You do not need to memorise a hundred lines of Hamlet. You need about thirty, chosen well, understood deeply and deployed flexibly. This guide to the Hamlet key quotes gives you exactly that: the quotations that matter most, a precise analysis of how each one works, and a clear sense of which themes and essay questions it can serve.

Part of our Hamlet Revision Guide series.

Table of Contents

1. How to learn quotes that actually earn marks
2. Section A: Corruption, surveillance and appearance (quotes 1 to 7)
3. Section B: Revenge, action and conscience (quotes 8 to 14)
4. Section C: Madness and perception (quotes 15 to 18)
5. Section D: Death, mortality and the human condition (quotes 19 to 25)
6. Section E: Gender, relationships and cruelty (quotes 26 to 30)
7. Quick-reference: one quote, many essays
8. How to embed a quote: a model sentence
9. Sentence frames for analysis and evaluation
10. Five mistakes to avoid when using quotes
11. Your next step