Favorite Shakespeare play and passage

What happened to the Flash Is Empress thread?

Gadzooks, I know not why I am so sad.
It worries me. Does it worry you?

 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

 

King Lear, Act IV, Scene VI:

Goo goo goo jooooob.

 

I know it's lame to pick a line from the most famous passage of all time but this always struck me as the perfect line for two dumb kids up to their eyes in lust:

JULIET

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

ROMEO

What shall I swear by?

JULIET

Do not swear at all;
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.

"Swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry"

Mercy, how many of us have been so stupid in young love that those words might well have come from ourselves?

 

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?

 

Does anybody but me think Flash has become more, well, sassy because of this Shakespeare thing? Whoo-hoo.
Is this thread an exception to the rule against "methinks"?

 

I don't think it's possible for Flash to become more sassy. At least, to me. You should have checked in on the late-night thread from time to time, Fenian.

 

I loved King Lear. Absolutely could not get enough of it.

And while not King Lear, this is my favorite passage:

 

From The Tempest...

FERDINAND
Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone.
No, it begins again.

A close second, from MacBeth...

MACDUFF
Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,
That you do lie so late?

Porter
'Faith sir, we were carousing till the
second cock: and drink, sir, is a great
provoker of three things.

MACDUFF
What three things does drink especially provoke?

Porter
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

 

Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing
else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!
(Especially, it appears, on the late-night threads.)

 

I always thought this from Henry IV, Part I perfectly summarized the downside of sportswriting (and being a professional athlete, I suppose)

If all the year were playing holidays;
To sport would be as tedious as to work.

 

Am I being sassy? Men who can quote Shakespeare make me hot!