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Showing posts with label shakespeare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shakespeare. Show all posts

Saturday, September 27, 2008

The Greatest Essay on the Infinity of Human Lust is Fourteen Lines

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Shakespeare Soundbites: Julius Caesar


You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? (1.1.39)

The live-long day. (1.1.42)

Beware the ides of March. (1.2.13)

He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass. (1.2.24)

I am not gamesome: I do lack some part
Of that quick spirit that is in Antony. (1.2.28)

Poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men. (1.2.46)

Set honour in one eye and death i' the other,
And I will look on both indifferently. (1.2.87)

Well, honour is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life: but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself. (1.2.92)

I was born free as Caesar; so were you:
We both have fed as well, and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he. (1.2.97)

Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone. (1.2.129)

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.135)

When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walls encompassed but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man. (1.2.154)

There was a Brutus once that would have brook’d
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king. (1.2.167)

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights;
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. (1.2.192)

'Tis very like: he hath the falling sickness. (1.2.256)

He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men. (1.2.209)

But, for my own part, it was Greek to me. (1.2.283)

Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius. (1.3.90)

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself. (1.3.93)

'Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. (2.1.22)

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection. (2.1.63)

O conspiracy!
Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free? (2.1.77)

Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds. (2.1.173)

For he is superstitious grown of late,
Quite from the main opinion he held once
Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies. (2.1.196)

But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flattered. (2.1.208)

Boy! Lucius! Fast asleep? It is no matter;
Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber:
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
Which busy care draws in the brains of men;
Therefore thou sleep’st so sound. (2.1.240)

That great vow
Which did incorporate and make us one. (2.1.272)

You are my true and honourable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart. (2.1.286)

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones. (3.2.79)

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man. (3.2.91)

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. (3.2.97)

O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. (3.2.110)

But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence. (3.2.124)

This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart;
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
O! what a fall was there, my countrymen;
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
O! now you weep, and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity; these are gracious drops. (3.2.189)

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:
I am no orator, as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man,
That love my friend. (3.2.221)

Were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny. (3.2.231)

He hath left you all his walks,
His private arbours, and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,
And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures,
To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. (3.2.252)

Fortune is merry,
And in this mood will give us anything. (3.2.271)

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforcèd ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith. (4.2.20)

Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemned to have an itching palm. (4.3.7)

Shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes? (4.3.23)

I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman. (4.3.27)

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;
For I am armed so strong in honesty
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not. (4.3.67)

By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,
And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection. (4.3.72)

A friend should bear his friend's infirmities,
But Brutus makes mine greater than they are. (4.3.86)

All his faults observed,
Set in a note-book, learn’d, and conn’d by rote. (4.3.92)

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. (4.3.218)

We must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. (4.3.247)

The deep of night is crept upon our talk,
And nature must obey necessity. (4.3.251)

Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius!
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then this parting was well made. (5.1.125)

O! that a man might know
The end of this day's business, ere it come;
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known. (5.1.131)

This day I breathèd first: time is come round,
And where I did begin, there shall I end;
My life is run his compass. (5.3.23)

O hateful error, melancholy's child!
Why dost thou show, to the apt thoughts of men,
The things that are not? (5.3.67)

I had rather have
Such men my friends than enemies. (5.4.28)

Thou art a fellow of a good respect;
Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it.
Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face,
While I do run upon it. (5.5.45)

This was the noblest Roman of them all;
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He, only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, 'This was a man!' (5.5.68)

Monday, September 1, 2008

Hal's Rejection of Falstaff

FALSTAFF
God save thy grace, King Hal! my royal Hal!

PISTOL
The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

FALSTAFF
God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING HENRY V
My lord chief-justice, speak to that vain man.

Lord Chief-Justice
Have you your wits? know you what 'tis to speak?

FALSTAFF
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING HENRY V

I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word. Set on.

Exeunt KING HENRY V, & c

FALSTAFF

Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.

Friday, August 22, 2008

The History of My Life

1. Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
2. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer by John Keats
3. Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
4. The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats
5. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
6. The Broken Tower by Hart Crane
7. Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore by Walt Whitman
8. The Underwriters by John Ashbery
9. I envy Seas, whereon He rides— by Emily Dickinson
10. Dear friend, far off, my lost desire by Alfred Lord Tennyson
11. Helian by Georg Trakl
12. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
13. You Who Never Arrived, Beloved by Rilke
14. Crusoe in England by Elizabeth Bishop
15. No worst. There is none. Pitched past pitch of grief by Hopkins
16. The Crystal Lithium by James Schuyler
17. The Vanity of Human Wishes by Samuel Johnson
18. Sonnet 20: A woman's face hast thou, the master mistress by Shakespeare
19. Your hands full of hours, you came to me by Paul Celan
20. Because That You Are Going by Emily Dickinson
21. Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell
22. Where Go the Boats? by Robert Louis Stevenson
23. The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens