Happy birthday Shakespeare

[hypatia_]

What are your favorite lines, passages, phrases, works, etc?

[JHG]

Titus Andronicus. Powerful. Underappreciated (which I can hardly believe I'm saying for anything by Shakespeare).

[Whosis]

Henry V; kind of an amalgam play. I also liked Hamlet.

[Poetaster]

Coriolanus, The Tempest, and Richard II are mine. I also like teaching Macbeth, because it's fun and usually well known from GCSE (I teach A-level).

My favorite quote actually comes from the play I maybe like the least, from King Lear 'Like flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods'.

[Lykren]

What! How do you like King Lear the least?

[Poetaster]

What! How do you like King Lear the least?

I'm just not it's biggest fan. It's not that I don't like it, I just prefer other plays over it.

I first saw it very young, and found it fantastically depressing at the time - and the scene where Gloucester's eyes were gouged out honestly made me very angry. Since then I've not been able to completely shake that associated feeling off.

[qimissung]

I like the usual suspects, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet. He said so many things-how to decide which I liked best? Well, barring that, I do like the following:

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.-Richard III

Screw your courage to the sticking-place.-Mcbeth

(http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-scr3.htm-explains some possible meanings of this)

Last, but not least:


She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing. — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)




No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for
me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I
am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o'
both your houses!-Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet

[Vota]

I actually didn't care for Macbeth that much. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was good, but not up to the standard of Hamlet, not by a long shot. I've only read these two plays so far, but plan to read several a year until I have read them all, and at this point, I am pretty much going to personally rate his plays based on how much I enjoyed them AND how they compare to Hamlet. For me, Macbeth fell quite away's short of Hamlet.

[Helga]

Macbeth is of course brilliant and I like all the king plays, Richard II is great. I also love his comedies most of them. there are of course many great lines and passages in his plays but for some reason I have always loved the last lines in sonnet 18:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

It makes me think how authors can live forever.

[qimissung]

Those are beautiful lines, Helga.

Well, Vota, I always go with my visceral reaction. And I always have one to Macbeth. That's just the way it is, for some reason.

[Dono]

There are so many great lines from the bard that resonate. Favorite play is Hamlet but hard to narrow that down. King Lear, R and J, 12th Night, MacBeth.

Favorite sonnet "that time thou mayest in me behold..."

Favorite misquoted line "I am but mad north by northwest; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw" ( or something like that) from Hamlet.
Or "there are more thing on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy"

[Dono]

Damn autocorrect butchered my post.

[Whosis]

Happy unbirthday, Shakespeare.

[Lokasenna]

Good ol' Shakey - how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

Picking a favourite work is impossible, though I'm minded to view Hamlet, King Lear, and Richard III as probably his greatest works.

As for a favourite quotation, how about this little wonder of Hal's from Henry IV, Part I:

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 wonder'd 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 wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
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, glittering 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.

[mal4mac]

Difficult to choose a favourite work amongst such riches. "The Tempest" would be on my short list, with Prospero's speech on the evanescence of life being a favourite passage of mine:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

[qimissung]

Ah, I do love "The Tempest."

[mal4mac]

... the scene where Gloucester's eyes were gouged out honestly made me very angry. Since then I've not been able to completely shake that associated feeling off.

It made me very angry to, but isn't that a reason to like it the most?

"Longinus would have said that pleasure is what the resenters have forgotten. Nietzsche would have called it pain; but they would have been thinking of the same experience upon the heights." - Harold Bloom

[mona amon]

The Tempest has some of the most gorgeous lines ever - Full fathom five thy father lies, etc, and

How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in it!

[Snowqueen]

I love these lines from Macbeth, Qimi.




She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing. — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)







And here are a few from Hamlet :

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me...
Act II. Scene II

[Poetaster]

It made me very angry to, but isn't that a reason to like it the most?

"Longinus would have said that pleasure is what the resenters have forgotten. Nietzsche would have called it pain; but they would have been thinking of the same experience upon the heights." - Harold Bloom

In a cerebral sense you are right. Objectively the play is one of Shakespeare's best. Like I said, I do like it, I've not came across a Bard's play I've not liked, it's just my reaction to the play at such a young age has had an effect on my opinion of it. If that's right or wrong - I can't help it.

[Pierre Menard]

The Julius Caesar/Antony & Cleopatra duo are probably my two personal sentimental favourites, but it's hard to go past Hamlet as the one I was most impressed by. It's an immensely impressive piece of work.


Henry IV has a real chance at being my favourite, but I've yet to read pt 2 so we'll have to wait and see.


But I love it all. Shakespeare is a constant source of joy and light in my life.