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.

quote by Ian McKellen
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Hamlet: Ay, but sir, 'While the grass grows,' -- the proverb is something musty.

classic line from the play Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: I once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair and labour'd much how to forget that learning, but, sir, now it did me yeoman's service.

classic line from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: These indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passeth show; these but the trappings and the suits of woe.

classic line from Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes between the pass and fell incensed points of mighty opposites.

classic line from the play Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Polonius: And I do think, or else this brain of mine hunts not the trail of policy so sure as it hath used to do, that I have found the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.

classic line from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
Rosencrantz: Why then, your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your mind.

classic lines from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaim'd their malefactions.

classic line from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in excellence; but, to know a man well, were to know himself.

classic line from the play Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

classic line from Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than TV golf.

quote by Jack Lemon
Added by Lucian Velea
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You have to get through the Hamlet hoop as a young actor. Your classical qualifications are based on the quality of your Hamlet. And then, as an older actor, you have to get through the Lear hoop. And I'm approaching the Lear hoop.

quote by Derek Jacobi
Added by Lucian Velea
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Hamlet: Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.

classic lines from the play Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor’s at the stake.

classic line from the play Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 4, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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An Interpretation

Now Lonergan appears upon the boards,
And Truth and Error sheathe their lingual swords.
No more in wordy warfare to engage,
The commentators bow before the stage,
And bookworms, militant for ages past,
Confess their equal foolishness at last,
Reread their Shakspeare in the newer light
And swear the meaning's obvious to sight.
For centuries the question has been hot:
Was Hamlet crazy, or was Hamlet not?
Now, Lonergan's illuminating art
Reveals the truth of the disputed 'part,'
And shows to all the critics of the earth
That Hamlet was an idiot from birth!

poem by Ambrose Bierce
Added by Poetry Lover
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Hamlet: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.

classic lines from the play Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

classic line from the play Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Queen Gertrude: O Hamlet, speak no more: Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; and there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct.

classic lines from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 4 by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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Hamlet: He does well to commend it himself; there are no tongues else for ’s turn.
Horatio: This lapwing runs aways with the shell on his head.

classic lines from the play Hamlet, script by William Shakespeare (1599)
Added by Dan Costinaş
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I played Hamlet, I played Chekhov and Ibsen and all the classics.

quote by Harvey Korman
Added by Lucian Velea
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