“Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, / Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state, / Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, / With one auspicious and one dropping eye, / With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage, / In equal scale weighing delight and dole, / Taken to wife;”

“A little more than kin, and less than kind.”

“O most wicked speed, to post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! / It is not, nor it cannot come to good. / But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

“O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; / It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,— / A brother’s murder!”