Richard 

Richard III
Shakespeare

A: Anne

B: Richard

Richard III

Shakespeare 

A

But say, my lord, it were not register'd,
Methinks the truth should live from age to age,
As 'twere retail'd to all posterity,
Even to the general all-ending day.

B

[Aside] So wise so young, they say, do never
live long.

A

What say you, uncle?

B

I say, without characters, fame lives long.

A: Prince Edward

B: Richard

Richard III

Shakespeare 

A

If they have done this thing, my gracious lord--

B

If I thou protector of this damned strumpet--
Tellest thou me of 'ifs'? Thou art a traitor:
Off with his head! Now, by Saint Paul I swear,
I will not dine until I see the same.
Lovel and Ratcliff, look that it be done:
The rest, that love me, rise and follow me

A: Hastings

B: Richard

Richard III

Shakespeare 

What think you we are Turks or infidels?

Or that we would, against the form of law,
Proceed thus rashly to the villain's death,
But that the extreme peril of the case,
The peace of England and our persons' safety,
Enforced us to this execution?

Richard 

Richard III

Shakespeare 

B

O A, now do I play the touch,
To try if thou be current gold indeed
Young Edward lives: think now what I would say.

A

Say on, my loving lord.

B

Why, A, I say, I would be king,

A

Why, so you are, my thrice renowned liege.

B

Ha! am I king? 'tis so: but Edward lives.

A

True, noble prince.

B

O bitter consequence,
That Edward still should live! 'True, noble prince!'
Cousin, thou wert not wont to be so dull:
Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead;
And I would have it suddenly perform'd.
What sayest thou? speak suddenly; be brief.

A

Your grace may do your pleasure.

B

Tut, tut, thou art all ice, thy kindness freezeth:
Say, have I thy consent that they shall die?

A

Give me some breath, some little pause, my lord
Before I positively herein:
I will resolve your grace immediately.

A: Richard

B: Buckingham

Richard III

Shakespeare 

A

But in your daughter's womb I bury them:
Where in that nest of spicery they shall breed
Selves of themselves, to your recomforture.

B

Shall I go win my daughter to thy will?

A

And be a happy mother by the deed.

B

I go. Write to me very shortly.
And you shall understand from me her mind.

A

Bear her my true love's kiss; and so, farewell.

A: Richard

B: Queen Elizabeth

Richard III

Shakespeare

Richard

Richard III
Shakespeare  

Richmond

Richard III

Shakespeare 

A: Nothing to be done.

B: I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying B, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resmed the struggle. So there you are again.

A: Am I?

B: I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone for ever.

A: Me too.

B: Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? Get up till I embrace you. 

A: Not now, not now. 

B: May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?

A: In a ditch.

B: A ditch! Where? 

A: Over there.

B: And they didn't beat you?

A: Beat me? Certainly they beat me.

A: Estragon

B: Vladimir

Waiting for Godot 

Samuel Beckett 

A: What are you doing?

B: Taking off my boot. Did that never happen to you?

A: Boots must be taken off every day. I'm tired telling you that. Why don't you listen to me?

B: Help me!

A: It hurts?

B: Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

A: No one ever suffers but you. I don't count. I'd like to hear what you'd say if you had what I have.

B: It hurts?
A: Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

B: You might button it all the same.

A: True. Never necglect the little things of life.

B: What do you expect, you always wait till the last moment.

A: The last moment...Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?

B: Why don't you help me?

A: Sometimes I feel it coming all the same. Then I go all queer. How shall I say? Relieved and at the same time...appalled. AP-PALLED. Funny. Nothing to be done. Well?

B: Nothing

A: Show

B: There's nothing to show

A: Try and put it on again

B: I'll air it for a bit

A: There's a man all over for you, blaming on his boots the gaults of his feet. This is getting alarming. One of the theives was saved. It's a reasonable percentage. 

B: What?

A: Suppose we repented.

B: Repented what?

A: Oh...We wouldn't have to go into the details

B: Our being born?

A: One daren't even laugh any more.

A: Valdimir

B: Estragon

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett 

A: You recognize the place?

