Isabella. No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, Angelo. Your brother is a forfeit of the law, Isabella. Alas! alas! Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once, To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous 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; 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. 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. That what we have we prize not to the worth, Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Hermia. I do entreat your Grace to pardon me. In such a presence here, to plead my thoughts: 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 Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires, Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon, 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: So quick bright things come to confusion.-id. Through bush, through briar, Through flood, through fire. And I serve the fairy Queen, 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. Is all the counsel that we two have shar'd, All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence ? Have with our needles created both one flower, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem: Due but to one, and crowned with one crest. Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it; Helena. O weary night, Ö! long and tedious night, Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 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, 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; The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 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. For never anything can be amiss, When simpleness and duty tender it. Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies. |