Shakespearean Quotes

You might produce some personalized lines from this Hamlet passage if you’ve done something you regret to someone close to you:

Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong; 
But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman. 
This presence knows, 
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d 
With sore distraction. What I have done 
That might your nature, honour, and exception 
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. 
Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet. 
If Hamlet from himself be taken away, 
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, 
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. 
Who does it, then? His madness. If’t be so, 
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d; 
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy. 
Sir, in this audience, 
Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil 
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts 
That I have shot my arrow o’er the house 
And hurt my brother.

(Ham.V.2.213-231)

…I would not necessarily recommend, however, taking this position in a situation where something real, like a friendship, is at stake.  Can we truly blame our gravest errors, transgressions, and wrongdoings on our past states of mind as if they were other people, disconnected from our present selves?  It’s comforting to think so.  But saying so may insult the person you’re trying to apologize to.  Instead of saying it wasn’t “you” that did something wrong, I recommend admitting the fault and following with a true apology.

They do not love that do not show their love.
(TGV.I.2.108)

This quote might be useful if you want to take a lover to task, very gently, for what you might see as reluctance in expressing their feelings. Beware though, as this could open a Pandora’s box you might later wish you’d left well and truly closed! Still, it’s a good quote to remind us all that a show of appreciation now and then is always gratefully received.

Photo by batega.

When someone exits a room in a melodramatic fashion, most specifically when they are overacting the part of “the poor victim” or making a tragedy of something trivial, you might quote Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing:

Alas, poor hurt fowl, now will he creep into
sedges.
(II.1.192-193)

Depending on your company, you may want to limit the size of the quote to “Alas, poor hurt fowl!” because then you won’t have to explain what sedges are.

This post on The Chronicles of Ridicule (ho ho, get the pun? I don’t think the author looks all that much like Diesel, if that’s what he’s suggesting, though he does have cool shades) illustrates how often we all quote Will in our daily lives.

http://chronicridicule.blogspot.com/2005/02/dude-youre-quoting-shakespeare.html

(I try to link to all blog posts that use “dude” in the title. That’s what kind of Shakespeare blog I’m running, here.)

Below are all the phrases Crash talks about in his post, each hyperlinked to the instance where they’re used in the plays.

• “It’s all Greek to me.”
• “She is more sinned against than sinning.”
• “I recall my salad days.”
• “He acted more in sorrow than in anger.”
• “His wish was father to that thought.” (from one of my favorite scenes!)
• “They vanished into thin air.” (two possible sources)
• “I won’t budge an inch.”
• “…green-eyed jealousy.” (two possible sources)
• “He plays fast and loose.”
• “She’s tongue-tied!” (a bunch of instances)
• “I am a tower of strength.”
• “I’ve been hoodwinked!”
• “We’re in a pickle.”
• “He angrily knit his brow.” (strange: all but one instance of this expression appear in Henry VI, the other in The Rape of Lucrece)
• “We make a virtue of necessity.” (and a variant here)
• “It was fair play.”
• “I didn’t sleep a wink.”
• “We stood on ceremony.” (what does this mean?)
• “I laughed myself into stitches.”
• “Make short shrift.” (what does this mean?)
• “I received cold comfort.”
• “That was too much of a good thing.”
• “I’ve seen better days.”
• “You’re living in a fool’s paradise.”
• “I hate being a foregone conclusion.”
• “…as good luck would have it.”
• “It’s high time that I read Antony and Cleopatra.”
• “These are the early days.”
• “Out, with bag and baggage!”
• “That’s the long and short of it.”
• “The truth will out.” (and a variant here)
• “You are my own flesh and blood.”
• “…until the crack of doom.”
• “I suspect foul play.”
• “…with neither rhyme nor reason.”
• “Give the devil his due.”
• “If the truth were known.”
• “Keep a good tongue in your head.”
• “Good riddance.”
• “She sent me packing.” (I use this one a lot)
• “He’s dead as a doornail.”
• “Your hat is an eyesore.”
• “I’m the laughing stock of the neighborhood.”
• “My boss is the devil incarnate.”
• “You stony-hearted villain!”
• “That child is rather bloody-minded.”
• “What a blinking idiot.”
• “What the dickens?!”
• And lastly: “But me no buts” …does not come from Shakespeare. It comes from Henry Fielding. This expression is just one of myriad things that get attributed to The Bard just because he’s so famous and thus naturally serves as a catch-all for everything of suspect or unclear origin.

Enjoy poking around that list! As a final note, let me just say that, like the 1,500 words Shakespeare supposedly invented, all of the phrases above probably can’t be credited to The Bard’s imagination. Even if he didn’t coin them, however, he may have been the first to write them down.

