On Athens, ripe for stroke! thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners! lust and liberty
Creep in the minds and marrows of your youth;
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot! itches, blains,
Sow all the Athenian blossoms; and their crop
Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath;
That their society, as their friendship, may
Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee,
But nakedness, thou detestable town!
You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con, That you are thieves professed; that you work not In holier shapes; for there is boundless theft In legal professions. Rascal thieves;
Here's gold; go, suck the subtle blood of the grape,
Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth And so 'scape hanging; trust not the physician; His antidotes are poison, and he slays
More than you rob; take wealth and lives together;
Do villainy, do, since you profess to do it,
Like workmen. I'll example you with thievery;
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surges resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement; each thing's a thief;
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough
power
Have unchecked theft! Love not yourselves;
All that you meet are thieves! To Athens, go, Break open shops! Nothing can you steal But thieves do lose it!"
Jaques, in the forest of Arden, discourses to the exiled Duke of the fools of fortune, and the nature of man.
“A fool, a fool!—I met a fool in the forest A motley fool;-a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool;
Who laid him down and basked him in the sun,
And railed on Lady Fortune in good terms.
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.
Good morrow, fool, quoth I No, sir, quoth he,
Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me for-
tune;
And then he drew a dial from his poke;
And looking on it with lack-luster eye
Says very wisely: It is ten o'clock;
Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags;
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;
And after an hour more, 'twill be eleven;
And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale! When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep contemplative;
And I did laugh sans intermission,
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley is the only wear!"
"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 pewking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school boy, with his
satchel,
And shining, morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwilling 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 honor, 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 slippered 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 every-
thing!"
In "Measure for Measure" the brave Duke, the pure Isabella and cowardly Claudio discourse thus on death:
"Be absolute for death; either death or life, Shall thereby be sweeter.
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
But none but fools would keep; a breath thou
(Servile to all the skiey influences)
That dost this habitation, where thou keepest,
Hourly afflict; merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou laborest by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still; Thou art not
noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm! Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not
thyself;
For thou exist'st on many thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast forgett'st; Thou art not
certain
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And Death unloads thee! Friend hast thou
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, leprosy, and the rheum
For ending thee no sooner; Thou hast nor youth,
nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both; For all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty
To make thy riches pleasant!"
"O, I do fear thy courage, Claudio; and I quake
Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honor. Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies!
Ay, Isabella, but to die, and go we know not
where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible, warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts
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