First Folio printed posthumously in 1623 by fellow actors John Hemming and Henry Condell – 750 copies were printed, 235 survive today
Geetha, Talitha, Indira
Everyone appreciated the added learning and insights brought in by our guests, and expressed the hope they could attend oftener, perhaps gracing poetry sessions, such as our Romantic Poets celebration in August.
Coat of Arms obtained for William's father, John Shakespeare, Glover, of Stratford-upon-Avon
William Shakespeare, the Player, applied and obtained this coat of arms for his father in 1596 from the College of Heralds in London. The central shield has a spear going through it. Joe, re-imagining it as a quill pen, adopted it for use as the Favicon, or website icon, of the KRG blog, as you will see in the tab of the browser at the top.
KumKum, Devika
Meanwhile news arrives that the theatre historian, Geoffrey Marsh, has identified the address in London where William Shakespeare lived at the height of his powers in 1598: 35 Great St. Helen's Street, hard by the modern landmark called the Gherkin.
1598 St Helens tax record, listing John Robinson the Younger, Prymme/Pryn and William Shakespeare
The attendance was at its best; thirteen were present, and two remote readers who could not attend submitted voice files. It has become routine now to con-celebrate birthdays with KRG readings. We had WS and Shoba to thank for an April birthday and the following goodies were on hand for Shakespeare’s 455th birth anniversary: kinnathappam and veg cutlets (Hemjit), barfi (Talitha), cake (Shoba), and pati sapta (KumKum).
Cake, Kinnathappam, Pati Sapta, Veg Cutlets
Kavita, Priya, Hemjit, KumKum
Zakia, Priya, KumKum, Devika
(Standing) Geetha, Devika, Kavita, Shoba, Zakia, Indira, Talitha, KumKum, Thommo, Priya (Sitting) Arundhaty, Hemjit, Joe
Painting believed to be the only image of Shakespeare made during his life
Full Account and Record of the Shakespeare Celebration – Apr 12, 2019
Present: Thommo, KumKum, Priya, Shoba, Joe, Arundhaty, Zakia, Kavita, Hemjit, Devika, Geetha
Virtually Present: Pamela, Gopa
Guests: Talitha, Indira
Indira, Thommo, Shoba, Devika (standing) Priya (at back)
These are the new dates for the coming sessions:
May 31: Puckoon (novel by Spike Milligan)
June 28: Poetry
July 19: Cold Comfort Farm (novel by Stella Gibbons)
Aug 30: Poetry of the Romantics
Sep (date TBD): Devil's Advocate (novel by Morris West)
1. Talitha
KumKum, Devika, Geetha, Talitha, Indira
Her selection was a speech in Richard II after the king, realising his hopeless position, has agreed to be deposed by Bolingbroke, his cousin. Talitha mentioned that this play was the first in a series of TV film adaptations of William Shakespeare's history plays by BBC called the Hollow Crown. The title is taken from this speech where Richard says:
... within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Antic here means a grotesque pageant. The king is in low spirits and driven to ruminate dolefully on Death which
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Subjected as he is to grief and common needs like bread, he asks his erstwhile subjects:
How can you say to me, I am a king?
Indira said WS raises the idea of the impotent king who towards the end of his reign runs into the ‘red hot poker’ of Bolingbroke who won't rest until his father's rightful properties, confiscated by the king, are restored. Ben Whishaw won an award for his performance in Richard II, and here you can listen to this very speech.
2. Indira
Indira chose the famous mortal speech of Cleopatra,
... I have
Immortal longings in me:
Two other metaphors for death spring to the lips of the queen:
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired.
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie:
Indira said she first saw this play staged in London when Judi Dench played Cleopatra opposite Anthony Hopkins. Indira contrasted the lovers in Antony and Cleopatra with the lovers in Romeo and Juliet. The Roman play features two mature worldly persons in their late thirties or forties, for whom the folly of their love is only the last in a string of follies. They had enormous pleasure with each other, said Indira.The source of the story, as always in Shakespeare, is someone else's chronicle; in this case Plutarch's Lives. But there is no comparison between Plutarch's plain textual history and and the lines of great magic and drama that issued from the quill of WS!
Indira said Cleopatra is 39 and Antony 54, perhaps three times the combined age of the lovers in Romeo and Juliet. Victorious Caesar who hated the Egyptians (pace Indira) took her in chains to Rome. This final speech is delivered when Cleopatra realises all the doors are closing. Here is Janet Suzman enacting the final scene, starting at time 4:50.
KumKum thanked Indira for coming to give us her presentation.
Bobby
At this point we paused to remember Bobby Paul George who inaugurated the Kochi Reading Group. We used to meet on the premises of his book store JustFiction on Pandit Karuppan Road. Some time after it started, Priya, our member now, inquired about an article she wanted to write; Bobby referred her to Joe who was then on holiday in America and over e-mail, the aims of the group were laid out. With a few photos of that time included Priya wrote an article in June 2007; that was when the public first became aware of KRG. The Hindu continues to publish web editions, parsimoniously doling out pictures in extremely poor resolution (in spite of reader protests) in an age when online storage costs almost nothing. Here is the original photo Joe provided:
KumKum recalled an occasion when Bobby visited our home and remarked on the fact she and Joe were still together after 50 years; the more surprised was he that feminine beauty was not a factor in the glue. KumKum remembers fiercely protesting at the implication! Priya said Bobby was fond of Joe and KumKum. Joe remembered one of his first meetings with Bobby at the Yacht Club over a beer by the waterfront.
3. Thommo
In this selection Antonio, the merchant, and Shylock, the lender, are finalising the terms of a loan by which Bassanio can be financed for a marital venture in which he seeks advantage by the wealthy hand of Portia. No lover he, but mere mercenary.
The deep irony in the speech of Shylock can't be missed:
'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys'?