B: I didn't say that.

A: Well?

B: That makes no difference.

A: All the same...that tree...that bog...

B: You're sure it was this evening?

A: What?

B: That we were to wait

A: He said Saturday. I think

B: You think.

A: I must have made a note of it.

B: But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? Or Monday? Or Friday?
A: It's not possible!

B: Or Thursday

A: What'll we do?

B: If he came yesterday and we weren't here you may be sure he won't come again to-day.

A: But you say we were here yesterday.  

A: Vladimir

B: Estragon

Waiting For Godot

Samuel Beckett 

A: I was asleep! Why will you never let me sleep?

B: I felt lonely.

A: I had a dream

B: Don't tell me!

A: I dreamt that -

B: DONT TELL ME!

A: This one is enough for you? It's not nice of you, Didi. Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can't tell them to you?

B: Let them remain private. You know I can't bear that.

A: There are times when I wonder if it wouldn't be better for us to part.

B: You wouldn't go far.

A: That would be too bad, really too bad. Wouldn't it ___, be really to bad? When you think of the beauty of the way. And the goodness of the wayferers. Wouln't it, _____?

A: Estragon

B: Vladimir

Waiting for Godot 

Samuel Beckett 

A: PPPOZZZO!

B: Ah! Pozzo...let me see...Pozzo...

C: Is it Pozzo or Bozzo?

B: Pozzo..no...I'm afriad I...no...I don't seem to...

C: I once knew a family called Gozzo. The mother had the clap. 

A: Pozzo

B: Estragon

C: Vladimir

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett 

A: To treat a man...like that...I think that...no...a human being...no...it's a scandal!

B: A disgrace?

C: You are severe. What age are you, if it's not a rude question? Sixty? Seventy? What age would you say he was?

B: Eleven

A: Vladimir

B: Estragon

C: Puzzo

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett 

A: The tree, look at the tree.

B: Was it not there yesterday?

A: Yes of course it was there. Do you not remember? We nearly hanged ourselves from it, but you wouldn't. Do you not remember?

A: You dreamt it

B: It is possible you've forgotten already?

A: That's the way I am. Either I foget immediately or I never forget

A: Vladimir

B: Estragon

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett 

A: I see nothing.

B: But yesterday evening it was all black and bare. And now it's covered with leaves.

A: Leaves?

B: In a single night.

A: It must be the Spring.

B: But in a single night!

A: I tell you we weren't here yestrday. Another of your nightmares

B: And where were we yesterday evening according to you?

A: How would I know? In another compartment. There's no lack of void. 

A: Estragon

B: Vladmir

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett 

A: And so we've come to the end of the world.

To Scythia: this howling waste no one passes through.

Hephasistos, now it's up to you.

What the Father wants done

you've got to do.

On these overhanging cliffs

with our own shatter-proof irons you're commanded:

Clamp this troublemaking bastard to the rock.

After all, Hephasistos, it was your glowing flower

FIRE

-the power behind it all

works of hands-

he stole it, he gave it away 

to human beings. 

Ths;s his crime, and the Gods demkand

he pay for it

He must submit

to the tyranny of Zeus 

and like it, too.

He'll learn.

He's got to give up

feeling for humanity 

Power
Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus  

New masters sail Olympus.

Look now, how Zeus lords it!

His rules are new, they're raw.

He rules beyond the law.

Giant Things that used to be

He wipes out completely 

Chorus

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus 

It's easy enough for the bystander,

who's not bogged down in sorrow,

to advise and warn

the one who suffers..

Myself, I knew all this

and knew it all along

Still,

I meant to be wrong. 

I knew what I was doing.

Helping humankind

I helped myself to misery

And yet I never dreamed it would be like this,

this wasting away against the air hung cliffs

the desolate mountain top

the loneliness

Prometheus

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus 

A: But who swings the helm?

Who brings Necessity about?

B: The three bodies of Fate, and the unforgetting Furies.

A: Is Zues really less powerful than these?

B: Well...He can't escape His fate.

