Here are 100 inspirational Shakespeare monologues for women. They vary in length and tone and are sourced from thirty-five of his plays, including tragedies, comedies, romances and histories. Each monologue is introduced with a brief synopsis.
This massive selection of Shakespeare monologues for women is suitable for professional actors who are looking for audition material, university students studying Shakespeare, or secondary school students undertaking drama or theatre courses. While all of these monologues were written for female actors over 400 years ago, what you do with them today in terms of gender is totally up to you.
Meaningful Shakespeare monologues exist in every one of his plays. Some are rousing, others are energising, and a few monologues from his comedies are even joyful. But what constitutes a thought-provoking monologue for one person, is sometimes considered pedestrian to the next. The actor’s job is to connect with a monologue and select one appropriate for their skill set.
Popular Shakespeare monologues for women include “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?” and “Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again” from Romeo and Juliet, “Out, damned spot!” from Macbeth, “Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow” from The Taming of the Shrew, and “Lo, she is one of this confederacy!” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The 100 Shakespeare monologues for women, below, represent a wide range of content and themes and include a number of lesser-known selections.
100 Shakespeare Monologues for Women
Juliet ponders on the unfortunate circumstance that the man she loves is a Montague, her family’s sworn enemy. She muses on how a name is merely a label and does not define the person while wishing Romeo could give up his name to be with her.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
JULIET: O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
Lady Macbeth is reading a letter from her husband, Macbeth, recounting his encounter with the witches. She expresses her fear that Macbeth’s nature is too kind and honourable to seize the throne in the way the witches prophesied. She resolves to convince him to take the necessary action to fulfil his destiny.
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5
LADY MACBETH: ‘They met me in the day of success: and I have
learned by the perfectest report, they have more in
them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire
to question them further, they made themselves air,
into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in
the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who
all-hailed me ‘Thane of Cawdor;’ by which title,
before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred
me to the coming on of time, with ‘Hail, king that
shalt be!’ This have I thought good to deliver
thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou
mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being
ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it
to thy heart, and farewell.’
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou’ldst have, great Glamis,
That which cries ‘Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.’ Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown’d withal.
Portia, disguised as a lawyer, is speaking to Shylock in court, urging him to show mercy to Antonio. She describes mercy as a divine quality that benefits both the giver and the receiver and asserts that true power is shown through mercy, not through punishment.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1
PORTIA: The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.
Helena is lamenting her unrequited love for Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia. She reflects on the irrational and blind nature of love, and how it can make insignificant things seem important and beautiful.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1
HELENA: How happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,
He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.
As she prepares for bed, Desdemona tells her maid Emilia about a sad song she can’t get out of her head, the ‘Willow Song’, sung by a maid who was deserted by her lover. This forebodes her own tragic fate, as she too will be abandoned by her love, Othello.
Othello, Act 4, Scene 3
DESMEDONA: My mother had a maid call’d Barbara:
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad
And did forsake her: she had a song of ‘willow;’
An old thing ’twas, but it express’d her fortune,
And she died singing it: that song to-night
Will not go from my mind; I have much to do,
But to go hang my head all at one side,
And sing it like poor Barbara. Prithee, dispatch.
Juliet, in anticipation of her wedding night with Romeo, implores the day to end so night can begin, allowing Romeo to stealthily come to her. This monologue vividly expresses Juliet’s deep love and yearning for Romeo, as well as her youthful impatience.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 2
JULIET: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway’s eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.
Juliet is about to drink the potion that Friar Lawrence has given her. This monologue portrays her fear and uncertainty of the potential outcomes of her actions, including waking up in the tomb before Romeo can rescue her, or going mad from the horror of the surroundings.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 3
JULIET: Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I’ll call them back again to comfort me:
Nurse! What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial. [She takes out the vial.]
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
[She takes out her knife and puts it down beside her.] No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there.
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there’s a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,–
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;–
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes’ torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:–
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefather’s joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier’s point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. [She drinks and falls upon her bed within the curtains.]
Portia is speaking to Bassanio before he chooses from the caskets, a condition her father put in his will for her suitors. She expresses her wish for him to delay his choice, as she fears losing him if he chooses incorrectly. She also conveys her frustration about not having any control over who she marries.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 2
PORTIA: I pray you, tarry: pause a day or two
Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,
I lose your company: therefore forbear awhile.
There’s something tells me, but it is not love,
I would not lose you; and you know yourself,
Hate counsels not in such a quality.
But lest you should not understand me well,–
And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought,–
I would detain you here some month or two
Before you venture for me. I could teach you
How to choose right, but I am then forsworn;
So will I never be: so may you miss me;
But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin,
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
They have o’erlook’d me and divided me;
One half of me is yours, the other half yours,
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours. O, these naughty times
Put bars between the owners and their rights!
And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,
Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.
I speak too long; but ’tis to peize the time,
To eke it and to draw it out in length,
To stay you from election.
Titania responds to Oberon’s accusations of infidelity by asserting they’re baseless and due to jealousy. She describes how their disputes disrupt nature: altering weather and seasons, causing floods, crop failures, and sickness. Titania emphasizes that their personal quarrels have direct and harmful consequences on the natural and human world, hence they are the originators of these issues.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1
TITANIA: These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge have suck’d up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine-men’s-morris is fill’d up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here:
No night is now with hymn or carol blest.
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
Viola, disguised as Cesario, reflects on the love triangle she finds herself in. She’s alarmed realising that Olivia has fallen for her male disguise, while she herself has feelings for Duke Orsino, who loves Olivia. Aware of the confusion her disguise has caused, she laments the fragility of women’s hearts and feels trapped in this complex situation.
Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 2
VIOLA: I left no ring with her: what means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charm’d her!
She made good view of me; indeed, so much,
That sure methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.
She loves me, sure; the cunning of her passion
Invites me in this churlish messenger.
None of my lord’s ring! why, he sent her none.
I am the man: if it be so, as ’tis,
Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper-false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!
For such as we are made of, such we be.
How will this fadge? my master loves her dearly;
And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master’s love;
As I am woman,–now alas the day!–
What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
O time! thou must untangle this, not I;
It is too hard a knot for me to untie!
Katherine admonishes women who don’t show obedience to their husbands. She argues that women’s duty is to serve, love, and obey, comparing this to the duty a subject owes their prince. She criticizes women who resist their husbands’ will, calling them “rebels.” At the end, she suggests women should submit to their husbands, symbolized by placing their hand under their husband’s foot.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 5, Scene 2
KATHERINE: Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.
Goneril complains about her father, King Lear’s, behaviour, finding it intolerable. She decides to treat him with “weary negligence” and directs her servants to do the same, suggesting if he dislikes it, he can go to her sister.
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 3
GONERIL: Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?
By day and night he wrongs me; every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other,
That sets us all at odds: I’ll not endure it:
His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,
I will not speak with him; say I am sick:
If you come slack of former services,
You shall do well; the fault of it I’ll answer.
Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I’ll have it come to question:
If he dislike it, let him to our sister,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-ruled. Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be used
With cheques as flatteries,–when they are seen abused.
Remember what I tell you.
Helena accuses Hermia of joining in a conspiracy with the others to mock her. She laments the seeming betrayal of their close friendship, comparing their bond to a single entity, split but still united.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2
HELENA: Lo, she is one of this confederacy!
Now I perceive they have conjoined all three
To fashion this false sport, in spite of me.—
Injurious Hermia! Most ungrateful maid!
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us—oh, is it all forgot?
All schooldays’ friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry—seeming parted
But yet an union in partition—
Two lovely berries molded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies but one heart,
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crownèd with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly.
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.
In the opening scene of the play, Cordelia, Lear’s youngest daughter, responds when she is asked by the king to profess her love for him in exchange for her portion of the kingdom.
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1
CORDELIA: Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty
According to my bond; no more nor less.
Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I
Return those duties back as are right fit:
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Why have my sisters husbands if they say
They love you all? Happily, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all.
Ophelia laments the downfall of Hamlet’s noble mind. She describes him as a courtier, soldier and scholar who was once the epitome of fashion and form. However, now she sees him as out of tune and harsh.
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
OPHELIA: O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
The Duchess in expresses her distress and humiliation as the wife of Duke Humphrey. She feels mocked and oppressed by the people while her husband does nothing. She warns Gloucester about the treacherous intentions of Suffolk, York, and Beaufort, urging him to be cautious but not to fear until he is truly trapped.
Henry VI – Part II, Act 2, Scene 4
ELEANOR: Ah, Gloucester, teach me to forget myself!
For whilst I think I am thy married wife
And thou a prince, protector of this land,
Methinks I should not thus be led along,
Mail’d up in shame, with papers on my back,
And followed with a rabble that rejoice
To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans.
The ruthless flint doth cut my tender feet,
And when I start, the envious people laugh
And bid me be advised how I tread.
Ah, Humphrey, can I bear this shameful yoke?
Trow’st thou that e’er I’ll look upon the world,
Or count them happy that enjoy the sun?
No; dark shall be my light and night my day;
To think upon my pomp shall be my hell.
