Favorite Shakespeare play and passage

Ah ... good one.

 

I'm fond of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Film version of Mickey Rooney as "Puck" is a riot.

Also favor Taming of the Shrew. Saw a tape of this with Glenn Close as "Kate." I immediately fell in love with her.

Favorite passage, and I can't remember if it's a sonnet or from a play, hell, I can't even remember the whole damn thing. But it goes something like this:

Give me mine angle. We'll to the river. There, my music playing far off, we'll (something, something something) tawny-finned fishes, think every one an Antony and say, "Aha, you're caught."

 

'Tis from Cleopatra, platy.

 

Any love for the sonnets?


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 ruined 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.

 

OK. I'll have to take your word for it. I had to memorize it for college which was, um, 26 years ago. I still have my text, "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" which is no longer complete as some more sonnets were discovered several years ago.

 

Not much for sonnets, Flasher. They're beautiful, no doubt, but not my cup o' tea.

However, this is:

O beware, my lord, of Jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves!

 

My favorite passage is Mercutio's Queen Mab speech. Doesn't completely fit the character and some think the passage was added later, but I love it.

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she--

My favorite play is The Tempest.

 

I like the part when Lady MacBeth looks at her dog and yells,

"Damn it Spot! Get out!"

 

..and the colored girls say, "Doot-doo-doot, doo-doot."

As for a favorite play, I'll stick with Macbeth.
My favorite passage always has been:

GLOSTER
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now,--instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,--
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I,--that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;--
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore,--since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,--
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,--
About a prophecy which says that G
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

 

I've always been partial to Hamlet. But my favorite passage comes from Julius Ceaser, in part because an uncle used the last three lines as the closing to an eulogy he wrote about my grandfather, a wise, kind and gentle soul.

Marc Antony:

This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general-honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, "This was a man!"

 

That's the one I quoted in the ill-fated thread!

I love both MacBeth and Hamlet. I still remember this one guy who had read Hamlet so much that he had the entire play memorized. He joked that if anyone missed the readings in class, he would be giving a recital.

 

Sad, but mine: "Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow." Uttered by Rosencrantz. And probably the very essence of what's wrong with me.