William Shakespeare
People note exceptional verbal wit, psychological depth, and emotional range of English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, who included such historical works as
Richard II
, comedies like
Much Ado about Nothing
, and such tragedies as
Hamlet
,
Othello
, and
King Lear
and also composed 154 sonnets before people published posthumously
First Folio
, which collected and contained edition of 36 plays in 1623.
He and Anne Hathaway, his wife, married in 1582.
Forest of Arden, a formerly very extensive wooded area, north of Stratford-upon-Avon of central England provided the setting for
As You Like It
of Shakespeare.
People widely regard William Shakespeare (baptized 26 April 1564) as the greatest writer in the language and the pre-eminent dramatist of the world. They often call him simply the national "bard of Avon." Surviving writings consist of 38 dramas, two long narratives, and several other books. People translate them into every major living language and performed them most often.
Anne bore him Susanna Shakespeare, and twins Hamnet Shakespeare and Judith Shakespeare. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company, later known as the King's Men.
Shakespeare wrote throughout the span of his life. He started writing in 1589 and afterward averaged 1.5 dramas a year. From 1590, Shakespeare produced most of his known literature. He early mainly raised genres to the peak of sophistication and artistry before 1601. Next, he wrote mainly Macbeth and similar dramas, considered some of the finest examples in the language, until 1608. In his last phase, he wrote also known romances and collaborated until 1613.
He apparently retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later on day of Saint George, his 52nd birthday. Few records of private life of Shakespeare survive with considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether he wrote all attributed literature.
People inscribed many books of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues issued all but two now recognized dramas of Shakespeare. Shakespeare, the great master of language and literature authentically wrote not all that people attribute.
People respected Shakespeare in his own day, but his reputation rose to its present heights not until the nineteenth century. The romantics in particular acclaimed genius of Shakespeare, and the Victorians hero-worshiped him with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry." In the 20th century, new movements in scholarship and performance repeatedly adopted and rediscovered his dramas. People consistently perform and reinterpret his highly popular dramas today in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
“Pardon's the word to all.”
“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely), that neither having th' accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.”
“Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won”
“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
“Men must endureTheir going hence, even as their coming hither.Ripeness is all.”
“But men are men; the best sometimes forget.”
“When themind's free, The Body's delicate.”
“Fear not, Cesario, take thy fortunes up. Be that thou know'st thou art and then thou art as great as that thou fear'st.”
“A knavish speech sleeps in a fool's ear.”
“Tis safter to be that which we destroyThan by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”
“Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.”
“How does he love me?With adoration, with fertile tears,With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.”
“Where lies your text?Viola: In Orsino's bosom.Olivia: In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom?Viola: To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.”
“O, let us pay the time but needful woe,Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.This England never did, nor never shall,Lie at the proud foot of a conquerorBut when it first did help to wound itself.Now these her princes are come home again,Come the three corners of the world in arms,And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rueIf England to itself do rest but true.”
“El destino es el que baraja las cartas, pero nosotros somos los que jugamos”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder”
“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.”
“The stars govern our conditions”
“He that commends me to mine own contentCommends me to the thing I cannot get.I to the world am like a drop of waterThat in the ocean seeks another drop,Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:So I, to find a mother and a brother,In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.”
“Knock... and ask your heart what it doth know.”
“I have not slept.Between the acting of a dreadful thingAnd the first motion, all the interim isLike a phantasma, or a hideous dream:The Genius and the mortal instrumentsAre then in council; and the state of man,Like to a little kingdom, suffers thenThe nature of an insurrection.”
“I sworn thee fair, and thought thee brightWho art cold as Hel, as dark as night”
“Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes.”
“For thy sweet love remembr'd such wealth bringsThat then, I scorn to change my state with kings.”
“The worm is not to be trusted...”
“Where souls do couch on flowers we’ll hand in hand...”
“And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”
“To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently abeast!”
“Fill till the wine o'erswell the cup”
“The very instant I saw you, didMy heart fly to your service; there residesTo make me slave to it....mine unworthiness, that dare not offerWhat I desire to give, and much less takeWhat I shall die to want.”
“You cram these words into mine ears against The stomach of my sense.”
“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”
“If there were a sympathy in choice,War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,Making it momentary as a sound,Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,Brief as the lightning in the collied nightThat, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'The jaws of darkness do devour it up;So quick bright things come to confusion.”
“Totus mundus agit histrionem. (All the World's a Stage.)"[Motto of William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (f. 1599) and its acting company, The King's Men; taken from the first play to be performed on the new stage.]”
“Do all men kill all the things they do not love?Shylock: Hates any man the thing he would not kill?Bassanio: Every offence is not a hate at first.”
“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.”
“Highly fed and lowly taught.”
“I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.”
“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,And ye that on the sands with printless footDo chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly himWhen he comes back; you demi-puppets thatBy moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastimeIs to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoiceTo hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm’dThe noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vaultSet roaring war: to the dread rattling thunderHave I given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oakWith his own bolt; the strong-based promontoryHave I made shake and by the spurs pluck’d upThe pine and cedar: graves at my commandHave waked their sleepers, oped, and let ‘em forthBy my so potent art. But this rough magicI here abjure, and, when I have requiredSome heavenly music, which even now I do,To work mine end upon their senses thatThis airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,And deeper than did ever plummet soundI’ll drown my book.”
“Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none- I say none! I'll able 'em.”
“We that are true lovers run into strange capers.”
“Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady: we may pick a thousand salads ere we light on such another herb.”
“This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven.”
“He reads much;He is a great observer and he looksQuite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sortAs if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spiritThat could be moved to smile at any thing.Such men as he be never at heart's easeWhiles they behold a greater than themselves,And therefore are they very dangerous.”
“I pray you, in your letters,When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speakOf one that loved not wisely but too well;Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,Perplexed in the extreme. . .”
“Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alikeFeeds beast as man.”
“But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,Making a famine where abundance lies,Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.”
“We came into the world like brother and brother,And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.”
“O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last,And careful hours with Time's deformed handHave written strange defeatures in my face.But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?”
“If she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world.”