A: But what is His fate, except to rule forever?
B: Don't be so insistent. You're not to learn that. Not yet.  

A: Chorus

B: Prometheus

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus

Prometheus

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus 

I do see, ______. And what I wish to give you 

(smart as you are)

is the best advice of all:

Know thyself.

Also, rehablitate yourself.

The Gods have a new Tyrant, 

Ocean 

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus

You're brave, you won't

give in to pain.

And yet, youre speech is much too free.

Fear quick fear 

pierces our fluttering hearts. 

Chorus

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus 

A: These are words, there are the dreams

of lunatics,

What part of this peculiar prayer 

is not insane?

You girls, who cry over his pains,

get our of here-

before Zues's lowing thuderclap

stuns you senseless

B: say something else, give us advice

we'll listen to!

We can't put up with this 

aside, these words you've dragged up in passing. 

How coudl you order me to be 

a coward, how?

I'll suffer by his side

whatever comes, because I've learned to hate

treachery: to me, the filthiest disease. 

A: Hermes

B: Chorus

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus 

A: How can anyone raise an army in a place like this? Sweden! I'm seriously thinking of killing myself. By the twelfth of next month I;ve got to get four units together. God knows how. When I do finally get hold of a possible and sort of ignore the pigeon chest and the varicose veins, I've no sooner got him blind drunk and signing on the dotted line than I turn to pay for the brandy, and wham! he's out the lavoratory window. I tell you, there's no such thing as hounour any more. Pride. Duty. What do they mean? I'm losing my faith in the human race.

B: Well, that's the problem, isn't it? They haven't had a war here for such a long time. Without a good war, where do you get your moral standards from? Everything goes to pot in peacetime. People eat what they like, you see them wandering about with cheese on their bread and then a great smear of bacon fat on top! How many men are there in that town down the road? How many horses? Nobody knows. They've never even been counted. I've been in places where they haven't had a war for seventy years. People can't even remember their own names. They can't tell each other apart. It's only when war comes you get proper lists. Everything numbered and with a label round its neck. I'ts obvious. No war. No order. 

A: Recruiting Officer

B: Sergeant

Mother Courage and Her Children

Bertolt Brecht 

A: It's ten shillings, money in your pocket an dyou get to fight for your King. And women? I tell you, one look at the uniform and they're yours. All right? Then fight me, come on, now you can fight me as much as you like.

B: All right, Kattrin, all right. Give us a moemnt. The Sergeant is still paying.

I don't trust coins, I've been skinned once too often. But this is good. Where's Eilif?

C: He went with the Recruiting Officer.

B: You prick. All right, I know, it's not your fault. It's never your fault, you can't speak. 

A: Recruiting Officer

B: Mother Courage

C: Swiss Cheese

Mother Courage and Her Children

Bertolt Brecht 

A: He must be a rotten general.

B: Hungry, sure. But why rotten?

A: Because he needs brave soldiers, that's why. If he knew what he was doing, he wouldn't need them to be brave. It's always the same. Whenever heroics are called for, it;s a sure sign someone's fucked up.

B: I'd have thought the opposite.

A: Come on, think about it. What's courage? Failure of planning, that's all. Some general takes his troops into some stupid situation. Or he's tried to save money and hired too few of them in the first place. It's sort of a law, isn't it? The stupider and more useless the general, the mroe exceptional the men need to be. Like it's only a badly-run country where the people have to be special. In a proper country, there's no need of virtue. Everyone can just get on with being so-so. Averagely intelligent. And for all I care, cowards as well.

A: Mother Courage

B: The Cook

Mother Courage and Her Children

Bertolt Brecht 

A: I need a moment to think. I can't pay two hundred. I can't. Without money, I'm nothing. Any stranger can kick me in the ditch. All right, say one twenty. Go back and say one twenty or the deal's off. Whatever happens, I lose the cart.

B: They're not going to take it. I warn you. The Cyclops is already getting jumpy. He needs the two hundred. 

A: I can't. I can't give him that. I've worked thiry years. This girl is twenty-five and she has no husband. I've got to think of her. Don't argue, I know what I'm doing. One hundred and twenty or the deal's off.

