The best Shakespearean duologues

[kelby_lake]

There's loads of debate over which are the great soliloquies but what about the duologues (that is to say, the exchanges between two characters)? What are some of your personal favourites?

[Charles Darnay]

There's a short one (with I think one useless interjection by a third party) between Touchstone and Jacques in "As You Like It" that is quite good.

Romeo and Friar Laurence in II.iii is always a good scene.

Any duologue between Hal and Falstaff

And probably topping the list for me is Hamlet II.i - Hamlet and Polonius.

Also, if you wan the best duolouges in lit, look to Cyrano de Bergerac.

[JuniperWoolf]

Act 1 scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet is my favorite. I love all of it, the very beginning with Gregor and Samson, Tybalt who I love and who has his best lines in this scene ("I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee" "What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee Benvolio. Look upon thy death"), Lady Capulet's line "a crutch, a crutch, why call you for a sword?" and especially Romeo's melodramatic juxtapositions when he's talking to Benvolio.

[fb0252]

does this one rank right up there?

...Prithee Horatio, tell me one thing.

Horatio: What's that my Lord?

Hamlet: Dost though think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

Horatio: E'en so.

Hamlet: And smelt so? Pah!
(puts down the skull)

Horatio: E'en so, my Lord.

Hamlet:To what base uses we return Horatio. Why might they not trace the noble dust of Alexander till they find it stopping up a bung hole?

Horatio: Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

Hamlet: No faith, not a jot, but to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust, the dust is earth, of that earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel?

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

-Hamlet Act V, Scene I

[kelby_lake]

I think Isabella and Angelo's soliloquies in Measure for Measure are electrifying.