You’d probably have ample opportunity to use this phrase, though the person you’d quote it to might not get the analogy at first. You’d have to use clear intonation to verbally convey the illustration with any success:

PEDRO
What need the bridge be much broader than the flood?
(Ado.I.1.300)

(It’s followed by “The fairest grant is the necessity. | Look, what will serve is fit.” Pelican tells us this means “The best gift is whatever is needed.” I would add the word only–”…only what is needed.”)

Pedro says this to Claudio meaning that one need not say more than is necessary to properly convey one’s meaning (and readers of this blog may wish that I take Pedro’s advice). The expression, however, can be used to illustrate any situation in which a minimum requirement of something–anything–will suffice. For instance, you could say this to someone who comments on how small your beer fridge is… if you only need a small beer fridge to accommodate your drinking habits (”the flood”). Why get a bigger fridge?

I need a bigger fridge.

Photo by peter pearson.

Closely following the death of his wife, Brutus shares a drink with Caius Cassius, fellow conspirator, with whom he has just had a heated argument. Because everything is falling apart for his cause and in his personal life, Brutus is feeling a bit repentant (though he may not know it yet).

BRUTUS
Speak no more of her. (To Lucius) Give me a bowl of wine.
To Cassius
In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius.
Brutus drinks.
(JC.IV.2.211)

I like this toast.

Photo by iTopher.

The most creative presentation of Will’s insults that I’ve found leaves a bit to be desired in the design department but offers an entertaining experience nonetheless; it compares Shakespeare’s insults to insults by Mark E. Smith of The Fall.

Photo by Yogi.

I picked up the book How to Speak Shakespeare by Cal Pritner and Louis Colaianni. It should be titled How to Speak Shakespeare for Students because it spends a lot of time covering extreme basics like the difference between verbs and nouns—but I suppose that the best place to start is at the beginning, and making assumptions about an audience’s prior knowledge often reduces the effectiveness of instruction, so I can understand why the basic grammatical review is there.

Often times puns and alliterations that would have passed you by will pop into plain view when you read the plays aloud, so even if you don’t go crazy and buy a book about reading the plays out loud, try it yourself. It will sound silly at first, but the longer you read, the more you start to “get it.” It was reading Twelfth Night aloud that got me hooked on The Bard.

How to Speak Shakespeare briefly addresses the poetic form of the majority of Will’s works: iambic pentameter. It starts you off by having you read the prologue from Romeo and Juliet in the tedious “da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM” pronunciation. Had the book stopped there, I would have chucked it in the proverbial fire. But the reason I like the book, so far, is that it proceeds to explain to you why you should never read Will’s poetry like that. The reason? It’s boring! Predictable patterns aren’t entertaining or exciting. People want to be surprised; shocked; moved. The best way to read Shakespeare is to learn what an “iambic foot” is and then forget it. When you’re reading Shakespeare, forget you’re reading Shakespeare. You can always tell a bad Shakespeare actor when it sounds like they’re reading poetry when they speak.

Here are some things you might to do avoid “bad Shakespeare acting”:

1. Go to Open Source Shakespeare, copy some lines from a play, paste them into a word processor, then remove all the line breaks. Make it all one big paragraph. Then read it. Forget that it’s poetry. Pretend it’s prose.
2. Watch Ken Brannagh’s Much Ado About Nothing and pay attention to how Denzel Washington speaks. Then pay attention to how Keanu Reeves speaks. Denzel sounds like he’s talking to you in your living room. Keanu sounds like he’s reading poetry.
3. Get yourself worked up before you read Shakespeare out loud. If you’re angry or upset you’ll naturally stress the syllables and words you’re supposed to stress.

Have fun!

A little more than kin, and less than kind!
(Ham.I.2.65)

Hamlet whispers this line as an aside; he’s talking about his uncle, Claudius, who has just named Hamlet his “son.” This phrase has the potential to fit into the context of many a real-world conversation when referring to your relationship with a family member (usually best if not part of your nuclear family; the farther removed, the better the fit) with whom you don’t get along very well.

[The nomenclature of this post's title implies that it is part of a series, and it is indeed intended to be. I'd like to toss short phrases and witticisms into the fray that readers might be able to pull out of their proverbial hats when the right situations arise, thus impressing their friends/friends' friends... Why else do we study Shakespeare except to quote it and appear well-informed? ]

I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.
(WT.IV.4.109-110)

In The Winter’s Tale, Camillo, an older man, says this to Perdita, a beautiful young farm-girl-who-is-secretly-a-princess, and means it more as a compliment than a come-on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it that way. It’s not a line that can really stand on its own; in the context of the play Perdita has just given Camillo flowers, so grazing has some relevance. I think your only opportunity to use this line and score points with a fine girl would be to use it after they’ve suggested “adding you to their flock of admirers” or that you “get in line to be with them” or something similar. Turn that playful insult into Shakespearean flattery and you’ll be on your way to making the “most dreamy guys I’ve ever hung out with” list!