B: You know best

A: Don't break the glasses, they're not ours any more. Watch what you're doing or you'll cut yourself. He will come back, I promise. I'll pay two hundred if I have to. You'll get your brother back. But if we keep eighty we can load a trunk with something. You have to start somewhere.

C: It is written: the Lord will provid

A: Dry them properly

B: It's not going to work. I warned you. The Cyclops wanted to leave straight away. He says there's no poin. ANy minute now, you'll hear the drum and that means the sentence is passed. I offered him one fify. Nothing. He didn't even want to stay while I came back.

A: Tell him he gets the two hundred. Run!

A: May I haggled too long.

A: Mother Courage

B: Yvette

C: The Chaplain

Mother Courage and Her Children

Bertolt Brecht 

Spring is here. The snow is melting

The dead are gone. They're all at peace

And waht remains must now continue.

That's us. Let's go. We're all that's left. 

Soldiers

Mother Courage and Her Children

Bertolt Brecht 

Horatio

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

A: Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

B: Ay, madam, it is common.

A

If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

B

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

A: Queen Gertrude

B: Hamlet

Hamlet Shakespeare 

A: To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love--

B: O God!

A

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

B

Murder!

A

Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

B

Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.

A: Ghost

B: Hamlet

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

Hamlet

Hamlet 

Shakespeare 

A: What do you read, my lord?

B

Words, words, words.

A

What is the matter, my lord?

B: Between who?

A

I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

A: Polonius

B: Hamlet

Hamlet

Shakespeare

A: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

B

I warrant your honour.

A: Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature

A: Hamlet

B: First Player

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

A: How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.

B

Who shall stay you?

A

My will, not all the world:
And for my means, I'll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.

A: Laertes

B: Claudius 

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

Hamlet

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.

Hamlet 

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

Hamlet

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

Hamlet

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

Horatio

Hamlet

Shakespeare 

A: When you stir your rice pudding, _____, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronimcal atlas. But if you stir it backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

B: No

A: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart

B: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disporder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangable, and we are donw tih it for ever. This is known as free will or self-determination. Sit!

A: Thomasina

B: Septimus

Arcadia

Tom Stoppard 

A: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?

B: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.

A: Is that all?

B: No...a shoulder of mutton, a haunch of venison well hugged, an embrace of grouse...caro, carnis; feminine; flesh.

A: Is it a sin?

B: Not necessarily, my lady, but when carnal embrace is sinful it is a sin of the flesh, QED.

A: Thomasina

B: Septimus

Arcadia 
Tom Stoppard  

Thomasina

Arcadia

Tom Stoppard

Chorus

Henry V

Shakespeare 

Canteburry

Henry V

Shakespeare

Ely

Henry V 

Shakespeare

Henry

Henry V

Shakespeare

Henry

Henry V

Shakespeare

Henry

Henry V

Shakespeare

Why, 'tis a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then
goes to the wars, to grace himself at his return
into London under the form of a soldier. And such
fellows are perfect in the great commanders' names:
and they will learn you by rote where services were
done; at such and such a sconce, at such a breach,
at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was
shot, who disgraced, what terms the enemy stood on;
and this they con perfectly in the phrase of war,
which they trick up with new-tuned oaths: and what
a beard of the general's cut and a horrid suit of
the camp will do among foaming bottles and
ale-washed wits, is wonderful to be thought on. But
you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or
else you may be marvellously mistook.

Gower

Henry V

Shakespeare

Henry

Henry V

Shakespeare

Henry

Henry V

Shakespeare 

Hail the world's soul, and mine! more glad than is

The teeming earth to see the long'd-for sun

Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram,

Am I, to view thy splendour darkening his;

That lying here, amongst my other hoards,

Shew'st like a flame by night; or like the day

Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled

Unto the centre. O thou son of Sol,

But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,

With adoration, thee, and every relick

Of sacred treasure, in this blessed room.

