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 did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.”
“I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks.”
“Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!Give me my sin again.”
“She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; and, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say more, swear more; but indeed our shows are more than will; for we still prove much in our vows but little in our love.”
“Love me!... Why?”
“As an unperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put besides his part,Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart; So I, for fear of trust, forget to say The perfect ceremony of love's rite, And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might. O, let my books be then the eloquenceAnd dumb presagers of my speaking breast;Who plead for love, and look for recompense,More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.”
“You are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward youlie.CRESSIDAUpon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defendmy wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, todefend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all thesewards I lie at, at a thousand watches.PANDARUSSay one of your watches.CRESSIDANay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of thechiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit,I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swellpast hiding, and then it's past watching.”
“Well, well! Why, have you any discretion? Have you anyeyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, goodshape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth,liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?CRESSIDAAy, a minc'd man; and then to be bak'd with no date inthe pie, for then the man's date is out.”
“Good; and what of him?ALEXANDERThey say he is a very man per se,And stands alone.CRESSIDASo do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have nolegs.”
“The blessedness of being little!!!”
“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:For never was a story of more woeThan this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
“How many actions most ridiculous/Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?CORIN: Into a thousand that I have forgotten.SILVIUS: O, thou didst then ne'er love so heartily!/If thou remember'st not the slightest folly/That ever love did make thee run into,/Thou hast not loved:/Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,/Wearying thy hearer in thy mistress' praise,/Thou hast not loved...”
“The moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”
“Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One, two; why, then ‘tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?—No more o’that, my lord, no more o’that: you mar all with this starting. Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
“thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.”
“Within the infant rind of this small flowerPoison hath residence and medicine power.For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.Two such opposèd kings encamp them still,In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will. And where the worser is predominant,Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.(Inside the little rind of this weak flower, there is both poison and powerful medicine. If you smell it, you feel good all over your body. But if you taste it, you die. There are two opposite elements in everything, in men as well as in herbs—good and evil. When evil is dominant, death soon kills the body like cancer.) ”
“What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica:Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drumAnd the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife,Clamber not you up to the casements then,Nor thrust your head into the public streetTo gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces,But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements:Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter”
“I do desire we may be better strangers.”
“This day's black fate on more days doth depend;This but begins the woe, others must end.”
“O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head, as is a winged messenger of heavenUnto the white-upturned wond'ring eyesOf mortals fall back to gaze on him.”
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,That, if I then had waked after long sleep,Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,The clouds methought would open, and show richesReady to drop upon me; that, when I waked,I cried to dream again.”
“O, hereWill I set up my everlasting rest,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O youThe doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissA dateless bargain to engrossing death!”
“to early seen unknown...and known to late”
“How much salt water thrown away in wasteTo season love, that of it doth not taste.”
“When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.”
“Through the forest have I gone.But Athenian found I none,On whose eyes I might approveThis flower's force in stirring love.Night and silence.--Who is here?Weeds of Athens he doth wear:This is he, my master said,Despised the Athenian maid;And here the maiden, sleeping sound,On the dank and dirty ground.Pretty soul! she durst not lieNear this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.Churl, upon thy eyes I throwAll the power this charm doth owe.When thou wakest, let love forbidSleep his seat on thy eyelid:So awake when I am gone;For I must now to Oberon.”
“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania”
“Will you walk out of the air, my lord? HAMLET Into my grave.”
“When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store;When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.”
“Shall we their fond pageant see?Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
“And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes Heaven drowsy with the harmony.”
“I may chance have someodd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me,because I have railed so long against marriage: butdoth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meatin his youth that he cannot endure in his age.Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets ofthe brain awe a man from the career of his humour?No, the world must be peopled. When I said I woulddie a bachelor, I did not think I should live till Iwere married.”
“Dost think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?" (Twelfth Night)”
“Peace? I hate the word as I hate hell and all Montagues.”
“Shame to him whose cruel striking, kills for thoughts of his own liking.”
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtues fall. ”
“Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.”
“Where is Polonius? HAMLET In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.”
“Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind.”
“Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear”
“Do you know me, my lord?'Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.”
“Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intendTo make this creature fruitful!Into her womb convey sterility!Dry up in her the organs of increase;And from her derogate body never springA babe to honour her! If she must teem,Create her child of spleen; that it may live,And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;Turn all her mother's pains and benefitsTo laughter and contempt; that she may feelHow sharper than a serpent's tooth it isTo have a thankless child! Away, away!”
“The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.”
“My oblivion is a very Antony and I am all forgotten.”
“Who is it that can tell me who I am?”
“Where the bee sucks, there suck IIn the cow-slip's bell i lieThere I couch when owls do cry”
“The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.”
“The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.”
“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”