How ill-treated Jews were by Christians for centuries is put on clear display by WS:
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
WS provides all the best lines to Shylock, yet leaves him at the end abandoned, and ill-used even by his own daughter. Since Shylock is the main dramatic character around whom the drama turns, the Merchant of Venice were better classified as a Tragedy.
You can watch Al Pacino as Shylock deliver this speech to Antonio (played by Jeremy Irons) in the 2004 film.
4. KumKum
Her selection was also from the Merchant of Venice; it’s a later scene in which Salarino, a friend of Antonio, seeks reassurance that Shylock will not insist on the penalty (a pound of Antonio’s flesh) should the loan not be repaid in time. In a defiant speech Shylock affirms his intention:
... If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge.
His famous ‘Hath not a Jew eyes’ speech is the prelude which you can see and hear, once again delivered by Al Pacino in the magnificent 2004 film.
5. Priya
Lady Macbeth is a most unlikely character for our Priya to slip into with these lines:
... 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!
......Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Joe thought the verb ‘unsex’ was a powerful way for Lady Macbeth to divest herself of all the gentler qualities of a woman’s nature in order to murder a royal house guest. She is undoubtedly the engine of ambition for her husband (and herself) to claim the throne by eliminating the king.
Hemjit pointed to her breakdown after the act. It was the outcome of crossing a psychological threshold. Even unsexed, neither man nor woman can endure the act of murder. Her sleepwalking, as Indira pointed out, is further evidence of the impossible self-harm and karmic retribution she has brought on herself. Here is the ‘Unsex me here’ speech by Judi Dench.
Then Priya went on to the famous ‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow’ speech of Macbeth. Soon Macbeth will issue a final cry to mortal battle:
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’
You can listen to the Shakespearean actor, Ian McKellen, as he draws out the pith and marrow of Macbeth's speech before an audience in this recording.
6. Shoba
King Lear is perhaps the most challenging character of Shakespeare to act. Many have aspired to the role only at the end of a long career.
Most recently Glenda Jackson has essayed the role of King Lear at age 82:
The role demands the king go mad from some affliction, but of what exactly WS does not make clear. In one modern production Simon Beale who plays King Lear takes on the medical characteristics of Lewy Body dementia.
Here is the opening scene in which King Lear is misled by the fulsome matlabi speeches of Goneril and Regan, but finds no truth in Cordelia's words.
KING LEAR
So young, and so untender?
CORDELIA
So young, my lord, and true.
KING LEAR
Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:
Indira took an outright censorious view of King Lear as a character. How could one be so foolish? She had little sympathy with Lear's ‘stupidity.’ But when WS is writing a tragedy any device will suffice, and response to flattery has been known since ancient times as a way to get ahead: with politicians, parents, and with bosses. Indeed, in modern MBA programs, how to flatter, according to the situation, is one of the methods taught.
James Earl Jones takes on the ‘cataracts and hurricanoes’ speech in this production.
Indira claimed Lear's suffering is of his own making. Joe said sympathy for the character is not a sentiment that issues upon reading the play. You have to see it on stage enacted with all the attendant actors and emotions, and then only does the fact emerge that the character is tragic, not stupid.
Take the tender scene in Act 5, Scene 3 when Lear is talking to Cordelia:
Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies
Thommo recalled when he was in school in Calcutta, the troupe of the Kendals would come along periodically to play scenes from the plays. Geoffrey Kendal was the father who ran the Shakespeareana Theatre Company, and daughters Felicity and Jennifer acted along with him. You can read more in this Hindu article.
Thommo waxed eloquent about the wonderful costume collection in St. Xavier's; Joe knows from having played on the stage there in college. Kavita regrets her children in modern India don't get to see such plays.
Indira chimed in with the analogous comment that you can graduate in English from an American university without reading a play by Shakespeare. I should add: a second-rate American university. Shakespeare is studied under the rubric of English Renaissance literature. Specialisation is partly to blame for compartmentalising different periods of literature, so that you may study some without needing to study all to get a degree, according to the scale of the number of ‘credits’ required to graduate.
7. Joe
Joe was inspired to select a passage in Twelfth Night by recalling an incident in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. The mother Rupa Mehra is in search of a groom for Lata, her far too independent daughter. She goes to watch a Shakespeare play at the college where Lata is acting as Olivia. She’s scandalised beyond measure to hear these lines from Act 3, Scene 4:
OLIVIA
Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?
MALVOLIO
To bed! ay, sweet-heart, and I'll come to thee.
Kabir Durrani, the cricketer, who plays Malvolio is her love interest at this point. It was good that Mrs Mehra had not read Eric Partridge’s book, Shakespeare’s Bawdy; else the meaning of ‘I’ll come to thee’ would have brought on an apoplexy.
Plot Summary:
Viola is in love with Orsino, who is in love with Olivia, who is in love with Viola’s male disguise, Cesario. This love triangle is complicated by the fact that neither Orsino nor Olivia knows that Cesario is really a woman (Viola). All is happily resolved in the end as in a typical Bollywood comedy.
If music be the food of love, play on;
This is the opening line of the play. WS throws some poetry for Duke Orsino to catch, so he can tell how love-sick he is for Viola, all in a metaphor for food. WS could roll off such lines effortlessly, and it ends on a high note:
... so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
For WS the play, the characters, the drama, all existed in the imagination before they appeared on stage and that is his sense of ‘fantastical’ – unreal, illusory, not the modern sense of ‘terrific.’ We are reminded of another poet who used it in the same sense, Milton in L'Allegro:
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
The second piece has to do with clowns or fools. The fool of Olivia’s household, Feste, moves between Olivia’s and Orsino’s homes. He earns his living by making jokes, singing old songs, being generally witty, and offering good advice cloaked under a layer of sarcasm. In spite of being a professional fool, he often seems the wisest character in the play. For instance, in this little debate with his mistress:
Feste. Good madonna, why mourn'st thou?
