Shakespeare

I have begun refreshing my knowledge of all the many interests I have listed in my CV. I was going through Shakespeare's plays and suddenly I realised what I had missed by coming to WIMWI (though I have gained a great deal too). Only six months ago, I was going through one play every month and was halfway through the canon. Now I am reduced to reading lines on the computer screen. It's all my fault only of course, as I think WIMWI's library does have Shakespeare.

What a masterful writer!

Some lines I could enjoy for eternity :

How we recognise faults in those whom we like and choose to cherish them...

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

(Sonnet 130)

A rousing invocation of the glories to be won on a battlefield...

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
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.

(Henry V, Henry V, 4.3.40-70)

Amongst the darkest words I have ever read...

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'

(Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, 1.5.42-58)