# Brush up your Shakespeare (a game) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 26, 2003, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330 "2003-03-26T17:30:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/1 "2003-03-26T17:30:29Z")
An now a Shakespeare quote game. How to play. I will post quote from the works of William Shakespeare. For this game we will only use _plays_ (no sonnets) The next poster will identify the **play** the the quote comes from. For bonus points you may also id the character and the act and scene. Then of course post a new quote. IN the event of simulposts the next player should go for the FIRST correct id. In the event of an incorrect ID you may correct the ID and then game continues from your post. (incorrect IDs lose points) Please realize that there are many editions of the plays so the quotes may not be exactly as you know them. There will be no deductions for a ‘loose’ quote unless it is deemed outrageously loose. This is my 3k post btw. So the game will now begin. Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/2 "2003-03-26T18:21:34Z")
> [@](#): > > **Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war.** _Julius Caesar_. Said by Antony, I think, but there’s no way I can give you act and scene off the top of my head. “If music be the food of love, play on.” ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/3 "2003-03-26T18:22:30Z")
> [@](#): > > Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war. Julius Caesar, of course… A bit more obscure… “O brave new world, That has such people in it!” ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/4 "2003-03-26T18:27:15Z")
> [@](#): > > If music be the food of love, play on Twelfth Night… (Just making up for my simulpost) ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/5 "2003-03-26T18:27:45Z")
“O brave new world, That has such people in it!” _The Tempest_. Miranda, upon finally meeting some men besides her father and Caliban. Here’s one of my favorites: “Come, winds! Blow, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back!” ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/6 "2003-03-26T18:56:39Z")
> [@](#): > > “Come, winds! Blow, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back!” That’s _Macbeth,_ of course. Macbeth makes his last stand. Incidentally, I believe it should be “Blow, winds! Come, wrack!” 😉 Now, then… “…He is come to open The purple testament of bleeding war; But ere the crown he looks for live in peace, Ten thousand bloody crowns of mother’s sons Shall ill become the flower of England’s face, Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace To scarlet indignation, and bedew Her pastor’s grass with faithful English blood.” (mmmmm…love that one ;)) ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/7 "2003-03-26T19:13:38Z")
Richard II here is one that I think about alot in these days. My duty to you both, on equal love, Great Kings of France and England! That I have labour’d, With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours, To bring your most imperial Majesties Unto this bar and royal interview, Your mightiness on both parts best can witness. Since then my office hath so far prevail’d That, face to face and royal eye to eye, You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me If I demand, before this royal view, What rub or what impediment there is, Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace, Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births, Should not in this best garden of the world, Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage? Alas, she hath from France too long been chas’d, And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps, Corrupting in it own fertility. Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach’d, Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair, Put forth disorder’d twigs; her fallow leas The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory, Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts That should deracinate such savagery; The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kexes, burs, Losing both beauty and utility; And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness. Even so our houses and ourselves and children Have lost, or do not learn for want of time, The sciences that should become our country; But grow like savages,—as soldiers will That nothing do but meditate on blood,— To swearing and stern looks, diffus’d attire, And everything that seems unnatural. Which to reduce into our former favour You are assembled; and my speech entreats That I may know the let, why gentle Peace Should not expel these inconveniences And bless us with her former qualities. ---
**Author:** ![Aguecheek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a9adbd/32.png) [@Aguecheek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aguecheek)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/8 "2003-03-26T19:22:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zebra \* > **My duty to you both, on equal love, > Great Kings of France and England![…]** That would be _The Life of King Henry V_ One of my particular favourites: “Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound…” ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/9 "2003-03-26T19:46:54Z")
With your name, I’d want to guess Twelfth Night, but I think that’s from **King Lear**. Can’t remember who said it… How about … _“All your wives, your daughters, your matrons, your maids could not fill the cistern of my lust.”_ I feel that way now, except it’s “all your sandwiches, soups, bowls of cereal, and steaks” and the cistern of my stomach. I forgot my lunch. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/10 "2003-03-26T19:56:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gallows fodder \* > \*\*How about … _“All your wives, your daughters, your matrons, your maids could not fill the cistern of my lust.”_ > \*\* _Macbeth,_ again. Malcolm being weird. 😉 (And you’re right, btw, about the Lear quote. The speaker is Edmund. :D) Here’s one that’s a bit obscure, maybe: “…Know thou first, I loved the maid I married; never man Sigh’d truer breath; but that I see thee here, Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars! I tell thee, We have a power on foot; and I had purpose Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn, Or lose mine arm fort: thou hast beat me out Twelve several times, and I have nightly since Dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me; We have been down together in my sleep, Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throat, And waked half dead with nothing.” ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/11 "2003-03-26T20:07:15Z")
