A Conversation for Ask h2g2

Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 1

kuzushi

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.


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 2

kuzushi


OOPS!

Richard III (First scene)


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 3

LL Waz


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


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 4

kuzushi


Interesting. Why?


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 5

Ellen

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!


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 6

Researcher U197087

"Get you gone, you dwarf!"

Not you Ellen smiley - hug


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 7

Ellen

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


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 8

Beatrice

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.


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 9

Danny B

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


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 10

laconian

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

Macbeth, V, 3


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 11

Just Bob aka Robert Thompson, plugging my film blog cinemainferno-blog.blogspot.co.uk

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


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 12

novosibirsk - as normal as I can be........


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"


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 13

KB

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.


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 14

laconian

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.


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 15

swl

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

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


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 16

kuzushi


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!


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 17

HonestIago

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.


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 18

novosibirsk - as normal as I can be........


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.


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 19

I'm not really here

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.


Your favourite Shakespeare bits?

Post 20

Steve K.

I'll join the "Tempest" voting block. smiley - magic

"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.



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