Sometime I’ll say, I am Duke Humphrey’s wife,
And he a prince and ruler of the land:
Yet so he ruled and such a prince he was
As he stood by whilst I, his forlorn duchess,
Was made a wonder and a pointing-stock
To every idle rascal follower.
But be thou mild and blush not at my shame,
Nor stir at nothing till the axe of death
Hang over thee, as, sure, it shortly will;
For Suffolk, he that can do all in all
With her that hateth thee and hates us all,
And York and impious Beaufort, that false priest,
Have all limed bushes to betray thy wings,
And, fly thou how thou canst, they’ll tangle thee:
But fear not thou, until thy foot be snared,
Nor never seek prevention of thy foes.
In this monologue, Miranda begs her father to stop the storm and tells him about her compassion for the shipwrecked men.
The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2
MIRANDA: If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash’d all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish’d.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow’d and
The fraughting souls within her.
In this monologue, Lady Percy laments her husband’s absence and urges him to stay with her.
Henry IV – Part I, Act 2, Scene 3
LADY PERCY: O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?
For what offence have I this fortnight been
A banish’d woman from my Harry’s bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit’st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks;
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch’d,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars;
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed;
Cry ‘Courage! to the field!’ And thou hast talk’d
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners’ ransom and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war
And thus hath so bestirr’d thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow
Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream;
And in thy face strange motions have appear’d,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?
Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.
Constance, grieving and desperate in King John, denies madness, yearns for it to forget her sorrows, contemplates suicide, and acknowledges the torment of each calamity she faces.
King John, act 3, scene 4
CONSTANCE: Thou art not holy to belie me so;
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!
For then, ’tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal;
For being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver’d of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he:
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.
Lady Macbeth, upon reading her husband’s letter about the witches’ prophecy, delivers this soliloquy. She calls on spirits to rid her of feminine weakness and fill her with ruthless ambition in order to help her husband seize the throne.
Macbeth, Act, Scene 5
LADY MACBETH: 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!’
In this soliloquy, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, resolves to commit suicide rather than be paraded as a prize in Rome. She imagines a reunion with Antony in death.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2
CLEOPATRA: Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip:
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So; have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.
[Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies]
Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world
It is not worth leave-taking.
In this speech, Phoebe cruelly rejects Silvius’s romantic advances. Her harsh words contrast with her later infatuation for Rosalind (disguised as Ganymede), which provides a comedic touch to the complexities of love in the play.
As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 5
PHOEBE: Think not I love him, though I ask for him:
‘Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well;
But what care I for words? yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
It is a pretty youth: not very pretty:
But, sure, he’s proud, and yet his pride becomes him:
He’ll make a proper man: the best thing in him
Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue
Did make offence his eye did heal it up.
He is not very tall; yet for his years he’s tall:
His leg is but so so; and yet ’tis well:
There was a pretty redness in his lip,
A little riper and more lusty red
Than that mix’d in his cheek; ’twas just the difference
Between the constant red and mingled damask.
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark’d him
In parcels as I did, would have gone near
To fall in love with him; but, for my part,
I love him not nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him:
For what had he to do to chide at me?
He said mine eyes were black and my hair black:
And, now I am remember’d, scorn’d at me:
I marvel why I answer’d not again:
But that’s all one; omittance is no quittance.
I’ll write to him a very taunting letter,
And thou shalt bear it: wilt thou, Silvius?
The Queen expresses her concerns about Humphrey’s changed behaviour, warning of his arrogance and the threat he poses to the crown. She argues that he should not be allowed near the king or involved in the council. The Queen seeks support from Suffolk, Buckingham, and York, asking them to refute her claims if they can.
Henry VI – Part II, Act 3, Scene 1
QUEEN MARGARET: Can you not see? or will ye not observe
The strangeness of his alter’d countenance?
With what a majesty he bears himself,
How insolent of late he is become,
How proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself?
We know the time since he was mild and affable,
And if we did but glance a far-off look,
Immediately he was upon his knee,
That all the court admired him for submission:
But meet him now, and, be it in the morn,
When every one will give the time of day,
He knits his brow and shows an angry eye,
And passeth by with stiff unbowed knee,
Disdaining duty that to us belongs.
Small curs are not regarded when they grin;
But great men tremble when the lion roars;
And Humphrey is no little man in England.
First note that he is near you in descent,
And should you fall, he as the next will mount.
Me seemeth then it is no policy,
Respecting what a rancorous mind he bears
And his advantage following your decease,
That he should come about your royal person
Or be admitted to your highness’ council.
By flattery hath he won the commons’ hearts,
And when he please to make commotion,
‘Tis to be fear’d they all will follow him.
Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now, and they’ll o’ergrow the garden
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.
The reverent care I bear unto my lord
Made me collect these dangers in the duke.
If it be fond, call it a woman’s fear;
Which fear if better reasons can supplant,
I will subscribe and say I wrong’d the duke.
My Lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York,
Reprove my allegation, if you can;
Or else conclude my words effectual.
Princess confronts the King, accusing him of breaking his promise. She challenges him to spend a year in solitude, testing his love. If he endures the hardships and still loves her, she will be his, but if not, they must part.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 5, Scene 2
PRINCESS: A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.
No, no, my lord, your grace is perjured much,
Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this:
If for my love, as there is no such cause,
You will do aught, this shall you do for me:
Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world;
There stay until the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about the annual reckoning.
If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,
And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine
I will be thine; and till that instant shut
My woeful self up in a mourning house,
Raining the tears of lamentation
For the remembrance of my father’s death.
If this thou do deny, let our hands part,
Neither entitled in the other’s heart.
Emilia reflects on the faults of husbands that may lead wives astray. She argues that if husbands neglect their duties, provoke jealousy, mistreat their wives, or betray them, wives are justified in seeking revenge. She asserts that women possess the same senses, desires, and frailties as men and should be treated with respect.
Othello, Act 4, Scene 3
EMILIA: But I do think it is their husbands’ faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
Gertrude recounts Ophelia’s tragic death, painting a vivid image of the willow by the brook where Ophelia fell into the water. She describes Ophelia’s state of mind, singing old tunes as her clothes, heavy with water, pulled her down to her muddy death.
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7
GERTRUDE: There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Margaret bitterly confronts the former queen, highlighting her fall from grace and accusing her of usurping her position. She leaves, finding solace in the woes of England.
Richard II, Act 4, Scene 4
MARGARET: I call’d thee then vain flourish of my fortune;
I call’d thee then poor shadow, painted queen;
The presentation of but what I was;
The flattering index of a direful pageant;
One heaved a-high, to be hurl’d down below;
A mother only mock’d with two sweet babes;
A dream of what thou wert, a breath, a bubble,
A sign of dignity, a garish flag,
To be the aim of every dangerous shot,
A queen in jest, only to fill the scene.
Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers?
Where are thy children? wherein dost thou, joy?
Who sues to thee and cries ‘God save the queen’?
Where be the bending peers that flatter’d thee?
Where be the thronging troops that follow’d thee?
Decline all this, and see what now thou art:
For happy wife, a most distressed widow;
For joyful mother, one that wails the name;
For queen, a very caitiff crown’d with care;
For one being sued to, one that humbly sues;
For one that scorn’d at me, now scorn’d of me;
For one being fear’d of all, now fearing one;
For one commanding all, obey’d of none.
Thus hath the course of justice wheel’d about,
And left thee but a very prey to time;
Having no more but thought of what thou wert,
To torture thee the more, being what thou art.
Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not
Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?
Now thy proud neck bears half my burthen’d yoke;
From which even here I slip my weary neck,
And leave the burthen of it all on thee.
Farewell, York’s wife, and queen of sad mischance:
These English woes will make me smile in France.
In this monologue, Isabella laments her predicament – if she reveals Angelo’s proposition to use her body in exchange for her brother’s life, who would believe her? She resolves to tell her brother about Angelo’s demand, believing her brother would rather die than have her virtue compromised. She elevates the importance of chastity over her brother’s life.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 3
ISABELLA: To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,
Either of condemnation or approof;
Bidding the law make court’sy to their will:
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother:
Though he hath fall’n by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour.
That, had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he’ld yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorr’d pollution.
Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.
I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request,
And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest
Lady Anne confronts Richard, accusing him of being a devilish figure who murdered King Henry. She expresses horror at the reopened wounds, calls for divine and earthly revenge, and denounces Richard’s unnatural deeds.
Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2
LADY ANNE: What, do you tremble? are you all afraid?
Alas, I blame you not; for you are mortal,
And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.
Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!
Thou hadst but power over his mortal body,
His soul thou canst not have; therefore be gone.
Foul devil, for God’s sake, hence, and trouble us not;
For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,
Fill’d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.
O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry’s wounds
Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh!
Blush, Blush, thou lump of foul deformity;
For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
O God, which this blood madest, revenge his death!
O earth, which this blood drink’st revenge his death!
Either heaven with lightning strike the
murderer dead,
Or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood
Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered!
Adriana laments her husband’s neglect. She questions if she’s lost her allure or if her wit is dull, acknowledging her husband’s infidelity. She feels her beauty decayed, yet believes his affection could restore it. She resolves to weep until death.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 1
ADRIANA: His company must do his minions grace,
Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.