Olivia. Good fool, for my brother's death.
Feste. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
Olivia. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Feste. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven.
He is no fool at all, or as he says:
Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.
8. Arundhaty
Arundhaty's piece was a long extract from As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 2. Here is a Summary from Sparknotes.
“Rosalind is depressed over the banishment of her father, Duke Senior. Her cousin, Celia, attempts to cheer her up. Celia promises that as the sole heir of the usurping Duke Frederick, she will give the throne to Rosalind upon his death. In gratitude, Rosalind promises to be less melancholy, and the two women wittily discuss the roles of “Fortune” and “Nature” in determining the circumstances of one’s life (I.ii.26–47). They are interrupted by the court jester, Touchstone, who mockingly tells of a knight without honour who still swore by it. Le Beau, a dapper young courtier, also arrives and intrigues them with the promise of a wrestling match featuring the phenomenal strength and skill of the wrestler Charles.”
9. Zakia
She recited the universally recognised speech by Jaques ‘All the world's a stage.’ How well WS has divided the ages of man into seven stages! Here is an insightful revelation of the speech. When you come to the end you know how accurately it has been described, ‘the infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms’ has once again reverted to ‘second childishness and mere oblivion.’
In an interview the actor Simon Callow reflects on the how he was inspired to became an actor on stage. Shakespeare for him encapsulates the human experience; he illustrates with particular reference to the Seven Ages of Man speech from time 7:40 onwards.
Geetha and Thommo have the experience of tending her 102-year old father at home. He is the loudest voice in the house, said Thommo. And with his one-eyed vision he can make out most things on TV.
10. Kavita
She started with the popular and best known sonnet of Shakespeare, No. 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
The world forgets it was addressed by one man to another, and it is employed now as though a man were addressing his sweetheart. The intent is flattery by bestowing the immortality of this verse (it is immortal) on the object of the poet's affection:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Joe unearthed Hindi, Bengali and French versions on the Web:
Hindi
Kya tum roshan din jaise ho
ya usse behtar ho?
क्या तुम रोशन दिन जैसे हो
या उससे बेहतर हो?
KumKum, Devika, Geetha, Talitha, Indira - 2
Talitha, Indira
Indira chose the famous mortal speech of Cleopatra,
... I have
Immortal longings in me:
Two other metaphors for death spring to the lips of the queen:
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired.
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie:
Indira said she first saw this play staged in London when Judi Dench played Cleopatra opposite Anthony Hopkins. Indira contrasted the lovers in Antony and Cleopatra with the lovers in Romeo and Juliet. The Roman play features two mature worldly persons in their late thirties or forties, for whom the folly of their love is only the last in a string of follies. They had enormous pleasure with each other, said Indira.The source of the story, as always in Shakespeare, is someone else's chronicle; in this case Plutarch's Lives. But there is no comparison between Plutarch's plain textual history and and the lines of great magic and drama that issued from the quill of WS!
Indira said Cleopatra is 39 and Antony 54, perhaps three times the combined age of the lovers in Romeo and Juliet. Victorious Caesar who hated the Egyptians (pace Indira) took her in chains to Rome. This final speech is delivered when Cleopatra realises all the doors are closing. Here is Janet Suzman enacting the final scene, starting at time 4:50.
KumKum thanked Indira for coming to give us her presentation.
Bobby
At this point we paused to remember Bobby Paul George who inaugurated the Kochi Reading Group. We used to meet on the premises of his book store JustFiction on Pandit Karuppan Road. Some time after it started, Priya, our member now, inquired about an article she wanted to write; Bobby referred her to Joe who was then on holiday in America and over e-mail, the aims of the group were laid out. With a few photos of that time included Priya wrote an article in June 2007; that was when the public first became aware of KRG. The Hindu continues to publish web editions, parsimoniously doling out pictures in extremely poor resolution (in spite of reader protests) in an age when online storage costs almost nothing. Here is the original photo Joe provided:
Bobby Paul George, Nina Nayar, Jeena Mathew and KumKum Cleetus at the book discussion of 'Snow' by Orhan Pamuk on Feb 16, 2007
KumKum recalled an occasion when Bobby visited our home and remarked on the fact she and Joe were still together after 50 years; the more surprised was he that feminine beauty was not a factor in the glue. KumKum remembers fiercely protesting at the implication! Priya said Bobby was fond of Joe and KumKum. Joe remembered one of his first meetings with Bobby at the Yacht Club over a beer by the waterfront.
3. Thommo
Talitha, Indira, Thommo, Priya, Shoba
In this selection Antonio, the merchant, and Shylock, the lender, are finalising the terms of a loan by which Bassanio can be financed for a marital venture in which he seeks advantage by the wealthy hand of Portia. No lover he, but mere mercenary.
The deep irony in the speech of Shylock can't be missed:
'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys'?
How ill-treated Jews were by Christians for centuries is put on clear display by WS:
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
WS provides all the best lines to Shylock, yet leaves him at the end abandoned, and ill-used even by his own daughter. Since Shylock is the main dramatic character around whom the drama turns, the Merchant of Venice were better classified as a Tragedy.
You can watch Al Pacino as Shylock deliver this speech to Antonio (played by Jeremy Irons) in the 2004 film.
4. KumKum
KumKum, Devika
Her selection was also from the Merchant of Venice; it’s a later scene in which Salarino, a friend of Antonio, seeks reassurance that Shylock will not insist on the penalty (a pound of Antonio’s flesh) should the loan not be repaid in time. In a defiant speech Shylock affirms his intention:
... If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge.
His famous ‘Hath not a Jew eyes’ speech is the prelude which you can see and hear, once again delivered by Al Pacino in the magnificent 2004 film.
