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.
“The game is up”
“Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?And, live we how we can, yet die we must.”
“Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.Mercutio: If love be rough with you, be rough with love;Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.”
“The rain, it raineth every day.”
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;Or close the wall up with our English dead.In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility:But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger;Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;Let pry through the portage of the headLike the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm itAs fearfully as doth a galled rockO'erhang and jutty his confounded base,Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,Hold hard the breath and bend up every spiritTo his full height. On, on, you noblest English.Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,Have in these parts from morn till even foughtAnd sheathed their swords for lack of argument:Dishonour not your mothers; now attestThat those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.Be copy now to men of grosser blood,And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,Whose limbs were made in England, show us hereThe mettle of your pasture; let us swearThat you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;For there is none of you so mean and base,That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:Follow your spirit, and upon this chargeCry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”
“All things are ready, if our mind be so.”
“By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death: I'll ne'er bear a base mind: an 't be my destiny, so; an't be not, so: no man's too good to serve's prince; and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.”
“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm”
“Those palates who, not yet two summers younger, must have inventions to delight the taste, would now be glad of bread, and beg for it.”
“A dream itself is but a shadow.”
“A happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story”
“a wild dedication of yourselvesTo undiscovered waters, undreamed shores.”
“There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are we now afloat;And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose our ventures.”
“They are the books, the arts, the academes,That show, contain and nourish all the world.”
“I must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words.”
“The iron tongue of Midnight hathtold twelve lovers, to bed; 'tisalmost fairy time. I fear weshall outstep the coming mornas much as we this night over-watch'd.”
“Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!”
“Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.”
“True, I talk of dreams,Which are the children of an idle brain,Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,Which is as thin of substance as the air,And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north,And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.”
“Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,And vice sometime by action dignified.”
“For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on;I tell you that which you yourselves do know;”
“Prophet may you be!If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,when time is old and hath forgot itself,when waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,and blind oblivion swallowed cities up,and mighty states characterless are gratedto dusty nothing, yet let memory,from false to false, among false maids in love,upbraid my falsehood!”
“Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,between whose endless jar justice resides,should lose their names, and so should justice too.Then everything includes itself in power,power into will, will into appetite;and appetite, an universal wolf,so doubly seconded with will and power, must make perforce an universal preyand at last eat up himself.”
“Oh, thou did'st then ne'er love so heartily.If thou rememb'rest not the slightest follyThat ever love did make thee run inot,Thou has not loved.Of if thou has't not sat as I do now,Wearying they hearer in thy mistress's praise,Thou has not loved.Of if thou hast not broke from companyAbruptly, as my passion now makes me,Thou has not loved. (Silvius)”
“I will desist;...But there is something glows upon my cheek,And whispers in mine ear, 'Go not till he speak.”
“Death is a fearful thing.”
“Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong”
“A peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party loser.”
“To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on.”
“the fire seven times tried this;seven times tried that judgement isthat did never choose amiss some there be that shadows kiss;such have but a shadows bliss,there be fool alive, i wissilverd o'er, and so was thisTake what wife you will to bedI will ever be your head.So be gone; you are sped.”
“I hold my peace, sir? no;No, I will speak as liberal as the north;Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.”
“So full of artless jealousy is guilt,It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”
“My love as deep; the more I give to thee,The more I have, both are infinite.”
“O, let me kiss that hand!KING LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.”
“I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapor of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others uses.”
“This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;And to do that well craves a kind of wit:He must observe their mood on whom he jests,The quality of persons, and the time,And, like the haggard, check at every featherThat comes before his eye. This is a practiseAs full of labour as a wise man's artFor folly that he wisely shows is fit;But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.”
“I was too young that time to value her,But now I know her. If she be a traitor, Why, so am I. We still have slept together,Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,Still we went coupled and inseparable.”
“Here comes Monseiur Le Beau.Rosalind: With his mouth full of news.Celia: Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young.Rosalind: Then shall we be news-crammed.Celia: All the better; we shall be the more marketable.”
“Under the greenwood tree,Who loves to lie with meAnd tune his merry note,Unto the sweet bird's throat;Come hither, come hither, come hither.Here shall he seeNo enemyBut winter and rough weather.”
“In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond...”
“Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.”
“What's done, is done”
“But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.”
“How Low am I, thou painted Maypole? Speak:How Low am I? I am not yet so LowBut that my Nails can reach unto thine Eyes”
“O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?”
“Mieux vaut mourir incompris que passer sa vie à s'expliquer.”
“We will have rings and things and fine array”
“Tis hatched and shall be so”
“I am agreed, and would I had given him the best horse in Padua to begin his wooing that would thoroughly woo her, wed her, and bed her, and rid the house of her”
“All that glisters is not gold;Often have you heard that told:Many a man his life hath soldBut my outside to behold:Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”