I ❤ Shakespeare

Beware the ides of March Beware the ides of march.....

Caesar:

Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue shriller than all the music

Cry "Caesar!" Speak, Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer:

Beware the ides of March.

Caesar:

What man is that?

Brutus:

A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 15–19

14

  Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,

  And yet methinks I have astronomy,

  But not to tell of good, or evil luck,

  Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality,

  Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;

  Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,

  Or say with princes if it shall go well

  By oft predict that I in heaven find.

  But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

  And constant stars in them I read such art

  As truth and beauty shall together thrive

  If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:

    Or else of thee this I prognosticate,

    Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

shakespeare sonnets

Here is Hamlet's most famous speech as it appears in the Bad Quarto...

• To be, or not to be, aye, there's the point,
• To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye, all.
• No, to sleep, to dream, aye merry, there it goes,
• For in that dream of death, when we awake,
• And borne before an everlasting Judge,
• From whence no passenger ever returned,
• The undiscovered country, at those sight 
• The happy smile, and the accursed damned. 
• But for this, the joyful hope of this,
• Who'd bear the scorns and flattery of the world,
• Scorned by the right rich, the rich cursed of the poor? 
• The widow being oppressed, the orphan wronged, 
• The taste of hunger, or a tyrant's reign,
• And thousand more calamities besides, 
• To grunt and sweat under this weary life, 
• When that he may his full quietus make,
• With a bare bodkin? Who would this endure,
• But for a hope for something after death?
• Which puzzles the brain, and doth confound the sense, 
• Which makes us rather bear those evils we have, 
• Than fly to others that we know not of.
• Aye that, oh this conscience makes cowards of us all.

Shakespeare is always with me.  I love his work.  History of the Elizabethan culture and beyond are in his profound words.  I love words anyway, Shakespeare makes reading electric.  

happy day.  the wild magnolia ❧