5. Priya
Priya
Lady Macbeth is a most unlikely character for our Priya to slip into with these lines:
... 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!
......Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Joe thought the verb ‘unsex’ was a powerful way for Lady Macbeth to divest herself of all the gentler qualities of a woman’s nature in order to murder a royal house guest. She is undoubtedly the engine of ambition for her husband (and herself) to claim the throne by eliminating the king.
Hemjit pointed to her breakdown after the act. It was the outcome of crossing a psychological threshold. Even unsexed, neither man nor woman can endure the act of murder. Her sleepwalking, as Indira pointed out, is further evidence of the impossible self-harm and karmic retribution she has brought on herself. Here is the ‘Unsex me here’ speech by Judi Dench.
Then Priya went on to the famous ‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow’ speech of Macbeth. Soon Macbeth will issue a final cry to mortal battle:
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’
You can listen to the Shakespearean actor, Ian McKellen, as he draws out the pith and marrow of Macbeth's speech before an audience in this recording.
6. Shoba
Thommo, Priya, Shoba, Joe
King Lear is perhaps the most challenging character of Shakespeare to act. Many have aspired to the role only at the end of a long career.
Most recently Glenda Jackson has essayed the role of King Lear at age 82:
Glenda Jackson as the title character in 'King Lear' at right, and Ruth Wilson, left, as the Fool
The role demands the king go mad from some affliction, but of what exactly WS does not make clear. In one modern production Simon Beale who plays King Lear takes on the medical characteristics of Lewy Body dementia.
Here is the opening scene in which King Lear is misled by the fulsome matlabi speeches of Goneril and Regan, but finds no truth in Cordelia's words.
KING LEAR
So young, and so untender?
CORDELIA
So young, my lord, and true.
KING LEAR
Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:
Indira took an outright censorious view of King Lear as a character. How could one be so foolish? She had little sympathy with Lear's ‘stupidity.’ But when WS is writing a tragedy any device will suffice, and response to flattery has been known since ancient times as a way to get ahead: with politicians, parents, and with bosses. Indeed, in modern MBA programs, how to flatter, according to the situation, is one of the methods taught.
James Earl Jones takes on the ‘cataracts and hurricanoes’ speech in this production.
Indira claimed Lear's suffering is of his own making. Joe said sympathy for the character is not a sentiment that issues upon reading the play. You have to see it on stage enacted with all the attendant actors and emotions, and then only does the fact emerge that the character is tragic, not stupid.
Take the tender scene in Act 5, Scene 3 when Lear is talking to Cordelia:
Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies
Thommo recalled when he was in school in Calcutta, the troupe of the Kendals would come along periodically to play scenes from the plays. Geoffrey Kendal was the father who ran the Shakespeareana Theatre Company, and daughters Felicity and Jennifer acted along with him. You can read more in this Hindu article.
Thommo waxed eloquent about the wonderful costume collection in St. Xavier's; Joe knows from having played on the stage there in college. Kavita regrets her children in modern India don't get to see such plays.
Indira chimed in with the analogous comment that you can graduate in English from an American university without reading a play by Shakespeare. I should add: a second-rate American university. Shakespeare is studied under the rubric of English Renaissance literature. Specialisation is partly to blame for compartmentalising different periods of literature, so that you may study some without needing to study all to get a degree, according to the scale of the number of ‘credits’ required to graduate.
7. Joe
Joe, Arundhaty, Kavita
Joe was inspired to select a passage in Twelfth Night by recalling an incident in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. The mother Rupa Mehra is in search of a groom for Lata, her far too independent daughter. She goes to watch a Shakespeare play at the college where Lata is acting as Olivia. She’s scandalised beyond measure to hear these lines from Act 3, Scene 4:
OLIVIA
Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?
MALVOLIO
To bed! ay, sweet-heart, and I'll come to thee.
Kabir Durrani, the cricketer, who plays Malvolio is her love interest at this point. It was good that Mrs Mehra had not read Eric Partridge’s book, Shakespeare’s Bawdy; else the meaning of ‘I’ll come to thee’ would have brought on an apoplexy.
Plot Summary:
Viola is in love with Orsino, who is in love with Olivia, who is in love with Viola’s male disguise, Cesario. This love triangle is complicated by the fact that neither Orsino nor Olivia knows that Cesario is really a woman (Viola). All is happily resolved in the end as in a typical Bollywood comedy.
If music be the food of love, play on;
This is the opening line of the play. WS throws some poetry for Duke Orsino to catch, so he can tell how love-sick he is for Viola, all in a metaphor for food. WS could roll off such lines effortlessly, and it ends on a high note:
... so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
For WS the play, the characters, the drama, all existed in the imagination before they appeared on stage and that is his sense of ‘fantastical’ – unreal, illusory, not the modern sense of ‘terrific.’ We are reminded of another poet who used it in the same sense, Milton in L'Allegro:
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
The second piece has to do with clowns or fools. The fool of Olivia’s household, Feste, moves between Olivia’s and Orsino’s homes. He earns his living by making jokes, singing old songs, being generally witty, and offering good advice cloaked under a layer of sarcasm. In spite of being a professional fool, he often seems the wisest character in the play. For instance, in this little debate with his mistress:
Feste. Good madonna, why mourn'st thou?
Olivia. Good fool, for my brother's death.
Feste. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
Olivia. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Feste. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven.
He is no fool at all, or as he says:
Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.
Arundhaty, Kavita, Hemjit
Arundhaty's piece was a long extract from As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 2. Here is a Summary from Sparknotes.
