… 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.
*Henry IV, Part 1, II, iv.
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.
— As You Like It, II, vii.
O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
Men of few words are the best men.
Henry V III ii
Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.
— Henry IV, Part II, I, i.
I heard a bustling rumor like a fray,
And the wind blows it from the Capitol.
Julius Caesar, II, iv
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Song
In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece
The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,
Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,
Fraught with the ministers and instruments
Of cruel war: sixty and nine, that wore
Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay
Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made
To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures
The ravish’d Helen, Menelaus’ queen,
With wanton Paris sleeps; and that’s the quarrel.
Troilus and Cressida, I, i
THESEUS
What are they that do play it?
PHILOSTRATE
Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labour’d in their minds till now,
And now have toil’d their unbreathed memories
With this same play, against your nuptial.
THESEUS
And we will hear it.
PHILOSTRATE
No, my noble lord;
It is not for you: I have heard it over,
And it is nothing, nothing in the world;
Unless you can find sport in their intents,
Extremely stretch’d and conn’d with cruel pain,
To do you service.
THESEUS
I will hear that play;
For never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.
Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies.
Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace.
Coriolanus, V, iii.
“As an unperfect actor on the stage”
Sonnet 23
Don’t forget to provide a cite!
Next up:
To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans;
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment’s mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights:
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why then a grievous labour won;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, i
Adieu, valour: rust, rapier: be still, drum, for your manager is in love: yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit: write, pen, for I am for whole volumes in folio.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, I, ii.
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
Sonnet 66
This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Hamlet, I, iii
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
— Sonnet 116
BENEDICK
Will your grace command me any service to the world’s end?
I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on;
I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia;
Bring you the length of Prester John’s foot;
Fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s beard;
Do you any embassage to the Pigmies … rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy.
Much Ado About Nothing II i
“O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost, V, i.
Come not between the dragon and his wrath!
– Lear, I, i.
[Modern addition: “For you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!”]
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
Henry V, I, i