Shakespeare

From Shakespeare's Macbeth, 1605:

LADY MACBETH
We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.

Meaning

Be steadfast and of good courage.




This quotation from Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare's best-known lines. Mark Antony delivers a eulogy in honour of the recently murdered Julius Caesar:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.

Caesar had been assassinated by a group of conspirators led by Brutus. Brutus had previously delivered a speech in which he claimed that the murder had been done in the name of freedom. In a clever speech, Antony turned the mob against Brutus and the other assassins.

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603. Horatio describes to Hamlet the appearance of his father's ghost:

Hamlet: What, look'd he frowningly?

Horatio: A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.



From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1594:

JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.


Meaning

What matters is what something is, not what it is called.



From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, 1601:

DUKE ORSINO:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! 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? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.



This line derives from Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1600:

LORD POLONIUS

'Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?'



To be, or not to be, that is the question


To be or not to be is probably the best-known line from all drama or literature. Certainly, if anyone is asked to quote a line of Shakespeare this is the one that first comes to mind for most people. It is, of course, from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, 1603 (Shakespeare's actual title is - The tragedie of Hamlet, prince of Denmarke):

HAMLET:

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: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
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 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;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

I love the extent of exploration shakespeare's mind and heart go to, the granduer of dialouge and the passion that drives his work.

Lorna Cameron