Hath homely age the alluring beauty took
From my poor cheek? then, he hath wasted it:
Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?
If voluble and sharp discourse be marr’d,
Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard:
Do their gay vestments his affections bait?
That’s not my fault; he’s master of my state:
What ruins are in me that can be found
By him not ruin’d? then is he the ground
Of my defeatures. My decayed fair
A sunny look of his would soon repair;
But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale
And feeds from home: poor I am but his stale.
[Luc.] Self-harming jealousy! fie! beat it hence.
Adr. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.
I know his eye doth homage otherwhere,
Or else what lets it but he would be here?
Sister, you know he promis’d me a chain:
Would that alone, alone he would detain,
So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!
I see, the jewel best enamelled
Will lose his beauty; and though gold bides still
That others touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold; and no man that hath a name,
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame.
Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I’ll weep what’s left away, and weeping die.
In this famous monologue, Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking, tormented by guilt over the murders she has been part of. She hallucinates bloodstains on her hands, symbolising her guilt, and finds that no amount of washing can cleanse her conscience.
Macbeth Act 5, Scene 1
LADY MACBETH: Out, damned spot! out, I say!–One: two: why,
then, ’tis time to do’t.–Hell is murky!–Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?–Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.
The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?–
What, will these hands ne’er be clean?–No more o’
that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with
this starting.
Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!
Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so
pale.–I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he
cannot come out on’s grave.
To bed, to bed! there’s knocking at the gate:
come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s
done cannot be undone.–To bed, to bed, to bed!
Paulina confronts the tyrant, King Leontes, asking what torments he has in store for her. She’s defiant and unafraid, indicating her resolve to withstand any cruelties he might inflict, showcasing her strength and unwavering integrity.
The Winter’s tale, Act 3, Scene 2
PAULINA: What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?
What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling?
In leads or oils? what old or newer torture
Must I receive, whose every word deserves
To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny
Together working with thy jealousies,
Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle
For girls of nine, O, think what they have done
And then run mad indeed, stark mad! for all
Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.
That thou betray’dst Polixenes,’twas nothing;
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant
And damnable ingrateful: nor was’t much,
Thou wouldst have poison’d good Camillo’s honour,
To have him kill a king: poor trespasses,
More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon
The casting forth to crows thy baby-daughter
To be or none or little; though a devil
Would have shed water out of fire ere done’t:
Nor is’t directly laid to thee, the death
Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts,
Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart
That could conceive a gross and foolish sire
Blemish’d his gracious dam: this is not, no,
Laid to thy answer: but the last,–O lords,
When I have said, cry ‘woe!’ the queen, the queen,
The sweet’st, dear’st creature’s dead,
and vengeance for’t
Not dropp’d down yet.
Cordelia pleads with the gods to heal her father’s mental anguish, a result of his older daughters’ betrayal. She expresses dismay over his past suffering and wishes that her love can restore him. Cordelia is horrified by the hardships Lear endured.
King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7
CORDELIA: O, you kind Gods,
Cure this great breach in his abused nature!
Th’untuned and jarring senses, O! wind up
Of this child-changed father!
Be govern’d by your knowledge, and proceed
I’th’sway of your own will. Is he array’d?
O my dear father! Restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made!
Had you not been their father, these white flakes
Did challenge pity on them. Was this a face
To be oppos’d against the warring winds?
To stand against the deep dread-bolt thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stoke
Of quick, cross lightning? To watch – poor perdu! –
With this thin helm? Mine enemy’s dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire. And wast thou fain, poor father,
To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!
‘Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once
Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him.
Juliet confesses her love to Romeo but fears appearing too easily won. She acknowledges she should’ve been more reserved, but her feelings for Romeo overtook her. She seeks Romeo’s honest confession of love and pledges to be faithful despite seeming light-hearted.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
JULIET: Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight.
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
What I have spoke; but farewell, compliment .
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay’,
And I will take thy word; yet, if thou swear’st,
Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs . O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully,
Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo, but else not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my haviour light.
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,
My true-love passion. Therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered.
Lady Percy pleads with her father-in-law not to go to war, recounting her husband Hotspur’s bravery and influence. She criticizes him for leaving Hotspur under-supported in a previous battle, leading to his death, and asks him to honour Hotspur’s memory.
Henry IV – Part 2, Act 2, Scene 3
LADY PERCY: O yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars!
The time was, father, that you broke your word,
When you were more endeared to it than now;
When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry,
Threw many a northward look to see his father
Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.
Who then persuaded you to stay at home?
There were two honours lost, yours and your son’s.
For yours, the God of heaven brighten it!
For his, it stuck upon him as the sun
In the grey vault of heaven, and by his light
Did all the chivalry of England move
To do brave acts: he was indeed the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves:
He had no legs that practised not his gait;
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;
For those that could speak low and tardily
Would turn their own perfection to abuse,
To seem like him: so that in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,
In military rules, humours of blood,
He was the mark and glass, copy and book,
That fashion’d others. And him, O wondrous him!
O miracle of men! him did you leave,
Second to none, unseconded by you,
To look upon the hideous god of war
In disadvantage; to abide a field
Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur’s name
Did seem defensible: so you left him.
Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong
To hold your honour more precise and nice
With others than with him! let them alone:
The marshal and the archbishop are strong:
Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,
To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur’s neck,
Have talk’d of Monmouth’s grave.
The Duchess of Gloucester accuses Gaunt of lacking motivation in seeking justice for his murdered brother and urges him to avenge the death to protect his own life.
Richard II, Act 1, Scene 2
DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER: Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?
Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?
Edward’s seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,
Or seven fair branches springing from one root:
Some of those seven are dried by nature’s course,
Some of those branches by the Destinies cut;
But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,
One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood,
One flourishing branch of his most royal root,
Is crack’d, and all the precious liquor spilt,
Is hack’d down, and his summer leaves all faded,
By envy’s hand and murder’s bloody axe.
Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! that bed, that womb,
That metal, that self-mould, that fashion’d thee
Made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest,
Yet art thou slain in him: thou dost consent
In some large measure to thy father’s death,
In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,
Who was the model of thy father’s life.
Call it not patience, Gaunt; it is despair:
In suffering thus thy brother to be slaughter’d,
Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life,
Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee:
That which in mean men we intitle patience
Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life,
The best way is to venge my Gloucester’s death.
In this powerful monologue, Queen Margaret bitterly curses Queen Elizabeth for the rise of Richard III. Margaret describes Richard as a hell-hound born from Elizabeth’s womb, a destroyer and a tyrant. She invokes divine justice, expressing gratitude that Richard’s evil deeds are turning.
Richard III, Act 4, Scene 4
QUEEN MARGARET: From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,
That foul defacer of God’s handiwork,
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth,
Thy womb let loose, to chase us to our graves.
O upright, just, and true-disposing God,
How do I thank thee, that this carnal cur
Preys on the issue of his mother’s body,
And makes her pew-fellow with others’ moan!
In this intense monologue, Constance expresses her deep grief over the loss of her son, Arthur. Her sorrow permeates her every moment, reminding her of her son’s character, voice, and appearance. Her profound pain and longing form a poignant portrait of a mother’s despair.
King John, Act 3, Scene 4
CONSTANCE: Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!
Lady Anne mourns the untimely death of King Henry VI and her husband Edward, both victims of Richard III. She grieves deeply, cursing the hands and heart that committed the murders, and presents a poignant picture of despair and sorrow.
Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2
LADY ANNE: Set down, set down your honourable load,
If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,
Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament
The untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.
Poor key-cold figure of a holy king!
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster!
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood!
Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost,
To hear the lamentations of Poor Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter’d son,
Stabb’d by the selfsame hand that made these wounds!
Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life,
I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.
Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes!
Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it!
Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!
More direful hap betide that hated wretch,
That makes us wretched by the death of thee,
Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,
Or any creeping venom’d thing that lives!
If ever he have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspect
May fright the hopeful mother at the view;
And that be heir to his unhappiness!
If ever he have wife, let her he made
A miserable by the death of him
As I am made by my poor lord and thee!
Come, now towards Chertsey with your holy load,
Taken from Paul’s to be interred there;
And still, as you are weary of the weight,
Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry’s corse.
Cressida confesses her love for Prince Troilus, expressing regret for not having controlled her feelings. She bemoans the traditional gender roles that prevent women from expressing love first. Her words reveal her struggle with self-disclosure and fear of Troilus exploiting her vulnerability.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 3 Scene 2
CRESSIDA: Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart:
Prince Troilus, I have lov’d you night and day
For many weary months.
Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
With the first glance that ever – Pardon me:
If I confess much you will play the tyrant.
I love you now, but till now not so much
But I might master it. In faith I lie –
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother. – See, we fools!
Why have I blabb’d? Who shall be true to us
When we are so unsecret to ourselves? –
But though I lov’d you well, I woo’d you not;
And yet, good faith, I wish’d myself a man,
Or that we women had men’s privilege
Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,
For in this rapture I shall surely speak
The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weak draws
My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth.