Well did wise poets, by thy glorious name,

Title that age which they would have the best;

Thou being the best of things: and far transcending

All style of joy, in children, parents, friends,

Or any other waking dream on earth:

Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe,

They should have given her twenty thousand Cupids;

Such are thy beauties and our loves! Dear saint,

Riches, the dumb God, that giv'st all men tongues;

That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things;

The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot,

Is made worth heaven. Thou art virtue, fame,

Honour, and all things else. Who can get thee,

He shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise, -

Volpone 

Volpone 

Ben Jonson 

A: It shall be minister'd to him, in his bowl.

B: Ay, do, do, do.

A: Most blessed cordial!

This will recover him.

B: Yes, do, do, do.

A: I think it were not best, sir.

B: What?

A: To recover him.

B: O, no, no, no; by no means.

A: Why, sir, this

Will work some strange effect, if he but feel it.

B: 'Tis true, therefore forbear; I'll take my venture:

Give me it again.

A: At no hand; pardon me:

You shall not do yourself that wrong, sir. I

Will so advise you, you shall have it all.

B: How?

A: All, sir; 'tis your right, your own; no man

Can claim a part: 'tis yours, without a rival,

Decreed by destiny.

B: How, how, good Mosca?

A: I'll tell you sir. This fit he shall recover.

B: I do conceive you.

A: And, on first advantage

Of his gain'd sense, will I re-importune him

Unto the making of his testament:

And shew him this.

[POINTING TO THE MONEY.]

B: Good, good.

A: Mosca

B: Corbaccio

Volpone Ben Jonson

 I fear, I shall begin to grow in love

With my dear self, and my most prosperous parts,

They do so spring and burgeon; I can feel

A whimsy in my blood: I know not how,

Success hath made me wanton. I could skip

Out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake,

I am so limber. O! your parasite

Is a most precious thing, dropt from above,

Not bred 'mongst clods, and clodpoles, here on earth.

I muse, the mystery was not made a science,

It is so liberally profest! almost

All the wise world is little else, in nature,

But parasites, or sub-parasites. - And yet,

I mean not those that have your bare town-art,

To know who's fit to feed them; have no house,

No family, no care, and therefore mould

Tales for men's ears, to bait that sense; or get

Kitchen-invention, and some stale receipts

To please the belly, and the groin; nor those,

With their court dog-tricks, that can fawn and fleer,

Make their revenue out of legs and faces,

Echo my lord, and lick away a moth:

But your fine elegant rascal, that can rise,

And stoop, almost together, like an arrow;

Shoot through the air as nimbly as a star;

Turn short as doth a swallow; and be here,

And there, and here, and yonder, all at once;

Present to any humour, all occasion;

And change a visor, swifter than a thought!

This is the creature had the art born with him;

Toils not to learn it, but doth practise it

Out of most excellent nature: and such sparks

Are the true parasites, others but their zanis.

Mosca

Volpone

Ben Jonson

A: ___!

B: ___!

A:___ is so wonderful!

B: I asked you to come here becayse I wanted to tell you something

A: Why did ___ look at me like that? It made me feel so crazy!

B: I wanted to ask you something, too.

A: That one time he kissed me-I can't forget it! He was only joking-but I felt-and he saw and just laughed!

B: Because that's the uncertain part. y end of it is a sure thing, and has been for a long time, and I guess everybody in town knows it-they're always kidding me-so it's a cinch you must know-how I feel about you

A:___ is so different from all the others. he can paint beautifully and write poetry and he plays and sings and dances so marvelously. But he's sad and shy, too, just like a baby sometimes, and he understands what I'm really like inside-and-and I'd love to run my fingers through his hair-and I love him! Yes, I love him! Oh____ I love you!

A: Margaret

B: Billy

The Great God Brown

Eugene O'Neill 

Dion

The Great God Brown

Eugene O'Neill 

A: ___!

B: __!

A: _____ !
B: ___ !

A: ___ ! Who are you? Why are you calling me? I don't know you!

B: I love you!

A: Is this a joke-or are you drunk?

B: ____! Ha-ha-ha! Tha's one on you, Peg!

