“O sacred receptacle of my joys,
Sweet cell of my virtue and nobility,
How many sons hast thou of mine in store
That thou wilt never render to me more!”
(Titus, 1.1, 92-95)
“Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them then in being merciful.
Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.”
(Tamora, 1.1, 117-119)
“Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned drugs, here are no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.”
(Titus, 1.1, 153-155)
“Lavinia, live; outlive thy father’s days
And fame’s eternal date, for virtue’s praise.”
(Titus, 1.1, 167-168)
“Give me a staff of honour for mine age,
But not a sceptre to control the world.”
(Titus, 1.1, 198-199)
“These words are razors to my wounded heart.”
(Titus, 1.1, 311)
“As when the golden sun salutes the morn
And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,
Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach
And overlooks the highest-peering hills,”
(Aaron, 2.1, 5-8)
“Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.”
(Aaron, 2.3, 38-39)
“Some say that ravens foster forlorn children
The whilst their own birds famish in their nests.”
(Lavinia, 2.3, 153-154)
“No grace, no womanhood - ah, beastly creature,
The blot and enemy to our general name,
Confusion fall-”
(Lavinia, 2.3, 182-184)
“Then all too late I bring this fatal writ,
The complot of this timeless tragedy,
And wonder greatly that man’s face can fold
In pleasing smiles such murderous tyranny.2
(Tamora, 2.3, 264-267)
“Let them not speak a word - the guilt is plain;
For by my soul, were there worse end than death
That end upon them should be executed.”
(Saturninus, 2.3, 301-303)
“One hour’s storm will drown the fragrant meads:
What will whole months of tears they father’s eyes?”
(Marcus, 2.4, 54-55)
“For these two, Tribunes, in the dust I write
My heart’s deep languor and my soul’s sad tears.
Let my heart stanch the earth’s dry appetite;
My sons’ sweet blood will make it shame and blush.”
(Titus, 3.1, 12-15)
“Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death,
And let me say, that never wept before,
My tears are now prevailing orators!”
(Titus, 3.1, 24-26)
“A stone is silent and offended not,
And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.”
(Titus, 3.1, 45-46)
“What shall we do? Let us that have tongues
Plots some device of further misery,
To make us wondered at in times to come.”
(Titus, 3.1, 133-135)
“If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes.
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o’erflow?”
(Titus, 3.1, 218-220)
“Now let hot Etna cool in Sicily,
And be my heart an ever-burning hell.
These miseries are more than may be borne.
To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal,
But sorrow flouted at is double death.”
(Marcus, 3.1, 240-244)
“Alas, poor man! Grief has so wrought on him
He takes false shadows for true substances.”
(Marcus, 3.2, 78-79)
“The angry northern wind
Will blow these sands like Sibyl’s leaves abroad,
And where’s our lesson then?”
(Titus, 4.1, 103-105)
“Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.”
(Aaron, 4.2, 48)
“What, what ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys,
Ye white limed walls, ye alehouse painted signs,”
(Aaron, 4.2, 96-97)
“He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed
Of that self blood that first gave life to you,
And from that womb where you imprisoned were
He is enfranchised, and come to light.”
(Aaron, 4.2, 121-124)
“And sith there’s no justice in earth nor hell,
We will solicit heaven and move the gods
To send down Justice for to wreak our wrongs.”
(Titus, 4.3, 50-52)
“Yet for I know thou are religious
And hast a thing within thee called conscience.”
(Aaron, 5.1, 74-75)
“But I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.”
(Aaron, 5.1, 141-144)
“I am Revenge, sent from th’infernal kingdom
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind
By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.”
(Tamora, 5.2, 30-32)
The Comedy of Errors
“Yet this is my comfort: when your words are done,
My woes end likewise with the evening sun.”
(Egeon, 1.1, 26-27)
“He that commends me to mine own content
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.”
(Antipholus of Syracuse, 1.2, 33-38)
“They say this town is full of cozenage,
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many suchlike libertines of sin.”
(Antipholus of Syracuse, 1.2, 97-102)
“There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye
But hath his bound in earth, in sea, in sky.”
(Luciana, 2.1, 16-17)
“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry.”
(Adriana, 2.1, 34-35)
“Are my discourse dull? Barren my wit?
If voluble and sharp discourse be marred,
Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard.”
(Adriana, 2.1, 90-92)
“I know his eye doth homage other where,
Or else what lets it but he would be here?”
(Adriana, 2.1, 103-104)
“Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I’ll weep what’s left away, and weeping die.”
(Adriana, 2.1, 113-114)
“Was there every any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?”
(Dromio of Syracuse, 2.2, 47-48)
“Why, but there’s many a man hath
More hair than wit.”
(Antipholus of Syracuse, 2.2, 82-83)
“If the skin were parchment, and the blows you gave were ink,
Your own handwriting would tell you what I think.”
(Dromio of Ephesus, 3.1, 13-14)
“For slander lives upon succession,
For ever housed where once it gets possession.”
(Balthasar, 3.1, 106-107)
“As from a bear a man would run for life,
So fly I from her that would be my wife.”
(Dromio of Syracuse, 3.2, 152-153)
“Who would be jealous, then, of such a one?
No evil lost is wailed when it is gone.”
“His word might bear my wealth at any time.”
(Angelo, 5.1, 8)
“Hath not else in his eye
Strayed his affection in unlawful love -
A sin prevailing much in youthful men,
Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing?”
(Abbess, 5.1, 50-53)
“Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy,
Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,
And at her heels a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?”
(Abbess, 5.1, 79-83)
“O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last,
And careful hours with time’s deformed hand
Have written strange defeatures in my face.”
(Egeon, 5.1, 298-300)
“We came into the world like brother and brother,
And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before the another.”
(Dromio of Ephesus, 5.1, 426-427)
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