Helena professes her unrequited love for a man to his mother, comparing her devotion to a religious fervour. She acknowledges her love is unreciprocated, yet cannot help but love him. She pleads for understanding, noting that she can’t resist giving love where it’s doomed to be lost.
All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 1, Scene 3
HELENA: Then, I confess,
Here on my knee, before high heaven and you
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love your son.
My friends were poor, but honest; so’s my love:
Be not offended, for it hurts not him
That he is lov’d of me: I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit;
Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;
Yet never know how that desert should be.
I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,
Let not your hate encounter with my love
For loving where you do: but, if yourself,
Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,
Did ever in so true a flame of liking
Wish chastely and love dearly, that your Dian
Was both herself and Love; O! then, give pity
To her, whose state is such that cannot choose
But lend and give where she is sure to lose;
That seeks not to find that her search implies,
But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.
Queen Katharine pleads for justice and mercy, asserting she’s been a faithful wife to King Henry. She asks him to recall their years together and challenges him to prove any dishonour on her part. If he can, she willingly accepts the harshest punishment.
Henry VIII, Act 2, Scene 4
QUEEN KATHARINE: Sir, I desire you do me right and justice;
And to bestow your pity on me: for
I am a most poor woman, and a stranger,
Born out of your dominions; having here
No judge indifferent, nor no more assurance
Of equal friendship and proceeding. Alas, sir,
In what have I offended you? what cause
Hath my behavior given to your displeasure,
That thus you should proceed to put me off,
And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness,
I have been to you a true and humble wife,
At all times to your will conformable;
Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
Yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry
As I saw it inclined: when was the hour
I ever contradicted your desire,
Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends
Have I not strove to love, although I knew
He were mine enemy? what friend of mine
That had to him derived your anger, did I
Continue in my liking? nay, gave notice
He was from thence discharged. Sir, call to mind
That I have been your wife, in this obedience,
Upward of twenty years, and have been blest
With many children by you: if, in the course
And process of this time, you can report,
And prove it too, against mine honour aught,
My bond to wedlock, or my love and duty,
Against your sacred person, in God’s name,
Turn me away; and let the foul’st contempt
Shut door upon me, and so give me up
To the sharp’st kind of justice. Please you sir,
The king, your father, was reputed for
A prince most prudent, of an excellent
And unmatch’d wit and judgment: Ferdinand,
My father, king of Spain, was reckon’d one
The wisest prince that there had reign’d by many
A year before: it is not to be question’d
That they had gather’d a wise council to them
Of every realm, that did debate this business,
Who deem’d our marriage lawful: wherefore I humbly
Beseech you, sir, to spare me, till I may
Be by my friends in Spain advised; whose counsel
I will implore: if not, i’ the name of God,
Your pleasure be fulfill’d!
Tamora describes a horrifying fate her enemies planned for her – to be left tied in a desolate, eerie valley filled with nightmarish creatures. She expresses her terror and implores her children to avenge the cruel insults and threats made against her.
Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 3
TAMORA: Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?
These two have ‘ticed me hither to this place:
A barren detested vale you see it is.
The trees though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss, and baleful mistletoe;
Here never shines the sun, here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven:
And when they show’d me this abhorred pit,
They told me here at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries,
As any mortal body hearing it,
Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.
No sooner had they told this hellish tale,
But straight they told me they would bind me here,
Unto the body of a dismal yew,
And leave me to this miserable death.
And then they call’d me foul adulteress,
Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms
That ever ear did hear to such effect.
And, had you not by wondrous fortune come,
This vengeance on me had they executed:
Revenge it, as you love your mother’s life,
Or be ye not henceforth call’d my children.
Helena laments her unrequited love for Bertram. She compares her love to a hind desiring a lion, destined to die for its ambition. She talks of her heart preserving every detail of Bertram’s appearance, acknowledging that she idealizes him, and mourns his absence.
All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 1, Scene 1
HELENA: O, were that all! I think not on my father;
And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him. What was he like?
I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s.
I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. ‘Twere all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. ‘Twas pretty, though plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart’s table; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?
Julia laments her role in delivering a love message from Proteus, the man she loves, to another woman. She struggles with her conflicting roles as a loyal servant to Proteus and a woman in love, acknowledging the irony of promoting a love she wishes to thwart.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 4, Scene 4
JULIA: How many women would do such a message?
Alas, poor Proteus! thou hast entertain’d
A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs.
Alas, poor fool! why do I pity him
That with his very heart despiseth me?
Because he loves her, he despiseth me;
Because I love him I must pity him.
This ring I gave him when he parted from me,
To bind him to remember my good will;
And now am I, unhappy messenger,
To plead for that which I would not obtain,
To carry that which I would have refused,
To praise his faith which I would have dispraised.
I am my master’s true-confirmed love;
But cannot be true servant to my master,
Unless I prove false traitor to myself.
Yet will I woo for him, but yet so coldly
As, heaven it knows, I would not have him speed.
Portia professes her love and loyalty to Bassanio, acknowledging her shortcomings but expressing her eagerness to improve for him. She surrenders her wealth, property, and even herself to him, symbolized by a ring, indicating that her life now belongs to him.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 2
PORTIA: You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
Such as I am: though for myself alone
I would not be ambitious in my wish,
To wish myself much better; yet, for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself;
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich;
That only to stand high in your account,
I might in virtue, beauties, livings, friends,
Exceed account; but the full sum of me
Is sum of something, which, to term in gross,
Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractised;
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
Myself and what is mine to you and yours
Is now converted: but now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o’er myself: and even now, but now,
This house, these servants and this same myself
Are yours, my lord: I give them with this ring;
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love
And be my vantage to exclaim on you.
Hermione defends herself against her husband’s false accusations of infidelity. She mourns the loss of her husband’s love, her son, her newborn daughter, and her own reputation. She protests the injustice of her public trial and her loss of womanly dignity.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 3, Scene 2
HERMIONE: Sir, spare your threats.
The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
To me can life be no commodity.
The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,
I do give lost, for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went. My second joy
And first-fruits of my body, from his presence
I am barred, like one infectious. My third comfort
Starr’d most unluckily, is from my breast,
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
Haled out to murder: myself on every post
Proclaimed a strumpet: with immodest hatred
The child-bed privilege denied, which ‘longs
To women of all fashion; lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i’ the open air, before
I have got strength of limit.
Nurse reminisces about Juliet’s childhood, recounting her memories vividly. She speaks fondly of a specific event that occurred on the day of Juliet’s weaning and a funny incident when Juliet fell and her late husband made a jest about it. The Nurse’s stories reveal her deep affection for Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 3
NURSE: Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she–God rest all Christian souls!–
Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me: but, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
‘Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was wean’d,–I never shall forget it,–
Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;
My lord and you were then at Mantua:–
Nay, I do bear a brain:–but, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!
Shake quoth the dove-house: ’twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge:
And since that time it is eleven years;
For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before, she broke her brow:
And then my husband–God be with his soul!
A’ was a merry man–took up the child:
‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ and, by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay.’
To see, now, how a jest shall come about!
I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,
I never should forget it: ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he;
And, pretty fool, it stinted and said ‘Ay.’
Julia reacts to love letters she believes Proteus wrote to another woman. She oscillates between anger and love, kissing the words, imagining discarding her own name, but keeping Proteus’s. Torn between resentment and enduring affection, she ultimately chooses to keep the letters.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, Scene 2
JULIA: O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!
Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!
I’ll kiss each several paper for amends.
Look, here is writ ‘kind Julia.’ Unkind Julia!
As in revenge of thy ingratitude,
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.
And here is writ ‘love-wounded Proteus.’
Poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed
Shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal’d;
And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.
But twice or thrice was ‘Proteus’ written down.
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away
Till I have found each letter in the letter,
Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear
Unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock
And throw it thence into the raging sea!
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,
‘Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,
To the sweet Julia:’ that I’ll tear away.
And yet I will not, sith so prettily
He couples it to his complaining names.
Thus will I fold them one on another:
Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.
Julia compares herself to a portrait of her love rival, listing similarities and differences, and contemplates altering her appearance to win Proteus’s love. She laments love’s blindness and bitterly addresses the portrait, expressing both resentment and resolution to treat it kindly for the sake of her unrequited love.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 4, Scene 4
JULIA: And she shall thank you for’t, if e’er you know her.
A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful
I hope my master’s suit will be but cold,
Since she respects my mistress’ love so much.
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
Here is her picture: let me see; I think,
If I had such a tire, this face of mine
Were full as lovely as is this of hers:
And yet the painter flatter’d her a little,
Unless I flatter with myself too much.
Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow:
If that be all the difference in his love,
I’ll get me such a colour’d periwig.
Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine:
Ay, but her forehead’s low, and mine’s as high.
What should it be that he respects in her
But I can make respective in myself,
If this fond Love were not a blinded god?
Come, shadow, come and take this shadow up,
For ’tis thy rival. O thou senseless form,
Thou shalt be worshipp’d, kiss’d, loved and adored!
And, were there sense in his idolatry,
My substance should be statue in thy stead.