_Coriolanus_. Spoken either by the big C himself or Aufidius, I can’t remember which. How about this one: “I do love thee so That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven – If heaven will take the present at our hands.” ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/12 "2003-03-26T20:20:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fretful Porpentine \* > \*\*_Coriolanus_. Spoken either by the big C himself or Aufidius, I can’t remember which. > > How about this one: > > “I do love thee so > That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven – > If heaven will take the present at our hands.” \*\* That’s from _Richard III_, spoken by Richard about his brother, Clarence, who Richard has set up by getting his other bother, King Edward IV, to believe that Clarence is plotting to gain the throne. Howzabout this one: “O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb? I am no baby, I, that with base prayers I should repent the evils I have done: Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did Would I perform, if I might have my will; If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul” ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/13 "2003-03-26T20:39:20Z")
Sounds like Aaron the Moor, from _Titus Andronicus_. “Music, awake her, strike! 'Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach; Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come, I’ll fill your grave up: stir, nay, come away, Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you.” ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/14 "2003-03-26T21:08:31Z")
No fair quoting from the play nobody reads, _The Winter’s Tale_. ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/15 "2003-03-26T21:31:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fretful Porpentine \* > **_Coriolanus_. Spoken either by the big C himself or Aufidius, I can’t remember which.** It’s Aufidius. And **gobear** owes us a quote… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/16 "2003-03-26T21:31:21Z")
One of my favorites - > [@](#): > > No beast so fierce but has some sparks of pity, > But I have none, and therefore am no beast. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/17 "2003-03-26T21:49:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shodan \* > \*\*One of my favorites - > > No beast so fierce but has some sparks of pity, > But I have none, and therefore am no beast. > > Regards, > Shodan \*\* That’s the epigraph at the beginning of _Runaway Train_. It’s from _Richard II_ also. OK, I owe you guys two quotes now. Here you go “Why, headstrong liberty is lash’d with woe. There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky: The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls, Are their males’ subjects and at their controls. Men, more divine, the masters of all these, Lords of the wide world, and wild wat’ry seas, Indu’d with intellectual sense and souls, Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, Are masters to their females and their lords: Then, let your will attend on their accords” and something approprite for the times “Take pity of your town and of your people, Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds Of heady murder, spoil, and villany. If not, why, in a moment, look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls; Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus’d Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. What say you? will you yield, and this avoid? Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d?” ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/18 "2003-03-26T21:51:00Z")
Ack, that’s \*Richard \*_III_!! ---
**Author:** ![ArrMatey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrmatey/32/3522_2.png) [@ArrMatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArrMatey)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/19 "2003-03-26T21:53:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gobear \* > \*\*That’s the epigraph at the beginning of _Runaway Train_. It’s from _Richard II_ also. > > OK, I owe you guys two quotes now. > > Here you go > > “Why, headstrong liberty is lash’d with woe. > There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye > But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky: > The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls, > Are their males’ subjects and at their controls. > Men, more divine, the masters of all these, > Lords of the wide world, and wild wat’ry seas, > Indu’d with intellectual sense and souls, > Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, > Are masters to their females and their lords: > Then, let your will attend on their accords” > > and something approprite for the times > > “Take pity of your town and of your people, > Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; > Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace > O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds > Of heady murder, spoil, and villany. > If not, why, in a moment, look to see > The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand > Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; > Your fathers taken by the silver beards, > And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls; > Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, > Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus’d > Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry > At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. > What say you? will you yield, and this avoid? > Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d?” \*\* The second is Henry’s speech at Harfleur in Henry V. How about this one? “Lord knows, we know what we are, but not what we may be!” ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330/20 "2003-03-26T22:16:04Z")
“Lord knows, we know what we are, but not what we may be!” From Hamlet, by Ophelia, I believe. Let’s try a slightly more obscure play. “Sound trumpets. Let our bloody colors wave And either victory, or else a grave.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brush-up-your-shakespeare-a-game/164330.md?page=2)