Is This a Dagger Which I See Before Me?

by William Shakespeare

  Be general leprosy. Breath infect breath,

  That their society, as their friendship, may

  Be merely poison. Nothing I’ll bear from thee

  But nakedness, thou detestable town.

  Take thou that too, with multiplying bans.

  Timon will to the woods, where he shall find

  Th’ unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.

  The gods confound – hear me, you good gods all –

  The Athenians both within and out that wall.

  And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow

  To the whole race of mankind, high and low!

  Amen.

  [IV, iii, 1–45] Wealth, not worth, decides status in the world of men, inveighs an angry Timon as he digs in the woods for edible roots. When he finds gold instead he is filled with satirical scorn towards this basest of metals, the ‘common whore’ of all mankind:

  O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth

  Rotten humidity. Below thy sister’s orb

  Infect the air! Twinn’d brothers of one womb,

  Whose procreation, residence, and birth,

  Scarce is dividant – touch them with several fortunes,

  The greater scorns the lesser. Not nature,

  To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune

  But by contempt of nature.

  Raise me this beggar and deject that lord –

  The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,

  The beggar native honour.

  It is the pasture lards the wether’s sides,

  The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares,

  In purity of manhood stand upright,

  And say ‘This man’s a flatterer’? If one be,

  So are they all, for every grise of fortune

  Is smoothed by that below. The learnèd pate

  Ducks to the golden fool. All’s obliquy,

  There’s nothing level in our cursèd natures

  But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorred

  All feasts, societies, and throngs of men.

  His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains.

  Destruction fang mankind. Earth, yield me roots.

  He digs

  Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate

  With thy most operant poison. What is here?

  Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?

  No, gods, I am no idle votarist.

  Roots, you clear heavens! Thus much of this will make

  Black white, foul fair, wrong right,

  Base noble, old young, coward valiant.

  Ha, you gods! Why this? What, this, you gods? Why, this

  Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,

  Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads.

  This yellow slave

  Will knit and break religions, bless th’ accursed,

  Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves

  And give them title, knee, and approbation,

  With senators on the bench. This is it

  That makes the wappened widow wed again –

  She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores

  Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices

  To th’ April day again. Come, damned earth,

  Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds

  Among the rout of nations, I will make thee

  Do thy right nature.

  King Lear

  [I, ii, 1–22] What makes a bastard less worthy than his legitimate brother? Conceived on the wrong side of the blanket, Edmund, Gloucester’s bastard son, resolves that he will be no respecter of right in his own conduct:

  Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law

  My services are bound. Wherefore should I

  Stand in the plague of custom and permit

  The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

  For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines

  Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?

  When my dimensions are as well-compact,

  My mind as generous, and my shape as true

  As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us

  With ‘base’? with ‘baseness’? ‘bastardy’? ‘base, base’?

  Who in the lusty stealth of nature take

  More composition and fierce quality

  Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed

  Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops

  Got ’tween asleep and wake? Well then,

  Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

  Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund

  As to the legitimate. Fine word ‘legitimate’!

  Well, my ‘legitimate’, if this letter speed

  And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

  Shall top the legitimate. I grow. I prosper.

  Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

  [II, iii, 1–21] His beloved father turned against him by his bastard brother’s machinations, Edgar must flee for his life in disguise. So crazy do things seem to be that he can think of no better shape to adopt for his flight than that of a wandering, ranting Bedlam beggar:

  I heard myself proclaimed,

  And by the happy hollow of a tree

  Escaped the hunt. No port is free, no place

  That guard and most unusual vigilance

  Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may ’scape

  I will preserve myself; and am bethought

  To take the basest and most poorest shape

  That ever penury, in contempt of man,

  Brought near to beast. My face I’ll grime with filth,

  Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots,

  And with presented nakedness outface

  The winds and persecutions of the sky,

  The country gives me proof and precedent

  Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,

  Strike in their numbed and mortified bare arms

  Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;

  And with this horrible object, from low farms,

  Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills

  Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,

  Enforce their charity: ‘Poor Turlygod! Poor Tom!’

  That’s something yet; Edgar I nothing am.

  [IV, i, 1–9] Still in his mad disguise, Edgar finds he can take considerable comfort from the knowledge that he is firmly at the bottom of the social heap:

  Yet better thus, and known to be contemned

  Than still contemned and flattered. To be worst,

  The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,

  Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.

  The lamentable change is from the best;

  The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then,

  Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!

  The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst

  Owes nothing to thy blasts.

  [III, iv, 28–36] Brought low himself by circumstance, Lear reflects on the plight of his country’s poor:

  Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

  That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

  How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

  Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

  From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

  Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

  Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

  That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

  And show the heavens more just.

  Macbeth

  [I, v, 36–52] A single murder stands between her husband and the Scottish throne, realizes Lady Macbeth – and King Duncan is to be the guest of honour in her own home this very night:

  The raven himself is hoarse

  That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

  Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

  That tend on mortal thoughts,
unsex me here

  And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

  Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood;

  Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

  That no compunctious visitings of nature

  Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between

  The effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts

  And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

  Wherever, in your sightless substances,

  You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,

  And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

  That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

  Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

  To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’

  [I, vii, 1–28] His wife having put the idea of murdering Duncan in his head, Macbeth is appalled at the enormity of the contemplated crime:

  If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

  It were done quickly. If the assassination

  Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,

  With his surcease, success – that but this blow

  Might be the be-all and the end-all! – here,

  But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

  We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases

  We still have judgement here – that we but teach

  Bloody instructions, which being taught return

  To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice

  Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice

  To our own lips. He’s here in double trust:

  First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

  Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

  Who should against his murderer shut the door,

  Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan

  Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

  So clear in his great office, that his virtues

  Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against

  The deep damnation of his taking-off;

  And pity, like a naked new-born babe

  Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed

  Upon the sightless curriers of the air,

  Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

  That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

  To prick the sides of my intent, but only

  Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself

  And falls on the other.

