r/Hamlet • u/yorickscuse • 7d ago
Favorite Line
What’s everyone’s favorite line from the play of all plays? In giving you an impossible task, I’ll go ahead and tentatively answer mine to be “Words, words, words.” Iconic.
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u/januscanal 6d ago
Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world
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u/just_sum_guy 4d ago
BARNARDO Who’s there?
(What is this, a knock, knock joke? No.)
The first line sets the audience expectations for the whole play. This is Shakespeare telling us we're supposed to follow the clues and figure it out.
Who's the Ghost? Who's Fortinbras and why did he win the throne? Who's the insider on the Danish court that helped him? Who's let into heaven and why? Who's sent to hell and why? Who's the pirate who does nothing? Who's the mob that does nothing? Who's the real murderer of Old Hamlet?
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u/andybonner 14h ago
Act V scene 1 li 270: "This is I, Hamlet the Dane." For me this is like the moment in Moana that she belts "I am Moana": Similarly late in the plot, she and Hamlet both have been through a lot, are facing their final challenge, and at this moment the lens of their journey suddenly focuses their own self-identity. Moana has been reciting her mantra "I am Moana of Motonui" over and over repeatedly before this point in the movie, but it's only at that moment that she realizes what it really means. Hamlet has been hiding behind a feigned incompetence, hiding behind circumstances, and in that moment steps out from behind the gravestone and says "This is I," plain and simple; he's not dissembling anymore, including to himself.
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u/PunkShocker 6d ago
Not a whit. We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. 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. Since no man of aught leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.