A: ____! How did you ever-Why, I never knew you 

B: How? It's the moon-the crazy moon-the monkey in the moon-playing jokes on us! You love me! You know you do! Say it! Tell me! I want to hear! I want to feel! I Want to know! I want to want! To want you as you want me!

A: O ____, I do! I do love you! 

A: Margaret

B: Dion

The Great God Brown

Eugene O'Neill 

Cybel

The Great God Brown

Eugene O'Neill 

Exactly how she died I do not know

For Oedipus burst in moaning and wound not let us

Keep vigil to the end: it was by him

As he stormed about the room that our eyes were caught

From one to another one of us were went, begging a sword

Cursing the wife who were not his wife, the mother

Whose womb had carried his own children and himself:

I do not know: it was none of us aided him

But surely one of us gods was in control

For with a dreadful cry

He hurled his weight, as though wrenched out of himself

At the twin doors: the bolts gave and he rushed in 

Second messenger

Sophocles

Oedipus

We make the same mistakes

Haughtiness and the high hand of distain

Tempt and outrage God’s holy law

And any mortal who dares hold

No immortal power in awe

Will be caught up in a net of pain:

The price in which his levity is sold 

Chorus

Sophocles

Oedipus

Oedipus calls himself great so not modest/humble – must be punished

Laios was killed by marauding strangers where three highways meet 

Iocaste

Sopholces

Oedipus

Our own choices will eliminate our options

We can not see that words or yours

Have been spoken except in anger, Oedipus,

And of anger we have no need. How can God’s will

Be accomplished best? That is what most concerns us 

Choragos

Sophocles

Oedipus

The more we chose freely the more we become each other

A: Tell me; Are you speaking for Creon, or for yourself?

B: Creon is no problem. You weave your own doom

A: Wealth, power, craft of statesmanship!

Kingly position, everywhere admired!

What savage envy os stored up against thee

A= Oedipus

B = Teiresias

Sophocles

Oedipus

Get more caught in own perspective!

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be

Then there’s no help in truth! I knew this will,

But made myself forget. I should not have come

Teiresias

Sophocles

Oedipus

Caught up in own perspective

A: What was that one thing? One may be the key

To everything, if we resolve to use it

B: He said that a band of highwaymen attacked them,

Outnumbered them, and overwhelmed the king

A: strange, that the shouldhighwayman  be so daring 

A – Oedipus

B – Creon

Sophocles

Oedipus

A: And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there!

B: My lord! He faints! He faints!

A: Break heart, I prithee, break

A = King Lear

B = Edgar

Shakespeare

King Lear

Lear is taking responsibility w breaking heart

A: When shall we come to the top of that same hill?

B: You do climb up it now: look, how we labour.

A: Methinks the ground is even.

B: Horrible steep.
Hark, do you hear the sea?

A: No, truly.

B: Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect
By your eyes' anguish.

A: So may it be, indeed:
Methinks thy voice is alter'd; and thou speak'st
In better phrase and matter than thou didst.

B: You're much deceived: in nothing am I changed
But in my garments.

A: Methinks you're better spoken.

B: Come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. How fearful
And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,
That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more;
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.

A = Gloucester

B = Edgar

Shakespeare

King Lear

We are trained not to trust our imagination 

A: Hold your hand, my lord:
I have served you ever since I was a child;
But better service have I never done you
Than now to bid you hold.

B: How now, you dog!

A: If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
I'd shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean?

C: My villain!

A: Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.

B: Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus!

A: O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left
To see some mischief on him. O!

C: Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!

A = first servant

B = Reagan

C = Cornwall

Shakespeare

King Lear

Where hast thou sent the king

Cornwall

Shakespeare

King Lear

Go seek the traitor Gloucester,
Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.
Though well we may not pass upon his life
Without the form of justice, yet our power
Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men
May blame, but not control. Who's there? the traitor?

Cornwall

Shakespeare

King Lear

Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer
with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.
Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou
owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep
no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on
's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself:
unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare,
forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings!
come unbutton here.

