Most Beautiful Lines from Hamlet by Shakespeare: Iconic Quotes, Meaning & Analysis

S ome lines in literature feel less written than overheard. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is full of them. The play is haunted, searching, and almost unbearably alive to the weight of thought, and its most memorable passages still stop readers in their tracks more than four hundred years later. What follows is a selection of thirty of the most beautiful and enduring longer passages, presented with enough context to feel their original force and enough close attention to see why they continue to work. Each quotation is followed by a Meaning section and an Analysis section, each developed at length so that the language can be given the space it deserves. 1. O, That This Too Too Solid Flesh Would Melt O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, That grows to…