One of my 2014 resolutions was to finally read all Shakespeare’s plays, and, at an irregular pace of one play per week, I made it. I bookmarked interesting quotes or turns of phrase in the Shakespeare app, and then tweeted one quote for each play. Here they are:
1. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM: “How shall we beguile/The lazy time, if not with some delight?”
2. ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL: “Mine eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon.”
3. ANTONY & CLEOPATRA: “Some innocents scape not the thunderbolt.”
4. AS YOU LIKE IT: “O, sir, we quarrel in print by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too with an If.”
5. CORIOLANUS: “These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.”
6. CYMBELINE : “Those that I reverence, those I fear – the wise:/At fools I laugh, not fear them.”
7. HAMLET: “Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.”
8. HENRY IV, PT 1: “Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!”
9. HENRY IV, PT 2: “Presume not that I am the thing I was.”
10. HENRY V: “Ils sont les mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dammes de honneur d’user.”
11. HENRY VI PT 1: “It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp/Should strike such terror to his enemies.”
12. HENRY VI PT 2: “But then are we in order when we are most out of order.”
13. HENRY VI PT 3: “‘Tell him,’ quoth she, ‘my mourning weeds are done,/And I am ready to put armour on.'”
14. HENRY VIII: “Is’t possible the spells of France should juggle/Men into such strange mysteries?”
15. JULIUS CAESAR: “Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.”
16. KING JOHN: “Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.”
17. KING LEAR: “Fut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenl’est star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.”
18. KING RICHARD II: “The cares I give I have, though given away / They tend the crown, yet still with me they
stay.”
19. LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST: “too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it / were, too peregrinate, as I may
call it.”
20. MACBETH: “These deeds must not be thought/After these ways; so, it will make us mad.”
21. MEASURE FOR MEASURE: “O, it is excellent/to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous/To use it like a giant.”
22. MERCHANT OF VENICE: “I can easier teach 20 what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”
23. MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR: “I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.”
24. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: “O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad.”
25. OTHELLO: “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.”
26. PERICLES: “We cannot but obey/The powers above us./Could I rage and roar/As doth the sea she lies in, yet the end/Must be as ’tis.”
27. RICHARD III: “Let me sit heavy in thy soul tomorrow.”
28. ROMEO & JULIET: “And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something, make it a word and a blow.”
29. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS:”Nay, ’tis for me to be patient; I am in adversity.” Better seen on the stage than the page, methinks.
30. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW: “Come, madam wife, sit by my side, and let the world slip, we shall ne’er be younger.”
31. THE TEMPEST: “These are not natural events, they strengthen/From strange to stranger.”
32. THE WINTER’S TALE: “These are flow’rs/Of middle summer, and I think they are given/To men of middle age.”
33. TIMON OF ATHENS: “Let no assembly of twenty be without a score of villains.”
34. TITUS ANDRONICUS: “…But we worldly men/Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.”
35. TROILUS & CRESSIDA: “Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery, nothing else holds fashion. A burning devil take them!”
36. TWELFTH NIGHT: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I,/It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.”
37. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA: “Alas, how love can trifle with itself!”
38. TWO NOBLE KINSMEN: “Friend, you must eat no white bread; if you do,/Your teeth will bleed extremely.”