“Rosalind is depressed over the banishment of her father, Duke Senior. Her cousin, Celia, attempts to cheer her up. Celia promises that as the sole heir of the usurping Duke Frederick, she will give the throne to Rosalind upon his death. In gratitude, Rosalind promises to be less melancholy, and the two women wittily discuss the roles of “Fortune” and “Nature” in determining the circumstances of one’s life (I.ii.26–47). They are interrupted by the court jester, Touchstone, who mockingly tells of a knight without honour who still swore by it. Le Beau, a dapper young courtier, also arrives and intrigues them with the promise of a wrestling match featuring the phenomenal strength and skill of the wrestler Charles.”
9. Zakia
Hemjit, Zakia
She recited the universally recognised speech by Jaques ‘All the world's a stage.’ How well WS has divided the ages of man into seven stages! Here is an insightful revelation of the speech. When you come to the end you know how accurately it has been described, ‘the infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms’ has once again reverted to ‘second childishness and mere oblivion.’
In an interview the actor Simon Callow reflects on the how he was inspired to became an actor on stage. Shakespeare for him encapsulates the human experience; he illustrates with particular reference to the Seven Ages of Man speech from time 7:40 onwards.
Geetha and Thommo have the experience of tending her 102-year old father at home. He is the loudest voice in the house, said Thommo. And with his one-eyed vision he can make out most things on TV.
10. Kavita
Arundhaty, Kavita, Hemjit, Zakia
She started with the popular and best known sonnet of Shakespeare, No. 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
The world forgets it was addressed by one man to another, and it is employed now as though a man were addressing his sweetheart. The intent is flattery by bestowing the immortality of this verse (it is immortal) on the object of the poet's affection:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Joe unearthed Hindi, Bengali and French versions on the Web:
Hindi
Kya tum roshan din jaise ho
ya usse behtar ho?
क्या तुम रोशन दिन जैसे हो
या उससे बेहतर हो?
(there's hardly an attempt to translate – it is colloquial and slipshod)
Bengali
Ami tomake ekti grishmokale diner sanghe tulna korbo?
Tumi aaro sundar ebong aaro nathishithoshno
আমি তোমাকে একটি গ্রীষ্মকালে দিনের সঙ্গে তুলনা করবো ?
তুমি আরো সুন্দর এবং আরো নাতিশীতোষ্ণ
(quite literary, particularly the word for temperate, the jaw-breaking ‘nathi-shithoshno’)
French
Comment te comparer aux beaux jours de l'Eté?
Ta grâce est plus aimable et ton humeur plus douce:
(elegant)
Kavita next took up No. 130 (this is addressed to a woman)
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
WS has put the poet-narrator in a mood of realism, scorning flattery even as he begins, yet going to the heart of his attachment in the final couplet:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
As any she belied with false compare.
There's a startling line
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
which Joe had to transpose to recite to his beloved (in her current aspect):
If hairs be wires, white silver floats o’er her head.
11. Hemjit
Iago's speech from Act 1, Scene 3 asserts that the rational will of man enables him to overcome irrational love, which is just an offshoot of lust. He tries to steady his friend and later, co-conspirator, Roderigo.
... I have told
thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I
hate the Moor: my cause is hearted; thine hath no
less reason.
The seeds of crime are laid early in the play by Iago's (imagined) suspicions of being cuckolded by Othello:
I hate the Moor:
And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if't be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety.
He eggs on Roderigo to compromise Desdemona.
Indira said jealousy is infecting. Once you doubt somebody, nothing can set it right. The question was posed whether jealousy declines with age. Thommo averred that in Geetha's case it has dimmed. Joe then asked: the real question is whether the libido has dimmed with age. Geetha responded: that you cannot tell!
12. Devika
In Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2, the ‘Royal wench’ is sitting in her fabulous barge, and we are fortunate to have a frank commentator in Domitius Enobarbus, Antony’s aide, to describe the pomp:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them;
Someone facetiously mistook ‘poop’ for faeces; but it is merely the stern part of a ship. Cleopatra ‘beggar'd all description’ he says, using a phrase that has become a cliché ever since.
Later occurs a famous agricultural metaphor for what Caesar did to Cleopatra:
She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed:
He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.
The crop was Caesarion, who ruled after Cleopatra as Ptolemy XV.
The aide supplies another immortal phrase for Cleopatra, nowadays cited about wenches far less royal, and less memorable:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety:
13. Geetha
In this scene from The Taming of the Shrew (Act 2, Scene 1) Petruchio is vowing to make Katharina (Kate) his bride,
For I am he am born to tame you Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
His tactic is while wooing to ascribe to her all the gentle qualities she does not possess.
He succeeds in the end and the feisty Kate (here as Elizabeth Taylor with an astonished Richard Burton looking on) becomes a woman who lectures other wives on their duties!
14. Pamela
In a brief speech (‘The quality of mercy is not strain'd’) from the Merchant of Venice Act 4, Scene 1, Portia as judge of the court presiding over the case of Shylock, pleads that he should show mercy.
She continues her argument,
... Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
It is surprising that Portia appeals to Christian ideas like salvation, whereas a Jew would be more likely to respond to the attributes of mercy revealed in Exodus 34:
The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate
and gracious, slow to anger
Hemjit, Zakia
Iago's speech from Act 1, Scene 3 asserts that the rational will of man enables him to overcome irrational love, which is just an offshoot of lust. He tries to steady his friend and later, co-conspirator, Roderigo.
... I have told
thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I
hate the Moor: my cause is hearted; thine hath no
less reason.
The seeds of crime are laid early in the play by Iago's (imagined) suspicions of being cuckolded by Othello:
I hate the Moor:
And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if't be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety.
He eggs on Roderigo to compromise Desdemona.
Indira said jealousy is infecting. Once you doubt somebody, nothing can set it right. The question was posed whether jealousy declines with age. Thommo averred that in Geetha's case it has dimmed. Joe then asked: the real question is whether the libido has dimmed with age. Geetha responded: that you cannot tell!
