There Is Nothing Either Good Or

These words are spoken by Hamlet in Act II, Scene 2 of Hamlet (c. 1600–1601), during his conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after they have been sent to spy on him. Hamlet is in a deeply cynical mood, dismissing Denmark as a "prison" and mocking the idea of a fixed moral order. The line anticipates later philosophical positions — it resonates with ideas in Montaigne, whom Shakespeare had read — and has been cited as an early articulation of the view that reality is constructed through perception rather than given by nature.