Top 45 Hamlet Play Quotes
#1. I look at it like this: that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written two or three plays about the Kennedy family, and actors would traditionally play JFK like they Hamlet or King Lear. They just would. I mean, people have played JFK, and they'll play him long after I have.
Rob Lowe
#2. If I ever play Hamlet, it'll be in a dress!
Matt Lucas
#3. King Lear is undoubtedly the greatest play ever written by Shakespeare - or anybody else for that matter. Hamlet is certainly great, but it doesn't contain as many elements of humanity as we see in Lear.
Paul Scofield
#4. Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.
Alan Cumming
#5. Good Gad! It looks like the last act of Hamlet in here.
Turnip banged his head against his clenched fists, making inarticulate moaning noises.
Pinchingdale gave him an odd look. 'I had no idea you felt so strongly about the play, Fitzhugh.
Lauren Willig
#6. HAMLET
I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
GUILDENSTERN
My lord, I cannot.
HAMLET
I pray you.
GUILDENSTERN
Believe me, I cannot.
HAMLET
I do beseech you.
GUILDENSTERN
I know no touch of it, my lord.
HAMLET
It is as easy as lying.
William Shakespeare
#7. 'Born to play? Hmmm. Probably Romeo ... or Hamlet, I guess. Also, I'd be a great Alexander the Great.
David Carradine
#8. I have no desire to play King Lear or Hamlet. I never had a grand ambition. I just followed my nose.
Liam Neeson
#9. I look forward to the day when indigenous actors can play Hamlet and Ophelia and not just Othello and Desdemona.
Shari Sebbens
#10. The music I was writing for 'Hamlet' needed to be very simple because there was so much going on with the dialogue in that play, so I felt like the music had to complement that - so that carried on through; I was working on the soundtrack and the album simultaneously.
Sarah Blasko
#11. I not only loved studying theater, I loved being a theater major. It gave me an excuse to brood, to grow a beard, to wear black 'at' people. I didn't just want to play Hamlet, I wanted to be Hamlet.
Stephen Colbert
#12. Hamlet, I will argue, is a play about reading and misreading, about the difficulties of interpretation.
William Shakespeare
#13. Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village-green, With magic tints to harmonize the scene. Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke When round the ruins of their ancient oak The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play, And games and carols closed the busy day.
Samuel Rogers
#14. I'm just an entertainer. All I want to be is funny. I never aspired to play Hamlet.
Danny Kaye
#15. Doing Shakespeare in the Park has always been a dream. Everyone else says Hamlet, but I want to play Romeo.
Aaron Yoo
#16. I saw Derek Jacobi play Hamlet when I was 17, and he directed me as Hamlet when I was 27, and I directed him as Claudius in 'Hamlet' when I was 35, and I'm hoping we meet again in some other production of Hamlet before we both toddle off.
Kenneth Branagh
#17. I'm on the list that I thought I'd never be on. I'm not sitting here thinking, 'God, I might get this part' or 'is it too late for me to play Hamlet?' It's really about: who do I get to work with? There's so many people on that list.
Joel Edgerton
#18. That's why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it's a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is.
Cate Blanchett
#19. I'd not really ever expected to play anything like 'Hamlet.' I hadn't seen myself as a natural Hamlet, whatever a natural Hamlet is, and I quickly realised there is no such thing.
Rory Kinnear
#20. By this edition of HAMLET I hope to help the student of Shakspere to understand the play - and first of all Hamlet himself, whose spiritual and moral nature are the real material of the tragedy, to
George MacDonald
#21. The tragedy of "Hamlet" is critically considered to be the masterpiece of dramatic poetry; and the tragedy of "Hamlet" is also, according to the testimony of every sort of manager, the play of all others which can invariably be depended on to fill a theater.
George Augustus Henry Sala
#22. Perhaps because my background is theatrical, I have a great affinity with the classics. Hamlet has always been a character of great interest to me and a character I would really love to play. Or a character in a Tennessee Williams play, maybe Tom in 'The Glass Menagerie.'
Adhir Kalyan
#23. The only way to find the best actor would be to let everybody play Hamlet and let the best man win.
Humphrey Bogart
#24. You'd never play Hamlet if you started worrying about who's played it before you.
Matthew Macfadyen
#25. 'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.
Meghan O'Rourke
#26. My favorite play is Hamlet. It was my first love when it comes to Shakespeare, and I've read it and seen it performed more than just about every other Shakespeare play. I've had the "To be or not to be" monologue memorized since I was 15, and it's just really close to my heart.
Ian Doescher
#27. I am not one of those people who like to play. I don't. I'm neither coy, nor do I, in any way, want to ask anyone to put up with somebody playing Hamlet.
Lou Dobbs
#28. I was so scared of going back to the theatre after 'Hamlet.' I didn't know if I'd do a play again because I was afraid of the power of it.
Alan Cumming
#29. The actor is too prone to exaggerate his powers; he wants to play Hamlet when his appearance is more suitable to King Lear.
Sarah Bernhardt
#30. I would love to play Henry IV, Henry V, and Hamlet.
Finn Wittrock
#31. A brilliant treatment of the history of Purgatory in England and its survivals and echoes throughout Shakespeare's plays, above all Hamlet.
Carol Zaleski
#32. When you are at the right age to play Hamlet you are still to young and immature to play it. It is much later, when you get the life experience and the emotional power, that you understand Hamlet or Macbeth.
Anthony Hopkins
#33. I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.
Ian McKellen
#34. I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.
Ian Doescher
#35. I have felt some twinges recently, about parts I wanted to play that I may be getting too old and fat to do. 'Hamlet,' for example - maybe that's gone. I would love to play Richard II.
Matthew Macfadyen
#36. The ordinary price paid for a new play was less than seven pounds; Oldys, on what authority is not known, says that Shakespeare received only five pounds for "Hamlet.
William Shakespeare
#38. I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than TV golf.
Jack Lemmon
#39. I saw Hamlet Prince of Denmark played; but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age.
John Evelyn
#40. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass..." Hamlet.
William Shakespeare
#42. Yes, it's annoying that Hamlet doesn't kill his stepfather ten minutes into the play, but if he did kill his stepfather ten minutes into the play, there wouldn't be a play. He has to be annoying, if you will, and not do what would be the thing to do.
Dallas Roberts
#43. There are a thousand ways of playing a good classic. If it were effective, I would play Hamlet on a trapeze.
Orson Welles
#44. Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why
Dustin Hoffman
#45. The longer I've been doing this, the more I've realized that you have no idea what kinds of roles are possible for you - dream roles can take you by surprise. That being said, I need to play Hamlet one day. I'd also love to be in a play that I have written myself.
Jake Epstein