I’ll use thee kindly for thy mistress’ sake,
That used me so; or else, by Jove I vow,
I should have scratch’d out your unseeing eyes
To make my master out of love with thee!
Paulina plans to confront the king about his actions and assumes responsibility as a woman. She promises to speak boldly and offers to show the queen’s child to soften the king’s heart, believing the innocence of the child can persuade him when words fail.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 2, scene 2
PAULINA: I dare be sworn
These dangerous unsafe lunes i’ the king,
beshrew them!
He must be told on’t, and he shall: the office
Becomes a woman best; I’ll take’t upon me:
If I prove honey-mouth’d let my tongue blister
And never to my red-look’d anger be
The trumpet any more. Pray you, Emilia,
Commend my best obedience to the queen:
If she dares trust me with her little babe,
I’ll show’t the king and undertake to be
Her advocate to the loud’st. We do not know
How he may soften at the sight o’ the child:
The silence often of pure innocence
Persuades when speaking fails.
Miranda questions her father’s control over a storm he has created, expressing her empathy for the shipwrecked souls and her desire to possess godlike powers to save them from their tragic fate.
The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2
MIRANDA: If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash’d all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish’d.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow’d and
The fraughting souls within her.
Rosalind rebukes a haughty woman for underappreciating a good man’s love, emphasizing the futility of vanity and the importance of self-awareness. She advises her to accept love humbly, warning against the peril of pride and scornful rejection.
As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 5
ROSALIND: [Advancing] And why, I pray you? Who might be your
mother,
That you insult, exult, and all at once,
Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty-
As, by my faith, I see no more in you
Than without candle may go dark to bed-
Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?
Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?
I see no more in you than in the ordinary
Of nature’s sale-work. ‘Od’s my little life,
I think she means to tangle my eyes too!
No faith, proud mistress, hope not after it;
‘Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,
That can entame my spirits to your worship.
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,
Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain?
You are a thousand times a properer man
Than she a woman. ‘Tis such fools as you
That makes the world full of ill-favour’d children.
‘Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her;
And out of you she sees herself more proper
Than any of her lineaments can show her.
But, mistress, know yourself. Down on your knees,
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love;
For I must tell you friendly in your ear:
Sell when you can; you are not for all markets.
Cry the man mercy, love him, take his offer;
Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.
So take her to thee, shepherd. Fare you well.
Juliet anxiously awaits the return of her nurse, who carries a message from Romeo. She reflects on the slowness of old age compared to the swift urgency of youthful love and is overjoyed when the nurse finally arrives.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 5
JULIET: The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse;
In half an hour she promised to return.
Perchance she cannot meet him: that’s not so.
O, she is lame! love’s heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glide than the sun’s beams,
Driving back shadows over louring hills:
Therefore do nimble-pinion’d doves draw love,
And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.
Now is the sun upon the highmost hill
Of this day’s journey, and from nine till twelve
Is three long hours, yet she is not come.
Had she affections and warm youthful blood,
She would be as swift in motion as a ball;
My words would bandy her to my sweet love,
And his to me:
But old folks, many feign as they were dead;
Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.
O God, she comes!
[Enter Nurse and PETER]
O honey nurse, what news?
Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.
The Duchess of York mourns her husband and two sons, likening their loss to losing crutches from her feeble limbs. She compares her grief to that of a widow, finding herself even more aggrieved due to her double loss.
Richard III, Act 2, Scene 2
DUCHESS OF YORK: Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow
As I had title in thy noble husband!
I have bewept a worthy husband’s death,
And lived by looking on his images:
But now two mirrors of his princely semblance
Are crack’d in pieces by malignant death,
And I for comfort have but one false glass,
Which grieves me when I see my shame in him.
Thou art a widow; yet thou art a mother,
And hast the comfort of thy children left thee:
But death hath snatch’d my husband from mine arms,
And pluck’d two crutches from my feeble limbs,
Edward and Clarence. O, what cause have I,
Thine being but a moiety of my grief,
To overgo thy plaints and drown thy cries!
Rosalind sets up a meeting for the next day, promising everyone their heart’s desire: Silvius’s affection for Phebe, Orlando’s love for Rosalind, and Phebe’s desire to marry. She confirms all will be resolved at this meeting.
as You Like It, Act 5, Scene 2
ROSALIND: Pray you, no more of this; ’tis like the howling of Irish
wolves against the moon. [To SILVIUS] I will help you if I can.
[To PHEBE] I would love you if I could.- To-morrow meet me all
together. [ To PHEBE ] I will marry you if ever I marry woman,
and I’ll be married to-morrow. [To ORLANDO] I will satisfy you if
ever I satisfied man, and you shall be married to-morrow. [To
Silvius] I will content you if what pleases you contents you, and
you shall be married to-morrow. [To ORLANDO] As you love
Rosalind, meet. [To SILVIUS] As you love Phebe, meet;- and as I
love no woman, I’ll meet. So, fare you well; I have left you
commands.
The Nurse enters Juliet’s room to find her seemingly dead. Initially thinking Juliet is asleep, the Nurse attempts to wake her for her impending marriage to Paris. When she realizes Juliet is “dead,” she cries out in despair.
romeo and Juliet: Act 4, Scene 5
NURSE: Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! fast, I warrant her, she:
Why, lamb! why, lady! fie, you slug-a-bed!
Why, love, I say! madam! sweet-heart! why, bride!
What, not a word? you take your pennyworths now;
Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,
The County Paris hath set up his rest,
That you shall rest but little. God forgive me,
Marry, and amen, how sound is she asleep!
I must needs wake her. Madam, madam, madam!
Ay, let the county take you in your bed;
He’ll fright you up, i’ faith. Will it not be?
[Undraws the curtains]
What, dress’d! and in your clothes! and down again!
I must needs wake you; Lady! lady! lady!
Alas, alas! Help, help! my lady’s dead!
O, well-a-day, that ever I was born!
Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! my lady!
Portia, Brutus’ wife, pleads with him to share his secrets, arguing that her noble lineage and marriage should assure him of her strength and loyalty. To prove her resilience, she reveals she has wounded herself voluntarily.
Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 1
PORTIA: I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife:
I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman well-reputed, Cato’s daughter.
Think you I am no stronger than my sex,
Being so father’d and so husbanded?
Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose ’em:
I have made strong proof of my constancy,
Giving myself a voluntary wound
Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience.
And not my husband’s secrets?
Luciana appeals to Antipholus, asking him to conceal any infidelity from her sister, his wife. She emphasizes the power of appearance, urging him to maintain a façade of love and devotion despite his possible tainted heart, for the sake of his wife’s comfort and belief.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 3, scene 2
LUCIANA: And may it be that you have quite forgot
A husband’s office? shall, Antipholus.
Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?
Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?
If you did wed my sister for her wealth,
Then for her wealth’s sake use her with more kindness:
Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;
Muffle your false love with some show of blindness:
Let not my sister read it in your eye;
Be not thy tongue thy own shame’s orator;
Look sweet, be fair, become disloyalty;
Apparel vice like virtue’s harbinger;
Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;
Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;
Be secret-false: what need she be acquainted?
What simple thief brags of his own attaint?
‘Tis double wrong, to truant with your bed
And let her read it in thy looks at board:
Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.
Alas, poor women! make us but believe,
Being compact of credit, that you love us;
Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;
We in your motion turn and you may move us.
Then, gentle brother, get you in again;
Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife:
‘Tis holy sport to be a little vain,
When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.
Lady Anne curses Richard, calling him a devil and blaming him for transforming the happy earth into hell with his brutal deeds. She accuses him of causing the late King Henry’s wounds to bleed afresh and passionately seeks divine retribution for his death.
Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2
LADY ANNE: Foul devil, for God’s sake, hence, and trouble us not;
For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,
Fill’d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.
O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry’s wounds
Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh!
Blush, Blush, thou lump of foul deformity;
For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
O God, which this blood madest, revenge his death!
O earth, which this blood drink’st revenge his death!
Either heaven with lightning strike the
murderer dead,
Or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood
Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered!
Helena expresses envy towards Hermia, whose beauty has captivated Demetrius, the man Helena loves. She wishes to catch Hermia’s charm and learn how to win Demetrius’s heart, even saying she’d trade the world for such a skill.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1
HELENA: Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!
Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue’s sweet air
More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I’d give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look, and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart.
Lady Macbeth eagerly anticipates King Duncan’s arrival and plots his murder. She calls on spirits to rid her of feminine gentleness, filling her with cruelty, preventing any feelings of remorse, and ensuring the success of her murderous intent.
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5
LADY MACBETH: 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!’
Tamora recounts her entrapment in a desolate, feared vale by her two sons. They planned to bind her to a tree and leave her to a horrifying death, taunting her with offensive names. She beseeches her savior to exact revenge for this intended cruelty.
Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 3
TAMORA: Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?
These two have ‘ticed me hither to this place:
A barren detested vale you see it is.
The trees though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss, and baleful mistletoe;
Here never shines the sun, here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven:
And when they show’d me this abhorred pit,
They told me here at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries,
As any mortal body hearing it,
Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.
