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.
“I do believe you think what now you speak, but what we do determine oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory, of violent birth, but poor validity, which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, but fall, unshaken, when they mellow be. Most unnecessary 'tis that we forget to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. What to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament. Grief joys, joy grieves on slender accident. This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange that even our loves should with our fortunes change. For 'tis a question left us yet to prove, whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. The great man down, you mark his favorite flies. The poor advanced makes friends of enemies. And hitherto doth love on fortune tend, for who not needs shall never lack a friend, and who in want a hollow friend doth try, directly seasons him his enemy. But, orderly to end where I begun, our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown. Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. So think thou wilt no second husband wed, but die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.”
“Why, what's the matter,That you have such a February face,So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
“Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!O any thing, of nothing first create!O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!This love feel I, that feel no love in this.Dost thou not laugh?”
“Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him. *all cheer for Shakespearean insults*”
“Wherein cunning, but in craft? Wherein crafty, but in villainy? Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing?”
“Sycorax has grown into a hoop”
“Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was a coward on instinct.”
“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restored and sorrows end.”
“Grief fills the room up of my absent child,Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,Puts on his pretty look, repeats his words,Remembers me of his gracious parts,Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form”
“There is nothing serious in Mortality”
“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.”
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?”
“For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?”
“Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love. That inward beauty and invisible;Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible: Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, yet should I be in love by touching thee.'Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me, and that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, and nothing but the very smell were left me, yet would my love to thee be still as much; for from the stillitory of thy face excelling comes breath perfum'd that breedeth love by smelling.”
“Homo is a common name to all men.”
“I freely told you, all the wealth I hadRan in my veins, I was a gentleman.”
“The night is long that never finds the day.”
“Don't trust the person who has broken faith once.”
“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”
“We will all laugh at gilded butterflies.”
“He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts.(Shakespeare, Love's Labor's Lost, IV)”
“But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
“There is a world elsewhere.”
“A beggar's book outworths a noble's blood.”
“The native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; and enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.”
“Muster your wits; stand in your own defence...”
“Call me what instrume you will,though you can fret me,yet you cannot play upon me.”
“I drink to the general joy o’ the whole table." Macbeth”
“My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.”
“Others there are who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, keep yet their hearts attending on themselves, and, throwing but shows of service on their lords, do well thrive by them and when they have lin'd their coats do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul and such a one do I profess myself...In following him, I follow but myself; heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so, for my peculiar end”
“whats here a cup closed in my true loves hand poisin i see hath been his timeless end. oh churl drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after. i will kiss thy lips some poisin doth hang on them, to help me die with a restorative. thy lips are warm.yea noise then ill be brief oh happy dagger this is thy sheath. there rust and let me die.”
“true apothecary thy drugs art quick”
“O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!”
“Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks.”
“O, were mine eyeballs into bullets turn'd, That I in rage might shoot them at your faces!”
“Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.”
“Patience perforce with willful choler meeting/Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting./I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall,/Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt'rest gall.”
“Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips, oh you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”
“where civil blood makes civil hands unclean”
“Men should be what they seem.”
“What means this shouting? I do fear, the peopleChoose Caesar for their king.”
“Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,That you would have me seek into myselfFor that which is not in me?”
“I can again thy former light restore,Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,I know not where is that Promethean heatThat can thy light relume.”
“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain; at least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.”
“I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it; knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.”
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
“Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me: yet,if you be out, sir, I can mend you.”
“Hence! home, you idle creatures get you home:Is this a holiday? what! know you not,Being mechanical, you ought not walkUpon a labouring day without the signOf your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?”
“I was born free as Caesar; so were you”