12. Devika
KumKum, Devika, Geetha
In Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2, the ‘Royal wench’ is sitting in her fabulous barge, and we are fortunate to have a frank commentator in Domitius Enobarbus, Antony’s aide, to describe the pomp:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them;
Someone facetiously mistook ‘poop’ for faeces; but it is merely the stern part of a ship. Cleopatra ‘beggar'd all description’ he says, using a phrase that has become a cliché ever since.
Later occurs a famous agricultural metaphor for what Caesar did to Cleopatra:
She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed:
He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.
The crop was Caesarion, who ruled after Cleopatra as Ptolemy XV.
The aide supplies another immortal phrase for Cleopatra, nowadays cited about wenches far less royal, and less memorable:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety:
13. Geetha
Devika, Geetha
In this scene from The Taming of the Shrew (Act 2, Scene 1) Petruchio is vowing to make Katharina (Kate) his bride,
For I am he am born to tame you Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
His tactic is while wooing to ascribe to her all the gentle qualities she does not possess.
He succeeds in the end and the feisty Kate (here as Elizabeth Taylor with an astonished Richard Burton looking on) becomes a woman who lectures other wives on their duties!
14. Pamela
In a brief speech (‘The quality of mercy is not strain'd’) from the Merchant of Venice Act 4, Scene 1, Portia as judge of the court presiding over the case of Shylock, pleads that he should show mercy.
She continues her argument,
... Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
It is surprising that Portia appeals to Christian ideas like salvation, whereas a Jew would be more likely to respond to the attributes of mercy revealed in Exodus 34:
The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate
and gracious, slow to anger
15. Gopa
In an extensive extract from the goings on in the forest of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, scene 1, Gopa laid out the story of four young Athenians and a theatrical troupe. They mix with fairies from the local forest. The resulting outcome is quite hilarious. Two fairies are talking and we get an idea of the bad blood that exists between Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies. The scene ends with the fairy Robin Goodfellow describing rather boastfully his own mischief-making gifts.
In an extensive extract from the goings on in the forest of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, scene 1, Gopa laid out the story of four young Athenians and a theatrical troupe. They mix with fairies from the local forest. The resulting outcome is quite hilarious. Two fairies are talking and we get an idea of the bad blood that exists between Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies. The scene ends with the fairy Robin Goodfellow describing rather boastfully his own mischief-making gifts.
Readings
1. KumKum
Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1
Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1
SALARINO
Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take
his flesh: what's that good for?
SHYLOCK
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
2. Devika
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
AGRIPPA
O, rare for Antony!
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.
AGRIPPA
Rare Egyptian!
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
Invited her to supper: she replied,
It should be better he became her guest;
Which she entreated: our courteous Antony,
Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman heard speak,
Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast,
And for his ordinary pays his heart
For what his eyes eat only.
AGRIPPA
Royal wench!
She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed:
He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street;
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, power breathe forth.
MECAENAS
Now Antony must leave her utterly.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Never; he will not:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
Sonnet 104
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
3. Joe
TwelfthNight, Act 1, Sc 1
DUKE ORSINO
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
Act 2, Scene 4
FESTE:
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!
4. Zakia
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7
JAQUES
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.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
5. Pamela
Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1
PORTIA
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
6. Hemjit
Othello, Act 1 Scene 3
IAGO
Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion.
7. Thommo
Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3
ANTONIO
Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
SHYLOCK
Three thousand ducats; 'tis a good round sum.
Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate--
ANTONIO
Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?SHYLOCK
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
'Shylock, we would have moneys:' you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? Should I not say
'Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?' Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys'?
ANTONIO
I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends; for when did friendship take
A breed for barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy,
Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face
Exact the penalty.
SHYLOCK
Why, look you, how you storm!
I would be friends with you and have your love,
Forget the shames that you have stain'd me with,
Supply your present wants and take no doit
Of usance for my moneys, and you'll not hear me:
This is kind I offer.
BASSANIO
This were kindness.
SHYLOCK
This kindness will I show.
Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Express'd in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me.
8. Priya
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5
LADY MACBETH
Give him tending;
He brings great news.
Exit Messenger
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!'
Enter MACBETH
Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
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.
9. Arundhaty
As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 2
ROSALIND
What shall be our sport, then?
CELIA
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from
her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
ROSALIND
I would we could do so, for her benefits are
mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman
doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
CELIA
'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce
makes honest, and those that she makes honest she
makes very ill-favouredly.
ROSALIND
Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to
Nature's: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world,
not in the lineaments of Nature.
Enter TOUCHSTONE
CELIA
No? when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she
not by Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature
hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not
Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?
ROSALIND
Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when
Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of
Nature's wit.
CELIA
Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but
Nature's; who perceiveth our natural wits too dull
to reason of such goddesses and hath sent this
natural for our whetstone; for always the dulness of
the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How now,
wit! whither wander you?
TOUCHSTONE
Mistress, you must come away to your father.
CELIA
Were you made the messenger?
TOUCHSTONE
No, by mine honour, but I was bid to come for you.
ROSALIND
Where learned you that oath, fool?
TOUCHSTONE
Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they
were good pancakes and swore by his honour the
mustard was naught: now I'll stand to it, the
pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and
yet was not the knight forsworn.
CELIA
How prove you that, in the great heap of your
knowledge?
ROSALIND
Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.
TOUCHSTONE
Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and
swear by your beards that I am a knave.
CELIA
By our beards, if we had them, thou art.
TOUCHSTONE
By my knavery, if I had it, then I were; but if you
swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no
more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he
never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away
before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.
CELIA
Prithee, who is't that thou meanest?
TOUCHSTONE
One that old Frederick, your father, loves.
CELIA
My father's love is enough to honour him: enough!
speak no more of him; you'll be whipped for taxation
one of these days.
TOUCHSTONE
The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what
wise men do foolishly.
