| QUOTES FROM PLAYS �I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.��Thornton Wilder You know me when it comes to plays...I just can't help myself... |
| �Lord, what fools these mortals be.� �Puck �Have you read Don Quixote? I have, and found myself the hero.��Cyrano DeBergerac "If music be the food of love, play on."�Twelfth Night �My soul, be satisfied with flowers, with fruit, with weeds, but gather them in the one garden you may call your own.��Cyrano DeBergerac �Formality is simply anger with its hair combed.��Botvinnik�A Walk in the Woods ��Have you ever slept with a redhead?� �No.� �Neither have I. It is a great regret.�� �Botvinnik and Honeyman�A Walk in the Woods �Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more!��Henry V �We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.��Henry V � �What are you doing in my hallucination?� �I�m not. You�re in my dream.� �You�re wearing make-up.� �So are you.� �But you�re a man.���Harper and Prior�Angels in America � �In my church, we don�t believe in homosexuals.� �In my church, we don�t believe in Mormans.�� �Harper and Prior�Angels in America �A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show its head. Go hence and have more talk of these sad things. Some will be pardonned, others punished. For never was there a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.��Romeo and Juliet Westmoreland: O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work to-day! King Henry V: What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin: If we are mark'd to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires: But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England: God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made And crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is called the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.' Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages What feats he did that day: then shall our names. Familiar in his mouth as household words Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. (Re-enter SALISBURY) Salisbury: My sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed: The French are bravely in their battles set, And will with all expedience charge on us. King Henry V: All things are ready, if our minds be so. Westmoreland: Perish the man whose mind is backward now! King Henry V: Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz? Westmoreland: God's will! my liege, would you and I alone, Without more help, could fight this royal battle! �Henry V Montjoy: Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry, If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound, Before thy most assured overthrow: For certainly thou art so near the gulf, Thou needs must be englutted. Besides, in mercy, The constable desires thee thou wilt mind Thy followers of repentance; that their souls May make a peaceful and a sweet retire From off these fields, where, wretches, their poor bodies Must lie and fester. King Henry V: Who hath sent thee now? Montjoy: The Constable of France. King Henry V: I pray thee, bear my former answer back: Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones. Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus? The man that once did sell the lion's skin While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him. A many of our bodies shall no doubt Find native graves; upon the which, I trust, Shall witness live in brass of this day's work: And those that leave their valiant bones in France, Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, They shall be famed; for there the sun shall greet them, And draw their honours reeking up to heaven; Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France. Mark then abounding valour in our English, That being dead, like to the bullet's grazing, Break out into a second course of mischief, Killing in relapse of mortality. Let me speak proudly: tell the constable We are but warriors for the working-day; Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd With rainy marching in the painful field; There's not a piece of feather in our host-- Good argument, I hope, we will not fly-- And time hath worn us into slovenry: But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim; And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night They'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads And turn them out of service. If they do this,-- As, if God please, they shall,--my ransom then Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour; Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald: They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints; Which if they have as I will leave 'em them, Shall yield them little, tell the constable. Montjoy: I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well: Thou never shalt hear herald any more. �Henry V �Shut up! Please stop jabbering for one minute and pull your wits together and tell me how to get to Brooklyn, because you know and you're going to tell me because there is no one else around to tell me and I'm cold and I'm wet and I'm very, very angry. So I'm sorry that you're psychotic but just make an effort.��Hannah Pitt�Angels in America ��.veimeru amen�you sonofabitch.� �Louis saying the Kaddish for Roy Cohen�Angels in America �I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there's a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so.��Harper�Angels in America �We can�t just stop. We�re not rocks�progress, migration, motion is�modernity. It�s animate, it�s what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it�s still desire for. Ever if we go faster than we should. We can�t wait. And wait for what? God�God�He isn�t coming back. And even if He did�If He ever did come back, if He ever dared to show His face, or his Glyph or whatever in the Garden again�if after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century He returned to see�how much suffering His abandonment had created, if all He has to offer is death, you should sue the bastard. That�s my only contribution to all this Theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He.��Prior�Angels in America �But still. Still. Bless me anyway. I want more life. I can�t help myself. I do. I�ve lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much worse, but�You see them living anyway. When they�re more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they�re burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don�t know if that�s just the animal. I don�t know if it�s not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that�s it, that�s the best I can do. It�s so much not enough, so inadequate but�Bless me anyway. I want more life�And if He returns, take Him to Court. He walked out on us. He ought to pay.��Prior�Angels in America � �As if it matters how a man falls down.� �When the fall is all that's left, it matters very much.�� �Geoffrey & Richard�Lion in Winter |