Your FAVORITE quote from Shakespeare!

[raggedtrousered]

There are many quotes from Hamlet that I love. For example:

"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me."

Also, my favorite of Hamlet's soliloquies:

"How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!"

[jocky]

' Screw your courage to the sticking place, and we shall not fail ' MacBeth.

[Christopher Sly]

“O monstrous beast! how like a swine he lies!
Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!
Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man.”

The Lord trying to justify what he is about to do to Christopher Sly in Taming of the Shrew. This has personal meaning because I was about to put on the role of Christopher Sly. Not the first time I've been set up by a pirate lord, but the most educational. The Lord's Bedchamber deserves a lot more attention as a mechanism for "inducing" character movement. From the "Gates of Hell", to the Yo "Ho Ho", the pirate lords use the lord's bedchamber to strip the people of their free roles, and drive them into roles the lord controls. But I don't think I was supposed to notice that. It's a comedy, right? And Sly deserves it, after all.

Monstrous, loathsome, drunk.

"I see one. I see two. I see you all..."

[kelby_lake]

From Julius Caesar:

'There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is 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'

And:
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.

And from Hamlet:
'The rest is silence' and of course the 'To be or not to be...' soliloquy.

[prendrelemick]

This is one of my favourites.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

Was he thinking of young Hamnet ? If so, it is about the only place in all his works where the author speaks as himself.

I have many more favorite quotes, I'll have a bit of a think

[Pryderi Agni]

Ahh, Shakespeare:

Here's Romeo:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

And Jaques:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

And Hamlet:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
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.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

Again Hamlet:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Caesar:
"Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once."

Marcus Antonius:
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 interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.

Mercutio:
I am hurt.
A plague a' both your houses! I am sped.
Is he gone and hath nothing?

King Richard:
A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Calpurnia:
"When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

2nd Witch:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

[JuniperWoolf]

These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which as they kiss, consume.

[Lucille Padua]

"Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direct degree;
All several sins, all us'd in each degree"

"Action is eloquence."

"Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men/ To turn their own points in their master's bosom."

[MANICHAEAN]

"I found you as a morsel, cold upon dead Caesar's trencher"
Antony & Cleopatra.

"Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled."
Hamlet.

"Lay not that flattering unction to your soul."
Hamlet.

[kelby_lake]

"Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direct degree;
All several sins, all us'd in each degree"

"Action is eloquence."

"Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men/ To turn their own points in their master's bosom."

Where are they from?

[xman]

Where are they from?

I believe:
R III V iii
Cor II ii
R III V i
respectively

[kelby_lake]

I thought I recognised the first and third

[wessexgirl]

Ooh there are so many.....but one I really love is the whole scene where Henry V is wooing Kate, and is telling her how he is not someone who can say pretty things to court her, but how he is just a plain soldier, (and king.....). His speech is wonderful.

KING HENRY V: Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for
your sake, Kate, why you undid me: for the one, I
have neither words nor measure, and for the other, I
have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable
measure in strength. If I could win a lady at
leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my
armour on my back, under the correction of bragging
be it spoken. I should quickly leap into a wife.
Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse
for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher and
sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God,
Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my
eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation;
only downright oaths, which I never use till urged,
nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a
fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth
sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love
of any thing he sees there, let thine eye be thy
cook. I speak to thee plain soldier: If thou canst
love me for this, take me: if not, to say to thee
that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the
Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou
livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and
uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee
right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other
places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that
can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do
always reason themselves out again. What! a
speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A
good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a
black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow
bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax
hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the
moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it
shines bright and never changes, but keeps his
course truly. If thou would have such a one, take
me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier,
take a king. And what sayest thou then to my love?
speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.

KATHARINE: Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?

KING HENRY V: No; it is not possible you should love the enemy of
France, Kate: but, in loving me, you should love
the friend of France; for I love France so well that
I will not part with a village of it; I will have it
all mine: and, Kate, when France is mine and I am
yours, then yours is France and you are mine.

and later

KING HENRY V: It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss
before they are married, would she say?

ALICE: Oui, vraiment.

KING HENRY V: O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear
Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak
list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of
manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our
places stops the mouth of all find-faults; as I will
do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your
country in denying me a kiss: therefore, patiently
and yielding.

[Kissing her]

You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is
more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the
tongues of the French council; and they should
sooner persuade Harry of England than a general
petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.

I think he is a lot smoother than he's portraying. He'd convinced me right at the start, but then again, I have just watched Ken and Em again in the film. (sigh). I have Michael Williams reciting this section on audio, and he's so wonderful. It's such a charming speech, and I love the little joke in there about loving France so much he won't give up a village of it.

I also love Henry 1V, where we see him with Falstaff and his cronies, showing how he is going to transform himself, leading to the heartbreaking scene where he disowns him.

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off
And pay the debt I never promisèd,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offence a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
(I.ii.173–195)


Falstaff: But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it. But that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked. If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff,
Banish not him thy Harry’s company,
Banish not him thy Harry’s company.
Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.
Prince: I do; I will.
(II.v.425–439)


I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane. (5.5.52)

Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gourmandising; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men. (5.5.60)

Presume not that I am the thing I was. (5.5.62)

Brilliant stuff. Cold, clinical and chilling in its planning, (as I have seen done), or someone who really does love the old reprobate, but knows that he has to do what he does and does so with a heavy heart, to use Shakey's own words, only being cruel to be kind, (also seen done)?

[Beewulf]

Some wonderful choices have been posted. Here's mine. It comes from Act III of Hamlet, shortly before the play-within-a-play. Hamlet says to Horatio:

Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts,
As I do thee.

It's hard to explain why I find this passage so moving, but I can't read it without bringing tears to my eyes. I guess it has to do with its remarkable beauty and restrained passion. It comes at a point when everything in Hamlet's life has fallen apart . . . has been proven false and ephemeral--except for Horatio's loyalty and resoluteness. For a moment, Hamlet frees himself from anguish, anger, and self-loathing to grace his friend with an eloquence that only the genius of Shakespeare can provide.

[LoveofmyLear]

Wasn't Shakespear the fist one to intoduce the phrase "I have nigh a hundred hardships but my whence is not among them"? I read that Jay-Z was just a copycat!