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.
“Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.”
“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom...”
“Et tu, Brute?”
“Fear no more the heat o' the sun,Nor the furious winter's rages;Thou thy worldly task hast done,Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;Golden lads and girls all must,As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.Fear no more the frown o' the great;Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:Care no more to clothe and eat;To thee the reed is as the oak:The sceptre, learning, physic, mustAll follow this, and come to dust.Fear no more the lightning-flash,Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;Fear not slander, censure rash;Thou hast finished joy and moan;All lovers young, all lovers mustConsign to thee, and come to dust. No exorciser harm thee! Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Ghost unlaid forbear thee! Nothing ill come near thee! Quiet consummation have; And renownéd be thy grave!”
“Me, poor man, my libraryWas dukedom large enough.”
“Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.”
“No matter where; of comfort no man speak: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:And yet not so, for what can we bequeathSave our deposed bodies to the ground?Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,And nothing can we call our own but deathAnd that small model of the barren earthWhich serves as paste and cover to our bones.For God's sake, let us sit upon the groundAnd tell sad stories of the death of kings;How some have been deposed; some slain in war,Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;All murder'd: for within the hollow crownThat rounds the mortal temples of a kingKeeps Death his court and there the antic sits,Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,Allowing him a breath, a little scene,To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,Infusing him with self and vain conceit,As if this flesh which walls about our life,Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thusComes at the last and with a little pinBores through his castle wall, and farewell king!Cover your heads and mock not flesh and bloodWith solemn reverence: throw away respect,Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,For you have but mistook me all this while:I live with bread like you, feel want,Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,How can you say to me, I am a king?”
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”
“And too soon Marred are those so early Made.”
“woah is me to have seen what i seen see what i see”
“I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.”
“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ”
“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.Hamlet: Or like a whale?Polonius: Very like a whale.”
“Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
“I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.”
“Music, moody foodOf us that trade in love.”
“Alas, the frailty is to blame, not weFor such as we are made of, such we be”
“Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated”
“Come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here,And fill me from the crown to the toe top fullOf direst cruelty; make thick my blood,Stop up the access and passage to remorse,That no compunctious visitings of natureShake my fell purpose, nor keep peace betweenThe effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,Wherever in your sightless substancesYou wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,To cry "Hold, hold!”
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
“All of Creation’s a farce.Man was born as a joke.In his head his reason is buffetedLike wind-blown smoke.Life is a game.Everyone ridicules everyone else.But he who has the last laughLaughs longest.”
“Presume not that I am the thing I was;For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,That I have turn'd away my former self;So will I those that kept me company.”
“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”
“And thus I clothe my naked villainyWith odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
“And all this day an unaccustomed spirit lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.”
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
“Oh, I am fortune's fool!”
“Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.”
“When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless criesAnd look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings. a”
“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
“O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!Despised substance of divinest show!Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,A damned saint, an honourable villain!O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell;When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiendIn mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?Was ever book containing such vile matterSo fairly bound? O that deceit should dwellIn such a gorgeous palace!”
“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.”
“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth And delves the parallels in beauty's brow, Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”
“Therein lies the rub.”
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;Doubt that the sun doth move;Doubt truth to be a liar;But never doubt I love.”
“Twas a clever quibble. Here, a garment for it.”
“I do feel it gone, But know not how it went”
“The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,And say what thou seest yond.”
“it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance”
“And it is very much lamented,...That you have no such mirrors as will turnYour hidden worthiness into your eyeThat you might see your shadow.”
“This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,Which gives men stomach to digest his wordsWith better appetite.”
“Take it in what sense thou wilt.”
“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”
“O, wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,That has such people in't!”
“Of all the wonders that I have heard,It seems to me most strange that men should fear;Seeing death, a necessary end,Will come when it will come.(Act II, Scene 2)”
“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”