Favorite Shakespeare Quotation

[Sava]

"Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war..."

I don't like Shakespeare though. IMO, he's the English literature equivalent of daytime soap operas.

[mactbone]

"Do you bite your thumb at me!"
"I do bite my thumb"
and on... and on
Romeo and Juliet

[St Leo]

Shakespeare sucks.

"That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs." - Hamlet III.ii.116

[Boris Godunov]

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but whole battalions." - Claudius, Hamlet

"Above all, to thine own self be true." Polonius, Hamlet

"Tear falling pity dwells not in this eye." Richard, Richard III

That's all I can think of from memory right now...

[molly bloom]

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, must
All 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 must
Consign 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 renowned be thy grave!

from Cymbeline, Alfred Lawn Tennyson's favourite Shakespeare play.

Also Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra:

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.

[MrBaggins]

The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Act 3 Scene 1

"She hath more hair than wit, and more faults
than hairs, and more wealth than faults"

[Agathon]

Man, you guys like all the sombre ones. Here's one of my faves from Sir Toby Belch, who is one of my favourite characters.

"Dost thou think, because thou art
virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

[Agathon]

Anyway, Shakespeare sucks. He could never have written anything like this:

"I struck him twice. In two great cries of agony
he buckled at the knees and fell. When he was down
I struck him the third blow, in thanks and reverence
to Zeus the lord of dead men underneath the ground.

Thus he went down and all the life struggled out of him;
and as he died he spattered me with the dark red
and violent driven rain of bitter savoured blood
to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers
of God in glory at the birthtime of the buds."

[Ben Kenobi]

That's from Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

Why does this quote strike your fancy? It's very sombre.

[Felch]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
"Above all, to thine own self be true." Polonius, Hamlet

That was in Clueless.

Josh's girlfriend: It's just like Hamlet said, "To thine own self be true."

Cher: Uh, No Hamlet didn't say that.

JG: I think that I remember Hamlet accurately

C: Well, I remember Mel Gibson accurately, and he didn't say that. That Polonius guy did.

Ah . . . Alicia Silverstone

[monolith94]

I like that one thing macbeth says near the end, about us being mere players... or something like that.

Tempest and Macbeth are for me, definitely the most quotable of his plays.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by obiwan18
That's from Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

Why does this quote strike your fancy? It's very sombre.

I would say it is sombre, terrifying, beautiful, joyous, erotic and a few other things all at the same time. Shakespeare can't seem to manage all that.

[Felch]

Is it erotic in a snuff film sort of way?

[Agathon]

Now now, there's no need to lower the tone of the conversation.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Agathon
Anyway, Shakespeare sucks. He could never have written anything like this:

"I struck him twice. In two great cries of agony
he buckled at the knees and fell. When he was down
I struck him the third blow, in thanks and reverence
to Zeus the lord of dead men underneath the ground.

Thus he went down and all the life struggled out of him;
and as he died he spattered me with the dark red
and violent driven rain of bitter savoured blood
to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers
of God in glory at the birthtime of the buds."

You clearly haven't read enough Shakespeare, then.

[Agathon]

I've read most of it.

Show me anything like the Agamemnon and I'd be happy.

[Felch]

She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before, she broke her brow:
And then my husband--God be with his soul!
A' was a merry man--took up the child:
'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
Wilt thou not, Jule?' and, by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying and said 'Ay.'

You all should know the play

[Ben Kenobi]

NURSE: Even or odd, of all the days in the year,
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she (God rest all Christian souls!)
Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me. But, as I said,
On Lammas Eve at night she shall be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was weaned (I never shall forget it),
Of all the days of the year, upon that day;
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.
My lord and you were then at Mantua.

What you were looking for, Felch?

[Felch]

I just like the part about how she'll fall on her back when she has more wit.

[Caesar the Great]

Probably my favorite character in all Shakespeare, from Othello

It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man. Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind puppies! I have profess'd me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perduarable toughness. I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurp'd beard. I say, put money in thy purse. It canoot be long that Desdemona should continue her love to the Moor - put money in thy purse - nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement in her, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestrations - put but money in thy purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills - fill thy purse with money....

And one of my favorite scenes in all Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft intrred with their bones;

[monolith94]

Yesterday I saw "Measure for Measure". Quite a convoluted plot, and not the best of the Bard's works, but entertaining nonetheless. Had some good quotes in it.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Agathon
I've read most of it.

Show me anything like the Agamemnon and I'd be happy.

Forgive me if I seem dubious- I know English graduates who have yet to read most of Shakespeare.

However, I would offer three of the great tragedies as obvious comparisons with 'Agamemnon'- 'King Lear', 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth' all deal with broad themes of politics, family, deeds of blood, vengeance and justice. Each of Shakespeare's plays usually has distinctive imagery interwoven with the textual fabric- 'Macbeth' notably with blood, night, darkness and witchcraft, 'Antony and Cleopatra' with images of mutability and metamorphosis, 'Hamlet' with action and inaction, states of readiness and torpor.

Lady Macbeth:

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You 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!'

[Switch]

Originally posted by Felch X
You're prolly not referring to Mark Antony "Cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war."

Darnnit, you stole my quote!

Oh well, barring that...

Mercutio, Romeo & Juliet
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
*****'d from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she--

[HolyWarrior]

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"

[Static Universe]

Henry the Fifths speech after being presenting with a gift of tennis balls from France is a classic:

We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have march'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chaces. And we understand him well,
How he comes o'er us with our wilder days,
Not measuring what use we made of them.
We never valued this poor seat of England;
And therefore, living hence, did give ourself
To barbarous licence; as 'tis ever common
That men are merriest when they are from home.
But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,
Be like a king and show my sail of greatness
When I do rouse me in my throne of France:
For that I have laid by my majesty
And plodded like a man for working-days,
But I will rise there with so full a glory
That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,
Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.
And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his
Hath turn'd his balls to gun-stones; and his soul
Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them: for many a thousand widows
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands;
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;
And some are yet ungotten and unborn
That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn.
But this lies all within the will of God,
To whom I do appeal; and in whose name
Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on,
To venge me as I may and to put forth
My rightful hand in a well-hallow'd cause.
So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.
Convey them with safe conduct. Fare you well.