CELIA
By my troth, thou sayest true; for since the little
wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery
that wise men have makes a great show. Here comes
Monsieur Le Beau.
10. Geetha
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Scene 1
KATHARINA
That I'll try.
She strikes him
PETRUCHIO
I swear I'll cuff you, if you strike again.
KATHARINA
So may you lose your arms:
If you strike me, you are no gentleman;
And if no gentleman, why then no arms.
PETRUCHIO
A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books!
KATHARINA
What is your crest? a coxcomb?
PETRUCHIO
A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.
KATHARINA
No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven.
PETRUCHIO
Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour.
KATHARINA
It is my fashion, when I see a crab.
PETRUCHIO
Why, here's no crab; and therefore look not sour.
KATHARINA
There is, there is.
PETRUCHIO
Then show it me.
KATHARINA
Had I a glass, I would.
PETRUCHIO
What, you mean my face?
KATHARINA
Well aim'd of such a young one.
PETRUCHIO
Now, by Saint George, I am too young for you.
KATHARINA
Yet you are wither'd.
PETRUCHIO
'Tis with cares.
KATHARINA
I care not.
PETRUCHIO
Nay, hear you, Kate: in sooth you scape not so.
KATHARINA
I chafe you, if I tarry: let me go.
PETRUCHIO
No, not a whit: I find you passing gentle.
'Twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen,
And now I find report a very liar;
For thou are pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,
But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers:
Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,
Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,
Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk,
But thou with mildness entertain'st thy wooers,
With gentle conference, soft and affable.
Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?
O slanderous world! Kate like the hazel-twig
Is straight and slender and as brown in hue
As hazel nuts and sweeter than the kernels.
O, let me see thee walk: thou dost not halt.
KATHARINA
Go, fool, and whom thou keep'st command.
PETRUCHIO
Did ever Dian so become a grove
As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?
O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate;
And then let Kate be chaste and Dian sportful!
KATHARINA
Where did you study all this goodly speech?
PETRUCHIO
It is extempore, from my mother-wit.
KATHARINA
A witty mother! witless else her son.
PETRUCHIO
Am I not wise?
KATHARINA
Yes; keep you warm.
PETRUCHIO
Marry, so I mean, sweet Katharina, in thy bed:
And therefore, setting all this chat aside,
Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented
That you shall be my wife; your dowry 'greed on;
And, Will you, nill you, I will marry you.
Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn;
For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,
Thy beauty, that doth make me like thee well,
Thou must be married to no man but me;
For I am he am born to tame you Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
Here comes your father: never make denial;
I must and will have Katharina to my wife.
11. Shoba
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2
KING LEAR
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
FOOL
O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry
house is better than this rain-water out o' door.
Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' blessing:
here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool.
KING LEAR
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!
12. Gopa
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, scene 1
SCENE I. A wood near Athens.
Enter, from opposite sides, a Fairy, and PUCK
PUCK
How now, spirit! whither wander you?
Fairy
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone:
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
PUCK
The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But, they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.
Fairy
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
PUCK
Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.
Fairy
And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!
Enter, from one side, OBERON, with his train; from the other, TITANIA, with hers
13. Kavita
Sonnets
18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
14. Talitha
Richard II, Act 3, scene 2
KING RICHARD II
No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
15. Indira
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2
CLEOPATRA
Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip:
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So; have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.
Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies
Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell'st the world
It is not worth leave-taking.
CHARMIAN
Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain; that I may say,
The gods themselves do weep!
CLEOPATRA
This proves me base:
If she first meet the curled Antony,
He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou
mortal wretch,
To an asp, which she applies to her breast
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool
Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass
Unpolicied!
CHARMIAN
O eastern star!
CLEOPATRA
Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
CHARMIAN
O, break! O, break!
CLEOPATRA
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle,--
O Antony!--Nay, I will take thee too.
Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take
his flesh: what's that good for?
SHYLOCK
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
2. Devika
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
AGRIPPA
O, rare for Antony!
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.
AGRIPPA
Rare Egyptian!
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
Invited her to supper: she replied,
It should be better he became her guest;
Which she entreated: our courteous Antony,
Whom ne'er the word of 'No' woman heard speak,
Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast,
And for his ordinary pays his heart
For what his eyes eat only.
AGRIPPA
Royal wench!
She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed:
He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street;
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, power breathe forth.
MECAENAS
Now Antony must leave her utterly.
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS
Never; he will not:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
Sonnet 104
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
3. Joe
TwelfthNight, Act 1, Sc 1
DUKE ORSINO
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
Act 2, Scene 4
FESTE:
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!
4. Zakia
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7
JAQUES
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.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
5. Pamela
Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1
PORTIA
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
6. Hemjit
Othello, Act 1 Scene 3
IAGO
Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion.
7. Thommo
Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3
ANTONIO
Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
SHYLOCK
Three thousand ducats; 'tis a good round sum.
Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate--
ANTONIO
Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?SHYLOCK
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
'Shylock, we would have moneys:' you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? Should I not say
'Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?' Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys'?
ANTONIO
I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends; for when did friendship take
A breed for barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy,
Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face
Exact the penalty.
SHYLOCK
Why, look you, how you storm!
I would be friends with you and have your love,
Forget the shames that you have stain'd me with,
Supply your present wants and take no doit
Of usance for my moneys, and you'll not hear me:
This is kind I offer.
BASSANIO
This were kindness.
SHYLOCK
This kindness will I show.
Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Express'd in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me.
8. Priya
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5
LADY MACBETH
Give him tending;
He brings great news.
Exit Messenger
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!'
Enter MACBETH
Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
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.
9. Arundhaty
As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 2
ROSALIND
What shall be our sport, then?
CELIA
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from
her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
ROSALIND
I would we could do so, for her benefits are
mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman
doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
CELIA
'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce
makes honest, and those that she makes honest she
makes very ill-favouredly.
