Isabella. No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace,
As mercy does.-Sc. 2.

Angelo. Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.

Isabella. Alas! alas!

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once,
And he that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy: How would you be
If he, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O! think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.-! Id.

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.-Id.

Isabella.

Man, proud man!

Drest in a little brief authority:

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

As make the angels weep.-Id.

Isabella. The sense of death is most in apprehension;

And the poor beetle that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great

As when a giant dies.-Act 3, Sc. 1.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Beatrice. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, man swear he loves me.

than a

Benedick. May your ladyship still keep in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face. Act 1, Sc. 1.

Claudio. Friendship is constant in all other things,

Save in the office and affairs of love :

Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent: for beauty is a witch,

Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.

-Act 2Sc. 1.

Claudio. Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.-Id.
Benedick. I do much wonder, that one man, seeing how

much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn, by falling in love: And such a man is Claudio. (After enumerating the requisites in a wife, he concludes by saying that she must be) of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please God.-Sc. 3.

Benedick. Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous;-'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me :-By my troth, it is no addition to her wit; nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage:-But doth not the appetite alter ? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age: shall quips, and sentences, and these paper bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his humour; no: The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.-Id.

Dogberry. Comparisons are odorous.-Act 3, Sc. 5.

Dogberry. An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind. -Id.

Claudio. O! what men dare do! what men may do!

What men daily do! not knowing what they do!-Act 4, Sc. 1.
Friar.
It so falls out,

That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost,
Why, then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.-Id.

Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words:
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow:
But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral, when he shall endure
The like himself.-Act 5, Sc. 1.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

Hermia. I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.
I know not by what power I am made bold;
Nor how it may concern my modesty,

In such a presence here, to plead my thoughts:
But I beseech your Grace that I

may know The worst that may befall me in this case, If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

Theseus. Either to die the death, or to abjure
For ever the society of men.

Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires,
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun;
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,
To live a barren sister all your life,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon,
Thrice happy they, that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage:

But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,

Than that, which withering on the virgin thorn,

Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.-Act 1, Sc. 1

Lysander. Ah! me, for aught that ever I could read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth:

But either it was different in blood;

Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;

Or else it stood upon the choice of friends:
Or if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it;
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up;

So quick bright things come to confusion.-id.
Puck. How now spirit! whither wander you ?
Fairy. Over hill, over dale,

Through bush, through briar,
Over park, over pale,

Through flood, through fire.
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moones sphere,

And I serve the fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green :
The cowslips tall her pensioners be
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.-Act 2, Se. 1. Fairy. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite ; Call'd Robin Goodfellow; are you not he, That fright the maidens of the villagery: Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm; Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work; and they shall have good luck.-Id. Hermia. Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, The ear more quick of apprehension makes;

Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,

It pays the hearing double recompense.-Act 3, Sc. 2.
Helena. Lo! she is one of this confederacy.
Now I perceive they have conjoin'd all three,
To fashion this false sport in spite of me.
Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid!
Have you conspir'd, have you with these contriv'd
To bait me with this foul derision ?

Is all the counsel that we two have shar'd,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us,-O! and is all forgot?

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence ?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, 'seeming parted;
But yet a union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,

Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
And will you rend our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly:

Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it;
Though I alone do feel the injury.-Id.

Helena. O weary night, Ö! long and tedious night,
Abate thy hours: shine comforts from the east ;
That I may back to Athens by daylight,
From these that my poor company detest:-
:-
And, sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye,
Steal me away from mine own company.-Id.

Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each.-Act 4, sc. 1.

Hippolyta. 'Tis strange my Theseus, that these lovers speak of. Theseus. More strange than true.

I never may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ;

That is the madman: the lover, all is frantick,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name;

Such tricks hath strong imagination;

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or, in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear?-Act 5, Sc. 1.
Theseus. I will hear that play,

For never anything can be amiss,

When simpleness and duty tender it.

Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies.