Twin Cities Shakespeare Readers

Monday, July 27, 2026, 6-8 pm

Minneapolis Central Library
(Downtown Minneapolis)
300 Nicollet Mall - Room N-202
Minneapolis, MN 55401

There is underground parking beneath the library, off 4th St. S., for about $6. There is also paid parking at parking meters.

Go in to the Library lobby and then in to the book stacks area. Take the elevator or stairs up to the 2nd floor, then go all the way to the left.

During part of the meeting we expect to have a special guest from the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN, via Zoom.

This is a discussion about the play, not a reading or showing of it.

O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
– Hamlet; Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
– Polonius; Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
– Marcellus; Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
– Hamlet; Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
– Polonius (reading a letter from Hamlet); Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable; in action how like
an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – and
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
– Hamlet; Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

Brevity is the soul of wit.
– Polonius; Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
– Polonius; Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
– Hamlet; Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause…
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all
– Hamlet; Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

The lady protests too much, methinks.
– Gertrude; Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: A fellow of infinite jest.
– Hamlet; Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1

The rest is silence.
– Hamlet; Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2

Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
– Horatio; Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2