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.
“Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word.”
“Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me,I'll knock elsewhere, to see if they'll disdain me”
“Ay, when fowls have no feathers and fish have no fin.”
“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.”
“I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;But will they come, when you do call for them?”
“If the skin were parchment and the blows you gave were ink,Your own handwriting would tell you what I think.”
“Until I know this sure uncertainty,I'll entertain the offered fallacy.”
“Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advised?Known unto these, and to myself disguised?I'll say as they say, and persever so,And in this mist at all adventures go.”
“And nothing is, but what is not.”
“Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh,To think it should leave crying and say 'Ay.'And yet, I warrant, it had upon its browA bump as big as a young cockerel's stone;A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly:'Yea,' quoth my husband,'fall'st upon thy face?Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;Wilt thou not, Jule?' it stinted and said 'Ay.”
“Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you the town's name where Alexander the Pig was born!GOWER-Alexander the Great.FLUELLEN-Why, I pray you, is not pig great? the pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phraseis a little variations.”
“Say'st thou me so? is that a ton of moys? Come hither, boy: ask me this slave in French What is his name.Boy-Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele?French Soldier-Monsieur le Fer.Boy- He says his name is Master Fer.PISTOL-Master Fer! I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him: discuss the same in French unto him.Boy-I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.”
“Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
“I have no way and therefore want no eyesI stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis seen our means secure us, and our mere defects prove our commodities.”
“Viola to Duke Orsino: 'I'll do my best To woo your lady.'[Aside.] 'Yet, a barful strife! Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife.”
“For this new-married man approaching here,Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'dYour well defended honour, you must pardonFor Mariana's sake: but as he adjudged your brother,--Being criminal, in double violationOf sacred chastity and of promise-breachThereon dependent, for your brother's life,--The very mercy of the law cries outMost audible, even from his proper tongue,'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!'Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still FOR MEASURE”
“O mischief, thou art swift to enter in the hearts of desperate men!”
“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,To die upon the hand I love so well.”
“To die, is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her, Is self from self: a deadly banishment! What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by, And feed upon the shadow of perfection.Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale; Unless I look on Silvia in the day, There is no day for me to look upon; She is my essence, and I leave to be, If I be not by her fair influence Foster'd, illumin'd, cherish'd, kept alive.”
“I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust: to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish.”
“O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”
“Nobody loves you”
“But I have that within which passes show. these but the trappings and the suits of woe”
“A plague on both your houses.”
“For he is superstitious grown of late,Quite from the main opinion he held onceOf fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies.”
“Night's candles have burned out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops." Hope tinged with melancholy - like life.”
“I am too much in the sun.”
“Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;Make dust our paper and with rainy eyesWrite sorrow on the bosom of the earth,Let's choose executors and talk of wills”
“All things that we ordained festival,Turn from their office to black funeral;Our instruments to melancholy bells,Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,And all things change them to the contrary.”
“Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;Life and these lips have long been separated:Death lies on her like an untimely frostUpon the sweetest flower of all the field.”
“I'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him.”
“And worse I may be yet: the worst is notSo long as we can say 'This is the worst.”
“Captain of our fairy band,Helena is here at hand,And the youth, mistook by me,Pleading for a lover's fee.Shall we their fond pageant see?Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
“Tell me, daughter Juliet, How stands your dispositions to be married"It is an honor that I dream not of”
“My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.”
“Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,You owe me no subscription: then let fallYour horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:But yet I call you servile ministers,That have with two pernicious daughters join'dYour high engender'd battles 'gainst a headSo old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!”
“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 ... The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, (For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all; all honourable men) Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man…. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me”
“Tis in ourselves that we are thusor thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the whichour wills are gardeners: so that if we will plantnettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed upthyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, ordistract it with many, either to have it sterilewith idleness, or manured with industry, why, thepower and corrigible authority of this lies in ourwills. If the balance of our lives had not onescale of reason to poise another of sensuality, theblood and baseness of our natures would conduct usto most preposterous conclusions: but we havereason to cool our raging motions, our carnalstings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this thatyou call love to be a sect or scion.”
“Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.”
“One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.”
“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.”
“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”
“Your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end.”
“Put on what weary negligence you please,You and your fellows; I'll have it come to question:If he dislike it, let him to our sister,Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,Not to be over-ruled. Idle old man,That still would manage those authoritiesThat he hath given away! Now, by my life,Old fools are babes again; and must be usedWith cheques as flatteries,--when they are seen abused.Remember what I tell you.”
“I yet beseech your majesty,--If for I want that glib and oily art,To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,I'll do't before I speak,--that you make knownIt is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,No unchaste action, or dishonour'd step,That hath deprived me of your grace and favour;But even for want of that for which I am richer,A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongueAs I am glad I have not, though not to have itHath lost me in your liking.”
“There was a star danced, and under that was I born.”
“Assure thee, if I do vow a friendship, I'll perform it to the last article."--Othello, Act III, Scene iii”
“Of all knowledge, the wise and good seek mostly to know themselves.”
“Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name.”
“And in thy best consideration checkThis hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgementThy youngest daughter does not love thee least,Nor are those empty-hearted whose low soundsReverb no hollowness.”