No sooner had they told this hellish tale,
But straight they told me they would bind me here,
Unto the body of a dismal yew,
And leave me to this miserable death.
And then they call’d me foul adulteress,
Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms
That ever ear did hear to such effect.
And, had you not by wondrous fortune come,
This vengeance on me had they executed:
Revenge it, as you love your mother’s life,
Or be ye not henceforth call’d my children.
Cleopatra laments Antony’s death, feeling like a commoner instead of a queen. She contemplates suicide, exclaiming it’s not a sin to choose death before it comes naturally. Encouraging her ladies, she decides they’ll bury Antony and die nobly like Romans, making death proud to claim them.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 4, Scene 15
CLEOPATRA: No more, but e’en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks
And does the meanest chares. It were for me
To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;
To tell them that this world did equal theirs
Till they had stol’n our jewel. All’s but naught;
Patience is scottish, and impatience does
Become a dog that’s mad: then is it sin
To rush into the secret house of death,
Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?
What, what! good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian!
My noble girls! Ah, women, women, look,
Our lamp is spent, it’s out! Good sirs, take heart:
We’ll bury him; and then, what’s brave,
what’s noble,
Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us. Come, away:
This case of that huge spirit now is cold:
Ah, women, women! come; we have no friend
But resolution, and the briefest end.
Miranda reprimands Caliban, expressing her disgust for his inability to adopt any goodness, despite her efforts to civilize him. She claims she taught him to speak and communicate, yet his base nature made him unbearable to be around, and thus she justifies his imprisonment.
The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2
MIRANDA: Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which
good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deservedly confined into this rock,
Who hadst deserved more than a prison.
Helena reflects on the human potential to control their fate, yet acknowledges our own inertia can hinder us. She puzzles over her intense, unrequited love. Despite her realisation that she may fail, she is resolved to try curing the King’s illness to win her love.
All’s Well that Ends Well, Act 1, Scene 1
HELENA: Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high,
That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
What hath been cannot be: who ever strove
So show her merit, that did miss her love?
The king’s disease—my project may deceive me,
But my intents are fix’d and will not leave me.
Fairy Queen Titania refuses to give up the changeling boy she has taken in. She explains that his mother was a loyal follower of hers who died giving birth, so she is raising him in her memory.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1
TITANIA: Set your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip’d by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following,—her womb then rich with my young squire,—
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.
A distressed Ophelia, pushed into madness by her father’s death and Hamlet’s harshness, expresses her inner turmoil through a series of disjointed songs and sayings, likely referring to her own tragic experiences and reflecting on her disturbed mental state.
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5
OPHELIA: Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
[Sings]
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.
Say you? nay, pray you, mark.
[Sings]
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
Pray you, mark.
[Sings]
White his shroud as the mountain snow,–
[Sings]
Larded with sweet flowers
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.
Well, God ‘ild you! They say the owl was a baker’s
daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not
what we may be. God be at your table!
Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they
ask you what it means, say you this:
[Sings]
To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
Indeed, la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t:
[Sings]
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do’t, if they come to’t;
By cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.
So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.
I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I
cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him
i’ the cold ground. My brother shall know of it:
and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my
coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
good night, good night.
The Player Queen, part of a play within the play, expresses her worries about her husband’s changed behaviour and affirms her enduring love despite fears and doubts, mirroring Hamlet’s feelings about his mother’s actions.
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
PLAYER QUEEN: So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o’er ere love be done!
But woe is me! you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state.
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must;
For women’s fear and love holds quantity,
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is siz’d, my fear is so.
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
Katherine complains about her husband’s cruel treatment under the guise of love. She’s deprived of food and sleep, feeling like a beggar rather than a wife.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Scene 3
KATHERINE: The more my wrong, the more his spite appears.
What, did he marry me to famish me?
Beggars that come unto my father’s door
Upon entreaty have a present alms;
If not, elsewhere they meet with charity;
But I, who never knew how to entreat,
Nor never needed that I should entreat,
Am starv’d for meat, giddy for lack of sleep;
With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed;
And that which spites me more than all these wants-
He does it under name of perfect love;
As who should say, if I should sleep or eat,
‘Twere deadly sickness or else present death.
I prithee go and get me some repast;
I care not what, so it be wholesome food.
Desdemona professes her profound love for Othello, justifying her decision to marry him. She expresses her desire to accompany him to war, fearing loneliness during his absence.
Othello, Act 1, Scene 3
DESDEMONA: That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world: my heart’s subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord:
I saw Othello’s visage in his mind,
And to his honour and his valiant parts
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.
So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
By his dear absence. Let me go with him.
Constance expresses her outrage towards Austria, accusing him of being a coward and traitor. She criticizes his constant allegiance-switching, his reliance on fortune, and calls him out for his perjury.
King John, Act 3, Scene 1
CONSTANCE: War! war! no peace! peace is to me a war:
O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame
That bloody spoil; thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward,
Thou little valiant, great in villany,
Thou ever strong upon the stronger side;
Thou Fortune’s champion, that dost never fight
But when her humorous ladyship is by
To teach thee safety: thou art perjured too,
And soothest up greatness. What a fool art thou,
A ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear
Upon my party: Thou cold-blooded slave,
Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side?
Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend
Upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength,
And dost thou now fall over to my fores?
Thou wear a lion’s hide, doff it for shame,
And hang a calf’s-skin on those recreant limbs.
Juliet expresses her intense frustration and anger towards Romeo, whom she sees as a deceitful and contradictory figure. She uses vivid and contrasting imagery to describe him as both beautiful and treacherous, lamenting the hypocrisy of his outward appearance.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 2
JULIET: O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell,
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In moral paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!
Helena laments her unrequited love for Demetrius. She feels inadequate and believes her appearance repels others, comparing herself unfavorably to Hermia’s beauty. She questions why she ever saw herself as comparable to Hermia.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2
HELENA: O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!
The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.
Happy is Hermia, wheresoe’er she lies;
For she hath blessed and attractive eyes.
How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears:
If so, my eyes are oftener wash’d than hers.
No, no, I am as ugly as a bear;
For beasts that meet me run away for fear:
Therefore no marvel though Demetrius
Do, as a monster fly my presence thus.
What wicked and dissembling glass of mine
Made me compare with Hermia’s sphery eyne?
Helena, feeling guilty for causing Bertram’s exile, laments the consequences of her actions. She resolves to leave, believing her departure will bring relief to Bertram and protect him from the dangers of war.
All’s well that Ends Well, Act 3, Scene 2
HELENA: Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.
Nothing in France until he has no wife:
Thou shalt have none Rousillon, none in France,
Then hast thou all again: Poor lord, is’t I
That chase thee from thy country, and expose
Those tender limbs of thine, to the event
Of the none-sparing war? and is it I,
That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou
Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark
Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,
That ride upon the violent speed of fire,
Fly with false aim, move the still-peering air
That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord:
Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;
Whoever charges on his forward breast,
I am the caitiff that do hold him to’t;
And though I kill him not, I am the cause
His death was so effected: better ’twere
I met the ravin lion when he roar’d
With sharp constraint of hunger: better ’twere
That all the miseries which nature owes
Were mine at once. No, come thou home Rousillon,
Whence honour but of danger wins a scar,
As oft it loses all. I will be gone:
My being here it is, that holds thee hence:
Shall I stay here to do’t? no, no, although
The air of paradise did fan the house
And angels officed all: I will be gone,
That pitiful rumour may report my flight,
To consolate thine ear. Come night; end day,
For with the dark (poor thief) I’ll steal away.
Marina, speaking to Pericles, reveals herself as a maiden who has experienced hardships and endured the scrutiny of others. She acknowledges her diminished status but feels a connection to Pericles and hopes he will speak to her before she leaves.
Pericles, Act 5, Scene 1
MARINA: I am a maid,
My lord, that ne’er before invited eyes,
But have been gazed on like a comet: she speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endured a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d.
Though wayward fortune did malign my state,
My derivation was from ancestors
Who stood equivalent with mighty kings:
But time hath rooted out my parentage,
And to the world and awkward casualties
Bound me in servitude.
[Aside]
I will desist;
But there is something glows upon my cheek,
And whispers in mine ear, ‘Go not till he speak.’
Phebe sarcastically rebuffs the notion that her eyes could wound or kill. She dismisses the romantic hyperbole that eyes can harm or display murderous intent.
As you Like It, Act 3, Scene 5
PHEBE: I would not be thy executioner;
I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.
Thou tell’st me there is murder in mine eye.
‘Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,
That eyes, that are the frail’st and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,
Should be call’d tyrants, butchers, murderers!
Now I do frown on thee with all my heart;
And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee.
Now counterfeit to swoon; why, now fall down;
Or, if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,
Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.
Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee.
Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains
Some scar of it; lean upon a rush,
The cicatrice and capable impressure
Thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes,
Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not;
Nor, I am sure, there is not force in eyes
That can do hurt.
Margaret encourages the lords to be resilient and find solutions to their problems instead of lamenting their losses. She compares their situation to a shipwreck and urges them to stay united and courageous.
