h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This post made me wonder: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/F19585?thread=5161621&skip=80&show=20 I like "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York." Not only is it a great opening line to a play, but it has amazing historical resonances.

OOPS!

Richard III (First scene)

"The world must be peopled" Benedick in Much Ado.

Interesting. Why?

My favorite Shakespeare line is "I will weep for thee; / For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like / Another fall of man."

I like it because it reminds me of a friend who failed me in the past. I like to imagine myself saying it to them!

"Get you gone, you dwarf!"

Not you Ellen

Oh, yes, I've got an entire book of just Shakespeare's insults. He really knew how to let them have it.

I get plenty of use from the following quote, living in Ireland'd greena nd pleasant...

"Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, and make me come without a cloak?"

Not sure where it's from though.

"Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit" - Feste
'Twelfth Night', I.v

" The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where got'st thou that goose look? "

Macbeth, V, 3

I have a certain soft spot for The Tempest, since it's the only one I've ever read voluntarily, on my own time.

St Crispin's Day Speech Henry V

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day"

Kent: Fellow, I know thee.

Oswald: What dost thou know me for?

Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deny'st the least syllable of thy addition.

From King Lear. Flicking through to refresh my memory of that fantastic insult reminded me how much I love the entire play.

Ah yes, the Tempest!

Stephano's great line:
"How cam'st thou [Trinculo] to be the siege [excrement] of this mooncalf? Can he vent [defacate] Trinculos?"

After coming across Trinculo and Caliban (the 'mooncalf') hiding together under a cloak.

"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind."

Spoken by Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Pretty self-explanatory really.

Despite my first post, I'm not actually much of a Shakespeare connoisseur. A lot of these I don't know. It's very informative!

I adore the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet:

Two houses, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona, where we lay our scene/From ancient grudge breaks new mutiny/Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean/From forth the fatal loins of these two foes/A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life.

There's so much in there that I like: the way it reads and is read out-loud, the puns and wordplay and the fact that it tells you what's going to happen, creating the emphatic tragedy of the play.

If I was asked for my single favourite quote in all of English literature, this would be it.

I'm quite partial to the bit in Julius Ceasar,

" There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries "

Says a lot about life I reckon.

I like 'If music be the food of love, play on' because it's usually used incorrectly.

It's the opening line from Twelfth Night, and really the only Shakespeare I know because I did it for O level and can't get the bloody thing out of my head.

My very fav bit from that play is "I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off" which always sounds a bit juicy to me.

I'll join the "Tempest" voting block.

"Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again."

Spoken by the monster Caliban, of all people.

As an aside, the first two lines above played a central role in the novel "Galatea 2.2" by Richard Powers, with a protagonist being a novelist named Powers:

"Powers then meets a computer scientist named Philip Lentz. Intrigued by Lentz's overbearing personality and unorthodox theories, Powers eventually agrees to participate in an experiment involving artificial intelligence. Lentz bets his fellow scientists that he can build a computer that can produce an analysis of a literary text that is indistinguishable from one produced by a human."

The "text" is selected by an impartial third party, who chooses not a complete work, but the first two lines above.