The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest have borne most. We that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. (24.318–21)
Antony and Cleopatra: what love, what accomplishments, what repetitions of natural affections passed between them is not for vulgar minds to imagine, none but so great hearts know them.
And my poor fool is hanged. No, no life. / Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more. / Never, never, never. Pray you, undo / This button. Than...
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Lear wills his own death: Break, heart, I prithee break
You there was, or might be, such a man / As this I dreamt of?—he can only answer like a Roman, Gentle madam, no,
WHEN SCHOLARS TALK ABOUT THE SOURCES OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS, they almost always mean printed books like Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles
Sonnet 55 that Not marble nor the gilded monuments / Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme [1–2]).
Like every great writer before or since, Jonson understood that the best poets 'are both made and born'. That all great writing has to be hammered out and all great poets stand or fall by that 'second...
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety (Antony, 2.2.245–46).