Henry VI – Part III, Act 5, Scene 4
MARGARET: Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now blown overboard,
The cable broke, the holding-anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood?
Yet lives our pilot still. Is’t meet that he
Should leave the helm and like a fearful lad
With tearful eyes add water to the sea
And give more strength to that which hath too much,
Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock,
Which industry and courage might have saved?
Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!
Say Warwick was our anchor; what of that?
And Montague our topmost; what of him?
Our slaughter’d friends the tackles; what of these?
Why, is not Oxford here another anchor?
And Somerset another goodly mast?
The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings?
And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I
For once allow’d the skilful pilot’s charge?
We will not from the helm to sit and weep,
But keep our course, though the rough wind say no,
From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wreck.
As good to chide the waves as speak them fair.
And what is Edward but ruthless sea?
What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit?
And Richard but a ragged fatal rock?
All these the enemies to our poor bark.
Say you can swim; alas, ’tis but a while!
Tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink:
Bestride the rock; the tide will wash you off,
Or else you famish; that’s a threefold death.
This speak I, lords, to let you understand,
If case some one of you would fly from us,
That there’s no hoped-for mercy with the brothers
More than with ruthless waves, with sands and rocks.
Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided
‘Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.
Julia, reflecting on her resemblance to Silvia, praises her mistress as a virtuous and beautiful woman. She compares her own features to Silvia’s and considers altering her appearance to gain her master’s affection, but ultimately remains loyal to her mistress.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 4, Scene 4
JULIA: And she shall thank you for’t, if e’er you know her.
A virtuous gentlewoman, mild, and beautiful
I hope my master’s suit will be but cold,
Since she respects my mistress’ love so much.
Alas, how love can trifle with itself:
Here is her picture: let me see, I think,
If I had such a tire, this face of mine
Were full as lovely as is this of hers;
And yet the painter flatter’d her a little,
Unless I flatter with myself too much.
Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow;
If that be all the difference in his love,
I’ll get me such a colour’d periwig:
Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine;
Ay, but her forehead’s low, and mine’s as high:
What should it be that he respects in her
But I can make respective in myself
If this fond Love were not a blinded god?
Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up,
For ’tis thy rival: O thou senseless form,
Thou shalt be worshipp’d, kiss’d, loved and adored!
And were there sense in his idolatry,
My substance should be statue in thy stead.
I’ll use thee kindly for thy mistress’ sake,
That used me so: or else by Jove, I vow,
I should have scratch’d out your unseeing eyes,
To make my master out of love with thee.
Desdemona seeks advice from Iago on how to regain Othello’s love. She expresses her love and loyalty to him, vowing to continue loving him even if he rejects her. Desdemona refuses to utter derogatory words against herself.
Othello, Act 4, Scene 2
DESDEMONA: O good Iago,
What shall I do to win my lord again?
Good friend, go to him; for, by this light of heaven,
I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel:
If e’er my will did trespass ‘gainst his love,
Either in discourse of thought or actual deed,
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
Delighted them in any other form;
Or that I do not yet, and ever did.
And ever will—though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement—love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love. I cannot say ‘whore:’
It does abhor me now I speak the word;
To do the act that might the addition earn
Not the world’s mass of vanity could make me.
Adriana accuses her husband, Antipholus, of being unfaithful to her. She questions how he has become estranged and begs him not to abandon her, emphasizing her loyalty and purity. She warns him of the consequences of infidelity and asserts her own innocence.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2
ADRIANA: Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown:
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;
I am not Adriana nor thy wife.
The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savor’d in thy taste,
Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carved to thee.
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art thus estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear self’s better part.
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me!
For know, my love, as easy mayest thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled that same drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself and not me too.
How dearly would it touch me to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate!
Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me
And hurl the name of husband in my face
And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot-brow
And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring
And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?
I know thou canst; and therefore see thou do it.
I am possess’d with an adulterate blot;
My blood is mingled with the crime of lust:
For if we too be one and thou play false,
I do digest the poison of thy flesh,
Being strumpeted by thy contagion.
Keep then far league and truce with thy true bed;
I live unstain’d, thou undishonoured.
The Courtesan believes Antipholus is mad because he denies owing her money for a ring. She plans to go to his house and tell his wife that he took her ring by force due to his supposed madness. She doesn’t want to lose the money.
the Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 3
COURTESAN: Now, out of doubt, Antipholus is mad,
Else would he never so demean himself.
A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats,
And for the same he promis’d me a chain:
Both one and other he denies me now.
The reason that I gather he is mad,
Besides this present instance of his rage,
Is a mad tale he told to-day at dinner,
Of his own doors being shut against his entrance.
Belike his wife, acquainted with his fits,
On purpose shut the doors against his way.
My way is now to hie home to his house,
And tell his wife, that, being lunatic,
He rush’d into my house, and took perforce
My ring away. This course I fittest choose,
For forty ducats is too much to lose.
Juliet finds Romeo dead and mourns his loss. She marvels at his enduring beauty and kisses him before deciding to join him in death. She toasts to their love and prepares to take her own life.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3
JULIET: How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death: O, how may I
Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer’d; beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here’s to my love!
Hermione defends her innocence against false accusations, expressing her integrity and challenging others to question their own judgments. She appeals to divine powers and her past virtues, standing up for her life and honour.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 3, Scene 2
HERMIONE: Since what I am to say must be but that
Which contradicts my accusation and
The testimony on my part no other
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me
To say ‘not guilty:’ mine integrity
Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,
Be so received. But thus: if powers divine
Behold our human actions, as they do,
I doubt not then but innocence shall make
False accusation blush and tyranny
Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know,
Who least will seem to do so, my past life
Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,
As I am now unhappy; which is more
Than history can pattern, though devised
And play’d to take spectators. For behold me
A fellow of the royal bed, which owe
A moiety of the throne a great king’s daughter,
The mother to a hopeful prince, here standing
To prate and talk for life and honour ‘fore
Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it
As I weigh grief, which I would spare: for honour,
‘Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for. I appeal
To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes
Came to your court, how I was in your grace,
How merited to be so; since he came,
With what encounter so uncurrent I
Have strain’d to appear thus: if one jot beyond
The bound of honour, or in act or will
That way inclining, harden’d be the hearts
Of all that hear me, and my near’st of kin
Cry fie upon my grave!
Queen Margaret pleads with someone to leave, wanting to grieve in solitude. She wishes her tears could mark their parting and hopes a kiss will remind them of her suffering. Reluctantly, she bids farewell to life.
Henry IV – Part II, Act 3, Scene 2
QUEEN MARGARET: O, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand,
That I may dew it with my mournful tears;
Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place,
To wash away my woful monuments.
O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,
That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,
Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee!
So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief;
‘Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by,
As one that surfeits thinking on a want.
I will repeal thee, or, be well assured,
Adventure to be banished myself:
And banished I am, if but from thee.
Go; speak not to me; even now be gone.
O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn’d
Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves,
Loather a hundred times to part than die.
Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!
Helena, who believes Hermia is making fun of her, has called her a shameless puppet, implying that Hermia is faking her emotion. But Hermia thinks Helena is making fun of her height, instead.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2
HERMIA: Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.
The Abbess explains that the man’s madness was caused by the venomous jealousy of a woman, whose constant railing and conflicts disrupted his sleep, affected his appetite, and hindered his enjoyment. Jealousy leads to madness and brings negative consequences.
the comedy of Errors, Act 5, Scene 1
ABBESS: And thereof came it that the man was mad.
The venom clamours of a jealous woman
Poisons more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth.
It seems his sleeps were hindered by thy railing,
And thereof comes it that his head is light.
Thou sayst his meat was sauced with thy
upbraidings.
Unquiet meals make ill digestions.
Thereof the raging fire of fever bred,
And what’s a fever but a fit of madness?
Thou sayest his sports were hindered by thy brawls.
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?
In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest
To be disturbed would mad or man or beast.
The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits
Hath scared thy husband from the use of wits.
Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc) defends herself, proclaiming her noble lineage and virtuous nature. She denies involvement with wicked spirits and condemns those stained with guilt and corruption. Her innocence will seek justice from heaven.
Henry VI – Part I, Act 5, Scene 4
JOAN LA PUCELLE: First, let me tell you whom you have condemn’d:
Not me begotten of a shepherd swain,
But issued from the progeny of kings;
Virtuous and holy; chosen from above,
By inspiration of celestial grace,
To work exceeding miracles on earth.
I never had to do with wicked spirits:
But you, that are polluted with your lusts,
Stain’d with the guiltless blood of innocents,
Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices,
Because you want the grace that others have,
You judge it straight a thing impossible
To compass wonders but by help of devils.
No, misconceived! Joan of Arc hath been
A virgin from her tender infancy,
Chaste and immaculate in very thought;
Whose maiden blood, thus rigorously effused,
Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.
Julia expresses her anger and hurt over the unkind words and actions of Proteus. She kisses the letters containing their names, expressing her love for him despite his betrayal. She playfully engages with the letters, embracing their contradictory nature.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, scene 2
JULIA: Nay, would I were so anger’d with the same!
O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!
Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!
I’ll kiss each several paper for amends.
