From “As You Like It,” Act II. Sc. 2.
ADAM.—Let me be your servant;
Though I look old, yet am I strong and lusty:
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility.
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly: let me...
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From “King Henry Eighth,” Act III. Sc. 1.
ORPHEUS, with his lute, made trees,
And the mountain-tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing;
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting Spring.Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their... -
From “The Merchant of Venice,” Act V. Sc. 1.
LORENZO.—How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There ’s not the... -
From “Second Part of Henry IV.,” Act III. Sc. 1.
KING HENRY.—How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep!—O sleep! O gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy... -
From “As You Like It,” Act II. Sc. 7.
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. At first the Infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining School-boy, with his... -
From “Antony and Cleopatra,” Act II. Sc. 2.
ENOBARBUS.—The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,... -
From “King John,” Act V. Sc. 7.
THIS England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,* * * * *
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true. -
[1415]
From “King Henry V.,” Act III. Sc. 1.
ONCE more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace, there ’s nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness, and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon... -
From “King Richard III.,” Act I. Sc. 1.
NOW is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York,
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,... -
From “Macbeth,” Act II. Sc. 1.
[MACBETH, before the murder of Duncan, meditating alone, sees the image of a dagger in the air, and thus soliloquizes:]IS this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:—
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To...