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Thread: quotes from Shakespeare in writers works

  1. #16
    Card-carrying Medievalist Lokasenna's Avatar
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    Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is a title taken from Macbeth.
    "I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche

  2. #17
    Registered User mona amon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lykren View Post
    Another book title - Pale Fire by Nabokov
    Nabokov's use of the quote from Timon of Athens is really ingenious and hilarious. The original quote -

    The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
    Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,
    And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
    The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
    The moon into salt tears;


    Kinbote, translating back to english from a Zemblan translation, comes up with this garbled quote -

    The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it.
    The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun.
    The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.


    Of course there's a lot more to it, and talking of garbled quotes, there's this classic from Huckleberry Finn -

    To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
    That makes calamity of so long life;
    For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
    But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep,
    Great nature's second course,
    And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
    Than fly to others that we know not of.
    There's the respect must give us pause:
    Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
    For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
    The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
    The law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take,
    In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black,
    But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,
    Breathes forth contagion on the world,
    And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage,
    Is sicklied o'er with care,
    And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops,
    With this regard their currents turn awry,
    And lose the name of action.
    'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
    Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
    But get thee to a nunnery--go!
    Last edited by mona amon; 03-25-2013 at 05:12 AM.
    Exit, pursued by a bear.

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