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.
“No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself,But by reflection, by some other things.”
“Las palabras están llenas de falsedad o de arte; la mirada es el lenguaje del corazón.”
“Il y a quelque chose de pourri dans le royaume du Danemark.”
“O shut the door! and when thou hast done so,Come weep with me; past hope, past cure, past help!”
“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:This wide and universal theatrePresents more woeful pageants than the sceneWherein we play in.”
“All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise”
“Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream—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”
“Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.”
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.The oldest hath borne most: we that are youngShall never see so much, nor live so long.”
“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!”
“Never; he will not:Age cannot wither her, nor custom staleHer infinite variety: other women cloyThe appetites they feed: but she makes hungryWhere most she satisfies;”
“O, brave new worldthat has such people in't!”
“Sit by my side, and let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger.”
“Summer's lease hath all too short a date.”
“Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play thefool no where but in's own house.”
“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”
“Golden lads and girls all must as chimney sweepers come to dust.”
“Hot blood begets hot thoughts,And hot thoughts beget Hot deeds,And hot deeds is love.”
“It is not, nor it cannot, come to good, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
“But love, first learnèd in a lady's eyes,Lives not alone immurèd in the brain,But, with the motion of all elements,Courses as swift as thought in every power,And gives to every power a double power,Above their functions and their offices.It adds a precious seeing to the eye;A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;A lover's ears will hear the lowest sound,When the suspicious head of theft is stopped:Love's feeling is more soft and sensibleThan are the tender horns of cockled snails:Love's tongue proves dainty Baccus gross in taste.For valour, is not love a Hercules,Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musicalAs bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;And when Love speaks, the voice of all the godsMakes heaven drowsy with the harmony.Never durst poet touch a pen to writeUntil his ink were tempered with Love's sighs.”
“Anything that's mended is but patched. Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue”
“Thou frothy tickle-brained hedge-pig!”
“Thou weedy elf-skinned canker-blossom!”
“Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make love known?”
“Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.”
“Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.”
“There is some soul of goodness in things evil,Would men observingly distill it out.”
“He who the sword of heaven will bearShould be as holy as severe;Pattern in himself to know,Grace to stand, and virtue go;More nor less to others payingThan by self-offences weighing.Shame to him whose cruel strikingKills for faults of his own liking!Twice treble shame on Angelo,To weed my vice and let his grow!O, what may man within him hide,Though angel on the outward side!How may likeness made in crimes,Making practise on the times,To draw with idle spiders' stringsMost ponderous and substantial things!Craft against vice I must apply:With Angelo to-night shall lieHis old betrothed but despised;So disguise shall, by the disguised,Pay with falsehood false exacting,And perform an old contracting.”
“Cease thy counsel, for thy words fall into my ears as priceless as water into a sieve.”
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used.”
“To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand; therefore, if tou art mov'd, thou runst away. (To be angry is to move, to be brave is to stand still. Therefore, if you're angry, you'll run away.)”
“If I profane with my unworthiest handThis holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready standTo smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.Juliet:Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,Which mannerly devotion shows in this;For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.Romeo:Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?Juliet:Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.Romeo:O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.Juliet:Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.Romeo:Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.Juliet:Then have my lips the sin that they have took.Romeo:Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!Give me my sin again.Juliet:You kiss by the book.”
“For what says Quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”
“She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.”
“I must be cruel only to be kind;Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.”
“Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”
“Make the doors upon a woman's wit,and it will out at the casement;shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole;stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.”
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,Raze out the written troubles of the brain,And with some sweet oblivious antidoteCleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous stuffWhich weighs upon the heart?DOCTOR:Therein the patient Must minister to himself.”
“A light heart lives long.”
“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.”
“Last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful history,is second childishness and mere oblivion.I am sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
“Though those that are betray'd Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe”
“Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar; Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear’t that th’opposèd may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
“The world must be peopled!”
“Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.”
“Watch out he's winding the watch of his wit, by and by it will strike.”
“Virtue? A fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.”
“The small amount of foolery wise men have makes a great show.”
“I would I were thy bird.”
“Alack, there lies more peril in thine eyeThan twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,And I am proof against their enmity.”