ramirez

  • Hamlet: [Laurence Harvey, onstage] "To be..."

    Youngman Grand, Esq.: [loud enough to be heard, turning to Sir Guy] I've seen it.

    Hamlet: "Or not to be... that is the question."

    Youngman Grand, Esq.: Shakespeare, right?

    Sir Guy Grand KG, KC, CBE: [whispers, eyes toward the stage] Right, and double right.

  • Hamlet: A little more than kin and less than kind.

  • Hamlet: For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

  • Hamlet: 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, or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.

  • Hamlet: Frailty, thy name is woman!

  • Hamlet: I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire! Why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

  • Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio - a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung these lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

  • Hamlet: But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

  • Claudius: Where is Polonius?

    [Strikes Hamlet with the back of his hand]

    Hamlet: In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him in the other place yourself!

  • Hamlet: O, from this time forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!

  • Hamlet: I lov'd Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum.

  • Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

  • Hamlet: Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not "seems."

  • Hamlet: The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

  • Hamlet: Now mother, what's the matter?

    Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

    Hamlet: Mother, you have *my* father much offended.

    Gertrude: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

    Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue!

    Gertrude: Why, how now, Hamlet?

    Hamlet: What's the matter now?

    Gertrude: Have you forgot me?

    Hamlet: No by the rood, not so! You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife!

  • Hamlet: What man dost thou dig it for?

    First Gravedigger: For no man sir.

    Hamlet: For what woman then?

    First Gravedigger: For none neither.

    Hamlet: *Who* is to be buried here?

    First Gravedigger: One that was a woman sir, but rest her soul, she's dead.

  • Polonius: My lord I will take my leave of you.

    Hamlet: You cannot sir, take from me anything I would more willingly part withal. Except my life. Except my life

    [grins crazily]

    Hamlet: Except my life.

    Polonius: Fare you well, my lord.

    Hamlet: [to himself, quite sane] These tedious old fools.

  • Hamlet: If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story.

  • Hamlet: If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

  • Hamlet: I myself am indifferent honest, yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.

  • Hamlet: Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!

  • Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in the shape of a camel?

    Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.

    Hamlet: Methinks it's like a weasel.

    Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.

    Hamlet: Or like a whale.

    Polonius: Very like a whale.

  • Hamlet: Whose grave is this sir?

    First Gravedigger: Mine sir.

    [Resumes singing his ditty]

    Hamlet: [Interrupts] I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in't.

    First Gravedigger: You lie out on't sir, and therefore it is not yours. For my part I do not lie ins't and yet it is mine.

    Hamlet: Thou dost lie in't to be in't, and say 'tis thine. 'Tis for the dead not for the quick, therefore thou liest.

    First Gravedigger: 'Tis a quick lie, sir. 'Twill away again from me to you.

  • Polonius: How dost my good lord Hamlet?

    [Turns a corner and is shocked by a mask-wearing Hamlet]

    Hamlet: Well. God a' mercy.

    Polonius: [Astonished at Hamlet's peculiar behavior] Do you know me my lord?

    Hamlet: Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.

  • Hamlet: Hide fox and all after!

  • Hamlet: Hoist with his own petard.

  • Hamlet: 'Tis now the very witching time of night, when church yards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.

  • [last lines]

    Hamlet: The rest is silence.

    Horatio: Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

  • [Hamlet descends the stairs to the sepulcher, to visit his father's tomb. His eyes are red with grief. He looks around warily, as though wondering if the Ghost might appear. He's depressed on many accounts: he's just frightened Ophelia, whom he loves; he himself is frightened by the Ghost's command to kill his uncle; he's been playing a madman all this time in order to kill his uncle, and he is afraid to continue to do any of these things]

    Hamlet: 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, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep no more...

    [He gazes at the skeletons residing in niches of the sepulcher]

    Hamlet: ...and by a sleep to say...

    [He finally comes to his father's tomb]

    Hamlet: ...we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to!

    [Hamlet rests his fists upon his father's tomb, closes his eyes, and shapes his hands into prayer position]

    Hamlet: 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep. To sleep -

    [in alarm at the idea, he stands and paces]

    Hamlet: perchance to dream! Aye, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life.

    [He lays his head upon his father's tomb]

    Hamlet: [viciously] For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin?

    [He stares at the ground, near to weeping]

    Hamlet: Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?