  [II, i, 33–64] As he steels his nerves to kill the sleeping Duncan, an all but delirious Macbeth can hardly tell where his fantasies of power leave off and murderous fact takes up the story:

  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 feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

  A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

  Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?

  I see thee yet, in form as palpable

  As this which now I draw.

  Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,

  And such an instrument I was to use. –

  Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,

  Or else worth all the rest. – I see thee still,

  And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood,

  Which was not so before. There’s no such thing:

  It is the bloody business which informs

  Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one half-world

  Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

  The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

  Pale Hecat’s offerings; and withered Murder,

  Alarumed by his sentinel the wolf,

  Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

  With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design

  Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

  Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

  Thy very stones prate of my whereabout

  And take the present horror from the time

  Which now suits with it. – Whiles I threat, he lives:

  Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

  (A bell rings.)

  I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.

  Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell

  That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

  [V, v, 17–28] On hearing the news of his lady’s death, Macbeth retreats into a world of his own to reflect upon the meaningless futility of all he has fought and killed for:

  She should have died hereafter;

  There would have been a time for such a word –

  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

  To the last syllable of recorded time;

  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

  And then is heard no more. It is a tale

  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

  Signifying nothing.

  Antony and Cleopatra

  [IV, xiv, 44–54] Having parted at odds with his Egyptian lover, Antony is broken by the news of her death (though it will turn out to be untrue). He will himself commit suicide, he resolves, and they will be reconciled in the next life, like the Carthaginian Queen Dido and the Trojan hero Aeneas:

  I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and

  Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now

  All length is torture; since the torch is out,

  Lie down, and stray no farther. Now all labour

  Mars what it does; yea, very force entangles

  Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done.

  Eros! – I come, my queen – Eros! Stay for me.

  Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand,

  And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:

  Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,

  And all the haunt be ours.

  Pericles, Prince of Tyre

  [I, i, 122–43] Pericles is horror-struck – and terrified – when he realizes that his intended bride has been the incestuous lover of her father, the great king Antiochus:

  How courtesy would seem to cover sin,

  When what is done is like an hypocrite,

  The which is good in nothing but in sight.

  If it be true that I interpret false,

  Then were it certain you were not so bad

  As with foul incest to abuse your soul;

  Where now you’re both a father and a son

  By your untimely claspings with your child,

  Which pleasures fits a husband, not a father,

  And she, an eater of her mother’s flesh

  By the defiling of her parents’ bed;

  And both like serpents are, who though they feed

  On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed.

  Antioch, farewell, for wisdom sees those men

  Blush not in actions blacker than the night

  Will shun no course to keep them from the light.

  One sin, I know, another doth provoke.

  Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.

  Poison and treason are the hands of sin,

  Ay, and the targets to put off the shame.

  Then, lest my life be cropped to keep you clear,

  By flight I’ll shun the danger which I fear.

  [II, i, 1–11] Pericles harangues the storm that has wrecked his ship: it has shown its mastery, now he wishes it would leave him to die in peace:

  Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven!

  Wind, rain, and thunder, remember earthly man

  Is but a substance that must yield to
you,

  And I, as fits my nature, do obey you.

  Alas, the seas hath cast me on the rocks,

  Washed me from shore to shore, and left my breath

  Nothing to think on but ensuing death.

  Let it suffice the greatness of your powers

  To have bereft a prince of all his fortunes,

  And, having thrown him from your watery grave

  Here to have death in peace is all he’ll crave.

  Coriolanus

  [IV, iv, 12–26] Exiled from Rome himself as an enemy of the people, Coriolanus now finds himself in Antium, an ‘enemy’ state. ‘City, ’tis I who made thy widows,’ he wryly recalls, as he sets off in search of his old adversary, Aufidius:

  O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,

  Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,

  Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise

  Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love

  Unseparable, shall within this hour,

  On a dissension of a doit, break out

  To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes,

  Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep

  To take the one the other, by some chance,

  Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends

  And interjoin their issues. So with me.

  My birthplace hate I, and my love’s upon

  This enemy town. I’ll enter. If he slay me,

  He does fair justice: if he give me way,

  I’ll do his country service.

  The Winter’s Tale

  [III, iii, 58–76] King Leontes of Bohemia, having taken it into his head that his queen, Hermione, has been unfaithful, orders that their infant child – her bastard, he believes – be taken out and abandoned in the wilderness. Fortunately for the baby, an aged shepherd comes bumbling along, pondering as he goes the follies of youth:

  I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest: for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting. Hark you now: would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather? They have scared away two of my best sheep, which I fear the wolf will sooner find than the master. If anywhere I have them, ’tis by the sea-side, browsing of ivy. Good luck, an’t be thy will!

  He sees the child

  What have we here? Mercy on’s, a barne! A very pretty barne. A boy or a child, I wonder? A pretty one, a very pretty one. Sure, some scape. Though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting gentlewoman in the scape: this has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work. They were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. I’ll take it up for pity – yet I’ll tarry till my son come: he hallowed but even now. Whoa-ho-hoa!