Speeches


[yes, i dumbed down the title]

��������These soliloquies are in no particular order. I love them all. There are obviously more than these in all the works of Shakespeare. If you would like to see another, then let me know, please. Also, let me know about misspellings. Thanks.


Twelfth Night
��������Act 1, Scene 1, line 1.
Duke: If music be the food of love, play on,
��������Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
�������� The appetite might sicken and so die.---
�������� That strain again;--it had a dying fall;
�������� O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
��������That breathes upon a bank of violets,
�������� Stealing, and giving odour.---Enough; no more;
��������'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
��������O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
��������That, notwithstanding thy capacity
��������Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
��������Of what validity and pitch soever,
��������But falls into abatement and low price
��������Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy,
��������That it alone is high-fantastical.

�������Act 2, Scene 2, line 17- Scene 3.
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 tnough,
��������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?
��������Oh time, thou must untangle this, not I;
��������It is too hard a knot for me to untie.

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. It were 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 a 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 sactify his relics. Who comes here?
��������One that goes with him: I love him for his sake;
��������And yet I know him a notorious liar,
��������Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
��������Yet these fix'd evils sit so fit in him
��������That they take place when the virtue's steely bones
��������Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see
��������Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.


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 onto 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 starved 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 the name of perfect love;
��������As who would say, if I should sleep or eat,
��������'Twere deadly sickness or else present death.


King John

Act 3, Scene 4.
(Pandulph: Lady, you are utter madness, and not sorrow.)
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 can�niz'd, cardinal;
��������For, being not mad, but sensible of grief,
��������My reasonable part produces reason
��������How I may be deliver's of these woes,
��������And teaches me to kill 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.


Antony and Cleopatra
�������Act 5, Scene 2.
Cleopatra: Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
�������Immortal longings in me: 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.
�������nbsp;���([Cleo. kisses Char. & Iras. 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 desir'd. Dost thou lie still?
�������If thus thou vanishest, thou tell'st the world
�������It is not worth leave-taking.



King Lear

�������Act 4, Scene 7.
Cordelia: 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!
�������(Kent: Kind and dear princess!)
�������Had you not been their father, there white flakes
�������Had challeng'd pity of them. Was this a face
�������To be oppos'd against the warring winds?
�������To stand against the deep dread bolted thunder?
�������In the most terrible and nimble stroke
�������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.


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!

�������Act I, Scene VII
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
�������Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
�������And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
�������At what it did so freely? From this time
�������Such I account thy love. Art thou afeared to be the same as thine own act and valour
�������As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
�������Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
�������And live a coward in thine own esteem;
�������Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
�������Like the poor cat i' the adage?
�������(Macbeth: Pr'ythee, pease" I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.)
�������What beast was't, then,
�������That made you break this enterprise to me?
�������When you durst do it, then you were a man;
�������And, to be more than what you were, you would
�������Be so more more the man. Nor time nor place
�������Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
�������They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
�������Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
�������How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
�������I would, while it was smiling in my face,
�������Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
�������And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
�������Have done to this.
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