    [He looks at the ceiling, or to Heaven]

    Hamlet: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...

  • Polonius: Ophelia, walk you here.

    [to Claudius]

    Polonius: Gracious, so please you, we will bestow ourselves.

    [to Ophelia, handing her a book of prayers]

    Polonius: Read on this book. He is coming. Let us withdraw, my lord.

    [Hamlet sees Polonius and Claudius sneaking away to hide and eavesdrop. Ophelia looks up and sees him approaching the staircase down to her; she obediently starts walking back and forth, pretending to study the prayers. Hamlet has a pretty good idea what is going on]

    Hamlet: Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.

    Ophelia: Good my lord, how does your honor for this many a day?

    Hamlet: I humbly thank you, well.

    [He starts to walk away and she hurries after him]

    Ophelia: My lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longèd long to redeliver. I pray you now receive them.

    Hamlet: No, not I. I never gave you aught.

    Ophelia: My honored lord, you know right well you did, and with them, words of so sweet breath composed as made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, take these again. There, my lord.

    [He takes the necklaces, staring at her, then begins to chuckle]

    Hamlet: Ha, ha! Are you honest?

    Ophelia: My lord?

    Hamlet: Are you fair?

    Ophelia: What means your lordship?

    Hamlet: That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

    Ophelia: [spiritedly] Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

    Hamlet: I did love you once.

    Ophelia: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

    Hamlet: [Pretending contempt] You should not have believed me. I loved you not! Where's your father?

    [Hiding behind a pillar, watching, Claudius and Polonius jump in fear. Horrified to lie to him, Ophelia gives us the first wild-eyed look of fright that will accompany her when she goes mad]

    Ophelia: At home, my lord.

    Hamlet: [loudly, for the eavesdroppers] Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. I have heard of your paintings, well enough. God hath 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.

    [He shoves her at the wall and she gasps]

    Hamlet: It hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriage. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.

    [He throws the necklaces at her]

  • Hamlet: The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

  • Hamlet: [to Ophelia] Get thee to a nunnery!

  • Hamlet: Frailty, thy name is woman.

  • Hamlet: O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

  • Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorrick, I knew him.

  • Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

  • Hamlet: Sir, to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

  • Hamlet: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

  • [furiously using his sword to "write" the following line in the stone battlements of the castle]

    Hamlet: I set it down, that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!

  • Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

    Hamlet: [looks down at his book] Words...

    [looks at the cover of the book]

    Hamlet: words...

    [looks up at Polonius]

    Hamlet: Words.

  • Hamlet: The play's the thing, with which I'll catch the conscience of the king.

  • Gertrud: [Hamlet is discussing with his mother] What I am going to say now is not just a whim. You'll understand if you just want to. I loved your father as much as you can demand a good wife to love a tyrant who never returns love, giving you as much passion as he gives to the winter tires of his car.

    Hamlet: I ask you not to tarnish my father's memory.

    Gertrud: I've been silent too long to gloss over the facts.

    Gertrud: Then get to the point.

    Gertrud: I'm going to marry Klaus. I love him.

  • Polonius: How are you, Hamlet?

    Hamlet: Alright, thank God.

    Polonius: Do you know me?

    Hamlet: Sure, You are the butcher.

    Polonius: No, I'm not.

    Hamlet: I wish you were.

    Polonius: Why?

    Hamlet: It would make you more respectable. Only one man in 10,000 is respectable and even he's nothing much to boast about.

    Polonius: That's true.

    Hamlet: For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead bitch it's worth the carrion to kiss it. You got a daughter?

    Polonius: Yes.

    Hamlet: Don't let her take too much sun, for it's nobler to give. Tell her about the facts of life or she might burst pregnant.

    Polonius: You're talking about my daughter? In my youth I, too suffered much for love. Almost just like you. What are you reading?

    Hamlet: Words, words, words.

    Polonius: About what?

    Hamlet: About it.

    Polonius: I mean: what's in the magazine?

    Hamlet: Gossip. Even if it was true, it's disgusting to print it because one day you'll be as old as I am, if you go backward like a crab.

    Polonius: I see. I must go. Will we meet again?

    Hamlet: I can't promise you anything else with as much pleasure, butcher except mu life, except my life, except my life.

    Polonius: Mad!

Browse more character quotes from Last Action Hero (1993)

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