Look, here is writ ‘kind Julia.’ Unkind Julia!
As in revenge of thy ingratitude,
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.
And here is writ ‘love-wounded Proteus.’
Poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed
Shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal’d;
And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.
But twice or thrice was ‘Proteus’ written down.
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away
Till I have found each letter in the letter,
Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear
Unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock
And throw it thence into the raging sea!
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,
‘Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,
To the sweet Julia:’ that I’ll tear away.
And yet I will not, sith so prettily
He couples it to his complaining names.
Thus will I fold them one on another:
Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.
Imogen angrily rejects the deceitful person speaking to her and condemns their dishonorable motives. She calls for Pisanio and vows to inform her father, the king, about the incident. She asserts her dignity and demands respect.
Cymbeline
IMOGEN: Away! I do condemn mine ears that have
So long attended thee. If thou wert honourable,
Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not
For such an end thou seek’st,–as base as strange.
Thou wrong’st a gentleman, who is as far
From thy report as thou from honour, and
Solicit’st here a lady that disdains
Thee and the devil alike. What ho, Pisanio!
The king my father shall be made acquainted
Of thy assault: if he shall think it fit,
A saucy stranger in his court to mart
As in a Romish stew and to expound
His beastly mind to us, he hath a court
He little cares for and a daughter who
He not respects at all. What, ho, Pisanio!
Cleopatra expresses her shame and disappointment in Caesar’s visit and the betrayal of her servant. She questions Caesar’s actions and demands respect. She pleads with Seleucus to leave and laments her unfortunate circumstances.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2
CLEOPATRA: O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,
That thou, vouchsafing here to visit me,
Doing the honour of thy lordliness
To one so meek, that mine own servant should
Parcel the sum of my disgraces by
Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,
That I some lady trifles have reserved,
Immoment toys, things of such dignity
As we greet modern friends withal; and say,
Some nobler token I have kept apart
For Livia and Octavia, to induce
Their mediation; must I be unfolded
With one that I have bred? The gods! it smites me
Beneath the fall I have.
[To SELEUCUS]
Prithee, go hence;
Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits
Through the ashes of my chance: wert thou a man,
Thou wouldst have mercy on me.
Volumnia pleads with Coriolanus not to attack Rome. She reminds him of the suffering they have endured since his exile and the tragic consequences of his actions. She urges him to show mercy and spare their country.
Coriolanus, Act 5, Scene 3
VOLUMNIA: Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what life
We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself
How more unfortunate than all living women
Are we come hither: since that thy sight, which should
Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,
Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow;
Making the mother, wife and child to see
The son, the husband and the father tearing
His country’s bowels out. And to poor we
Thine enmity’s most capital: thou barr’st us
Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort
That all but we enjoy; for how can we,
Alas, how can we for our country pray.
Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory,
Whereto we are bound? alack, or we must lose
The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,
Our comfort in the country. We must find
An evident calamity, though we had
Our wish, which side should win: for either thou
Must, as a foreign recreant, be led
With manacles thorough our streets, or else
triumphantly tread on thy country’s ruin,
And bear the palm for having bravely shed
Thy wife and children’s blood. For myself, son,
I purpose not to wait on fortune till
These wars determine: if I cannot persuade thee
Rather to show a noble grace to both parts
Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner
March to assault thy country than to tread—
Trust to’t, thou shalt not—on thy mother’s womb,
That brought thee to this world.
The fairy describes its ability to wander swiftly through various terrains and its role in serving the fairy queen. It mentions the cowslips as the queen’s attendants and plans to collect dewdrops and adorn the flowers.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, scene 1
FAIRY: Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone:
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
Ariel accuses the men of sin and informs them that destiny and the sea have brought them to the island. He reveals that he has made them mad and warns them of impending consequences for their past actions.
The Tempest, Act 3, scene 3
ARIEL: You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,
That hath to instrument this lower world
And what is in’t, the never-surfeited sea
Hath caused to belch up you; and on this island
Where man doth not inhabit; you ‘mongst men
Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;
And even with such-like valour men hang and drown
Their proper selves.
[ALONSO, SEBASTIAN &c. draw their swords]
You fools! I and my fellows
Are ministers of Fate: the elements,
Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that’s in my plume: my fellow-ministers
Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,
Your swords are now too massy for your strengths
And will not be uplifted. But remember—
For that’s my business to you—that you three
From Milan did supplant good Prospero;
Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,
Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have
Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,
Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,
They have bereft; and do pronounce by me:
Lingering perdition, worse than any death
Can be at once, shall step by step attend
You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from—
Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls
Upon your heads—is nothing but heart-sorrow
And a clear life ensuing.
Ariel recounts how he/she caused chaos and fear by setting fire to the King’s ship, creating a spectacle of flames and terrifying thunder. The passengers, including Ferdinand, were driven to desperation and jumped overboard.
The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2
ARIEL: To every article.
I boarded the King’s ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement. Sometimes I’d divide
And burn in many places. On the topmast,
The yards, and bowsprit would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join. Jove’s lightning, the precursors
O’ th’ dreadful thunderclaps, more momentary
And sight-outrunning were not. The fire and cracks
Of sulfurous roaring the most mighty Neptune
Seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble,
Yea, his dread trident shake.
Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and played
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,
Then all afire with me. The King’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring—then like reeds, not hair—
Was the first man that leaped; cried “Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.”
Queen Margaret expresses her hunger for revenge, reveling in the deaths of those who wronged her. She wishes for Richard’s demise and hopes to live long enough to declare his demise.
Richard III, Act 4, Scene 4
QUEEN MARGARET: Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge,
And now I cloy me with beholding it.
Thy Edward he is dead, that stabb’d my Edward:
Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;
Young York he is but boot, because both they
Match not the high perfection of my loss:
Thy Clarence he is dead that kill’d my Edward;
And the beholders of this tragic play,
The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
Untimely smother’d in their dusky graves.
Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer,
Only reserved their factor, to buy souls
And send them thither: but at hand, at hand,
Ensues his piteous and unpitied end:
Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray.
To have him suddenly convey’d away.
Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I prey,
That I may live to say, The dog is dead!
The Queen expresses her concerns about Humphrey’s changed behaviour. She notes his arrogance, pride, and disregard for his duties. The Queen warns that Humphrey’s popularity with the common people could lead to rebellion and urges others to recognize the danger he poses. She seeks support from Suffolk, Buckingham, and York to address the issue.
Henry VI – Part 2, Act 3, scene 1
QUEEN MARGARET: Can you not see? or will ye not observe
The strangeness of his altered countenance?
With what a majesty he bears himself,
How insolent of late he is become,
How proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself?
We know the time since he was mild and affable,
And if we did but glance a far-off look,
Immediately he was upon his knee,
That all the court admired him for submission;
But meet him now and, be it in the morn,
When every one will give the time of day,
He knits his brow and shows an angry eye
And passeth by with stiff unbowèd knee,
Disdaining duty that to us belongs.
Small curs are not regarded when they grin,
But great men tremble when the lion roars,
And Humphrey is no little man in England.
First note that he is near you in descent,
And should you fall, he is the next will mount.
Me seemeth then it is no policy,
Respecting what a rancorous mind he bears
And his advantage following your decease,
That he should come about your royal person
Or be admitted to your highness’ council.
By flattery hath he won the commons’ heart;
And when he please to make commotion,
‘Tis to be feared they all will follow him.
Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted.
Suffer them now, and they’ll o’ergrow the garden
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.
The reverent care I bear unto my lord
Made me collect these dangers in the duke.
If it be fond, call it a woman’s fear;
Which fear if better reasons can supplant,
I will subscribe and say I wronged the duke.
My Lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York,
Reprove my allegation if you can,
Or else conclude my words effectual.
Portia questions Brutus’s behavior, suspecting that he is troubled. She demands to be included in his concerns, reminding him of their marriage vows and expressing her frustration at being kept in the dark.
Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 1
PORTIA: Is Brutus sick? and is it physical
To walk unbraced and suck up the humours
Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick,
And will he steal out of his wholesome bed,
To dare the vile contagion of the night
And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air
To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus;
You have some sick offence within your mind,
Which, by the right and virtue of my place,
I ought to know of: and, upon my knees,
I charm you, by my once-commended beauty,
By all your vows of love and that great vow
Which did incorporate and make us one,
That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,
Why you are heavy, and what men to-night
Have had to resort to you: for here have been
Some six or seven, who did hide their faces
Even from darkness.
I should not need, if you were gentle Brutus.
Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.
Helena expresses her frustration at being mocked and mistreated by the others, urging them to show compassion and respect. She criticizes their insincere compliments and accuses them of exploiting her for their amusement.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2
HELENA: O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent
To set against me for your merriment:
If you we re civil and knew courtesy,
You would not do me thus much injury.
Can you not hate me, as I know you do,
But you must join in souls to mock me too?
If you were men, as men you are in show,
You would not use a gentle lady so;
To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts,
When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.
You both are rivals, and love Hermia;
And now both rivals, to mock Helena:
A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,
To conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes
With your derision! none of noble sort
Would so offend a virgin, and extort
A poor soul’s patience, all to make you sport.