King Lear

Shakespeare

King lear

Lear cant tell if it is real or not

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

Lear

Shakespeare

King Lear

A: Thou canst tell why one's nose stands i'
the middle on's face?

B: No.

A: Why, to keep one's eyes of either side's nose; that
what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into.

B: I did her wrong--

A: Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?

B: No.

A: Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.

B: Why?

A: Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his
daughters, and leave his horns without a case.

B: I will forget my nature. So kind a father! 

A= fool

B = lear

Shakespeare

King lear

Paying someone to mock you is a a way to avoid getting to big for your britches 

All with me’s meet do that I can Fashion fit

Edmund

Shakespeare

King Lear

Either make things look like strong – or actually make strong 

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Edmund

Shakespeare

King Lear

Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.

King Lear

Shakespeare

King Lear

Disown kid frees you from the responsibility

Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.
Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger years 

King Lear

Shakespeare

King Lear

Spit kingdom 

A: Is not this your son, my lord?

B: His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have
so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am
brazed to it.

A: I cannot conceive you.

B: Sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon
she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son
for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed.
Do you smell a fault?

A: I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it
being so proper.

B: But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year
elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account:
though this knave came something saucily into the
world before he was sent for, yet was his mother
fair; there was good sport at his making, and the
whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this
noble gentleman, Edmund?

A = kent

B = Gloucester

Shakespeare

King lear

Take away responsibility of your children by not acknowledging them 

And therefore will come.

Sings The god of love,
That sits above,
And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,--
I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good
swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and
a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers,
whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a
blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned
over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I
cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find
out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent
rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for,
'school,' 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous
endings: no, I was not born under a rhyming planet,
nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

Benedick

Shakespeare

MuchAdo

Bad poetry is a sign of true love

A: By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.

B: Do not swear, and eat it.

A: I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make
him eat it that says I love not you.

B: Will you not eat your word?

AWith no sauce that can be devised to it. I protest
I love thee.

B: Why, then, God forgive me!

A: What offence, sweet Beatrice?

B: You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to
protest I loved you.

A: And do it with all thy heart.

B: I love you with so much of my heart that none is
left to protest.

A: Come, bid me do any thing for thee.

A= Benedick

B= Beatrice

Shakespeare

Much Ado

By not understanding a pun, you are sincere

A: Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.

B: Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.

A: I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.

B: You take pleasure then in the message?

A: Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit

B: Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that 'I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.' that's as much as to say, Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture.

A= Beatrice

B =Benedick

Shakespeare

MuchAdo

Jokes are only funny when they have the power to hurt

A: I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night to Messina.

B: He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when I left him.

A: How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

B: But few of any sort, and none of name.

A: A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.

B: Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by Don Pedro. He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.

A: Leonato

B: Messenger Shakespere

Much Ado

- get your place w the pecking order

A: Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

B: Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.

A: You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your daughter. 

B: Her mother hath many times told me so. 

C: Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her? 

B:Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.

A: Benedick

B: Leonato 

Much Ado

Shakespeare

A: Will you have me, lady?

B: No, my lord, unless I might have another for working-days: your grace is too costly to wear every day. But, I beseech your grace, pardon me: I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

B: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.

A: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.

A: Don Pedro

B: Beatrice

- Shakespear

- Much Ado

- can change meanings 

Beatrice

- Shakespeare

- Much Ado

- not all jokes are still funny  

Beatrice

- Shakespeare

- Much Ado

- Women can never win 

A:

Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it.

B:

I have already.

A:

Tush, that was in thy rage:
Speak it again, and, even with the word,
That hand, which, for thy love, did kill thy love,
Shall, for thy love, kill a far truer love;
To both their deaths thou shalt be accessary.

B:

I would I knew thy heart.

A:

'Tis figured in my tongue.

B:

I fear me both are false.

A:

Then never man was true.

B:

Well, well, put up your sword.

A:

Say, then, my peace is made.

B:

That shall you know hereafter.

A:

But shall I live in hope?

B:

All men, I hope, live so.

A:

Vouchsafe to wear this ring.

B:

To take is not to give.

a: Richard 

b: Lady Anne

Shakespeare

Richard III