Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay.
Bow, stubborn knees, and heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
All may be well.
[III, iii, 73–95] Hamlet, finding Claudius at prayer and vulnerable, senses a golden opportunity to kill him, but pauses, fearing he might thus save a soul whom he thinks deserves damnation:
Now might I do it pat, now ’a is a-praying.
And now I’ll do’t. And so ’a goes to heaven.
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned.
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
’A took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
’Tis heavy with him! And am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage,
Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t –
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes.
[IV, iv, 32–66] The news of a war to be fought over ownership of a tiny piece of territory sparks thoughts in Hamlet of his own failure to avenge even the most grievous of wrongs:
How all occasions do inform against me
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’ event –
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward – I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do’,
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me.
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puffed,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Twelfth Night
[II, ii, 17–41] When Viola, disguised as a boy, is sent a love token by the beautiful Olivia – who claims to be ‘returning’ it – she is struck by the power of a handsome form over female sensibilities:
I left no ring with her; what means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her!
She made good view of me; indeed, so much
That – methought – her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts, distractedly.
She loves me, sure, the cunning of her passion
Invites me in this churlish messenger.
None of my lord’s ring! Why, he sent her none.
I am the man! If it be so – as ’tis –
Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms.
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we,
For such as we are made of, such we be.
How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly;
And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master’s love.
As I am woman – now alas the day,
What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
O time, thou must untangle this, not I!
It is too hard a knot for me t’ untie.
Troilus and Cressida
[I, i, 91–106] Though his city, Troy, is at war, Prince Troilus deems no dispute worthy of his Cressida-engrossed attention – his anger is saved for the difficult intermediary who is running his love affair, Lord Pandarus:
Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds!
Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,
When with your blood you daily paint her thus.
I cannot fight upon this argument;
It is too starved a subject for my sword.
But Pandarus – O gods, how do you plague me!
I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar,
And he’s as tetchy to be wooed to woo
As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.
Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love,
What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we –
Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:
Between our Ilium and where she resides,
Let it be called the wild and wandering flood,
Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.
[I, ii, 281–95] Cressida too finds romance conducted through a go-between hard, but knows enough not to surrender any ground. Love, she senses, is as much a power-struggle as any war:
Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice
He offers in another’s enterprise;
But more in Troilus thousandfold I see
Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be.
Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing;
Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she beloved knows naught that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue;
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
‘Achievement is command; ungained, beseech.’
Then, though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.
[III, ii, 16–27] All but overcome already by the anticipation of love, Troilus is sure he will be overwhelmed by love in fact – annihilated as effectively by pleasure, perhaps, as he might be by death in battle:
I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
Th’ imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense. What will it be,
When that the watery palate tastes indeed
Love’s thrice-repurèd nectar? – death, I fear me,
Swooning destruction, or some joy too fi
ne,
Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers.
I fear it much; and I do fear besides
That I shall lose distinction in my joys,
As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.
Measure for Measure
[II, ii, 162–87] Angelo, most pious of officials, claims he has resisted every other feminine temptation without difficulty, but is attracted despite himself to the chaste Isabella:
What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha?
Not she, nor doth she tempt; but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman’s lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou? Or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook. Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Ever till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.
[II, iv, 1–17] His unlicensed feelings for Isabella, fears Angelo, make a mockery of his religious faith:
When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words,
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: God in my mouth,
As if I did but only chew His name,
And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied,
Is like a good thing being often read,
Grown seared and tedious; yea, my gravity,
Wherein, let no man hear me, I take pride,
Could I with boot change for an idle plume
Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood;
Let’s write ‘good Angel’ on the devil’s horn;
’Tis not the devil’s crest.
[III, ii, 249–70] Angelo’s superior, the Duke of Vienna, is scathing about his deputy’s corruption – but more about his hypocrisy. He will be repaid in kind for his dishonesty that night, decides the Duke, when his spurned love Mariana comes to his bed in place of Isabella, whom Angelo has ordered to sleep with him in return for her brother’s life:
He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking.
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow.
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side?
How may likeness made in crimes,
Make a practice on the times,
To draw with idle spiders’ strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
Craft against vice I must apply.
With Angelo tonight shall lie
His old betrothed but despised:
So disguise shall by th’ disguised
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.
Othello
[III, iii, 255–74] Taken in as much by his own jealousy as by the lying insinuations of his malevolent ensign, Iago, the moor Othello is tragically ready to see his beloved Desdemona as his betrayer – no true falcon but an unruly ‘haggard’ hawk:
This fellow’s of exceeding honesty,
And knows all qualities, with a learnèd spirit
Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,
I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind
To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years – yet that’s not much –
She’s gone: I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. O, curse of marriage!
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon,
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others’ uses. Yet, ’tis the plague of great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death:
Even then this forked plague is fated to us
When we do quicken:
[V, ii, 1–22] Convinced of his wife’s infidelity by no more compelling cause than his own frantic jealousy, Othello resolves to murder Desdemona:
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul:
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood,
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster:
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again,
It must needs wither. I’ll smell it on the tree.
He kisses her
O, balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.
Be thus when thou art dead and I will kill thee,
And love thee after. One more, and this the last.
So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep.
But they are cruel tears; this sorrow’s heavenly –
It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.
All’s Well That Ends Well
[I, i, 78–97] Helena should, she knows, reserve her sorrow for the recent death of her beloved father – but she finds her overpowering love for Bertram displacing such filial feelings:
O, were that all! I think not on my father,
And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him. What was he like?
I have forgot him; my imagination
Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s.
I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. ’Twere all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me.
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sp
here.
Th’ ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His archèd brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart’s table – heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.
But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics.
Timon of Athens
[IV, i, 1–41] Having squandered a fortune in hospitality and gifts, Timon finds himself forgotten by his so-called ‘friends’ when, exhausted by generosity, his money runs out. Bitterly disenchanted with the world of men, he takes refuge in the wild woods outside the city, but allows himself a single backward glance at his hometown as he leaves:
Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall
That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth
And fence not Athens. Matrons, turn incontinent.
Obedience, fail in children. Slaves and fools
Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench,
And minister in their steads. To general filths
Convert, o’th’instant, green virginity.
Do’t in your parents’ eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with your knives
And cut your trusters’ throats. Bound servants, steal.
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed;
Thy mistress is o’th’brothel. Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains. Piety and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries
And let confusion live. Plagues incident to men,
Your potent and infectious fevers heap
On Athens, ripe for stroke. Thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty
Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,
That ’gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot. Itches, blains,
Sow all th’ Athenian bosoms, and their crop
Is This a Dagger Which I See Before Me? Page 6
