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Word Nerd: "quietus"
Context and Language Videos
Act 3,
Scene 1
Lines 74-83

An explanation of the word "quietus" in Act 3, Scene 1 of myShakespeare's Hamlet.

myShakespeare | Hamlet 3.1 Word Nerd: Quietus

Hamlet

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make    
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,     
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?    
Video Transcript: 

SARAH: Quietus is short for the Latin phrase quietus est, which literally means, "he is quiet." But in classical Latin, the phrase also meant, "he is discharged of his debt, he is paid up". Throughout the medieval period, if you wrote "quietus est" on an account, it meant that the account had been paid.

RALPH: So, when Shakespeare writes, "when he himself might his quietus make", he means settling one's debt to God. Since God lends us our life, we can only settle that debt by ending our life, and returning what we've borrowed.

SARAH: So in this line, Hamlet is saying that we can settle our accounts with God by using a dagger — in other words, by dying.

RALPH: In modern English, quietus means death, but it only means this today because of this line in Hamlet. Similarly, the expression "to give or put the quietus" has come to mean to put an end to something.