ROSALIND
Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to
Nature's: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world,
not in the lineaments of Nature.
Enter TOUCHSTONE
CELIA
No? when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she
not by Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature
hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not
Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?
ROSALIND
Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when
Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of
Nature's wit.
CELIA
Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but
Nature's; who perceiveth our natural wits too dull
to reason of such goddesses and hath sent this
natural for our whetstone; for always the dulness of
the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How now,
wit! whither wander you?
TOUCHSTONE
Mistress, you must come away to your father.
CELIA
Were you made the messenger?
TOUCHSTONE
No, by mine honour, but I was bid to come for you.
ROSALIND
Where learned you that oath, fool?
TOUCHSTONE
Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they
were good pancakes and swore by his honour the
mustard was naught: now I'll stand to it, the
pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and
yet was not the knight forsworn.
CELIA
How prove you that, in the great heap of your
knowledge?
ROSALIND
Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.
TOUCHSTONE
Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and
swear by your beards that I am a knave.
CELIA
By our beards, if we had them, thou art.
TOUCHSTONE
By my knavery, if I had it, then I were; but if you
swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no
more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he
never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away
before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.
CELIA
Prithee, who is't that thou meanest?
TOUCHSTONE
One that old Frederick, your father, loves.
CELIA
My father's love is enough to honour him: enough!
speak no more of him; you'll be whipped for taxation
one of these days.
TOUCHSTONE
The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what
wise men do foolishly.
CELIA
By my troth, thou sayest true; for since the little
wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery
that wise men have makes a great show. Here comes
Monsieur Le Beau.
10. Geetha
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Scene 1
KATHARINA
That I'll try.
She strikes him
PETRUCHIO
I swear I'll cuff you, if you strike again.
KATHARINA
So may you lose your arms:
If you strike me, you are no gentleman;
And if no gentleman, why then no arms.
PETRUCHIO
A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books!
KATHARINA
What is your crest? a coxcomb?
PETRUCHIO
A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.
KATHARINA
No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven.
PETRUCHIO
Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour.
KATHARINA
It is my fashion, when I see a crab.
PETRUCHIO
Why, here's no crab; and therefore look not sour.
KATHARINA
There is, there is.
PETRUCHIO
Then show it me.
KATHARINA
Had I a glass, I would.
PETRUCHIO
What, you mean my face?
KATHARINA
Well aim'd of such a young one.
PETRUCHIO
Now, by Saint George, I am too young for you.
KATHARINA
Yet you are wither'd.
PETRUCHIO
'Tis with cares.
KATHARINA
I care not.
PETRUCHIO
Nay, hear you, Kate: in sooth you scape not so.
KATHARINA
I chafe you, if I tarry: let me go.
PETRUCHIO
No, not a whit: I find you passing gentle.
'Twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen,
And now I find report a very liar;
For thou are pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,
But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers:
Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,
Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,
Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk,
But thou with mildness entertain'st thy wooers,
With gentle conference, soft and affable.
Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?
O slanderous world! Kate like the hazel-twig
Is straight and slender and as brown in hue
As hazel nuts and sweeter than the kernels.
O, let me see thee walk: thou dost not halt.
KATHARINA
Go, fool, and whom thou keep'st command.
PETRUCHIO
Did ever Dian so become a grove
As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?
O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate;
And then let Kate be chaste and Dian sportful!
KATHARINA
Where did you study all this goodly speech?
PETRUCHIO
It is extempore, from my mother-wit.
KATHARINA
A witty mother! witless else her son.
PETRUCHIO
Am I not wise?
KATHARINA
Yes; keep you warm.
PETRUCHIO
Marry, so I mean, sweet Katharina, in thy bed:
And therefore, setting all this chat aside,
Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented
That you shall be my wife; your dowry 'greed on;
And, Will you, nill you, I will marry you.
Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn;
For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,
Thy beauty, that doth make me like thee well,
Thou must be married to no man but me;
For I am he am born to tame you Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
Here comes your father: never make denial;
I must and will have Katharina to my wife.
11. Shoba
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2
KING LEAR
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
FOOL
O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry
house is better than this rain-water out o' door.
Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' blessing:
here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool.
KING LEAR
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!
12. Gopa
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, scene 1
SCENE I. A wood near Athens.
Enter, from opposite sides, a Fairy, and PUCK
PUCK
How now, spirit! whither wander you?
Fairy
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone:
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
PUCK
The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But, they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.
Fairy
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
PUCK
Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.
Fairy
And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!
Enter, from one side, OBERON, with his train; from the other, TITANIA, with hers
13. Kavita
Sonnets
18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
14. Talitha
Richard II, Act 3, scene 2
KING RICHARD II
No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
15. Indira
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2
CLEOPATRA
Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip:
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So; have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.
Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies
Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell'st the world
It is not worth leave-taking.
CHARMIAN
Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain; that I may say,
The gods themselves do weep!
CLEOPATRA
This proves me base:
If she first meet the curled Antony,
He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou
mortal wretch,
To an asp, which she applies to her breast
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool
Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass
Unpolicied!
CHARMIAN
O eastern star!
CLEOPATRA
Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?
CHARMIAN
O, break! O, break!
CLEOPATRA
As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle,--
O Antony!--Nay, I will take thee too.
Very interesting session on Shakespeare. It was delightful to listen to Indira and Talitha, our guests to this special Session.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of us also put in considerable efforts to make this Session worth while.
Thank you, Joe, for putting together this outstanding piece.
Food was excellent at this Session, contribution from 3 members.
Thank you, Joe!
ReplyDelete- Devika
Thank you Joe. It is really enjoyable reading your report of the KRG meetings, and the April reading is spectacular. I felt I was there , a fly on the wall. Thank you so much.
ReplyDelete- Saras