Which I with more than with a common pain

  ’Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.

  Power in war and violence

  Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 1

  BRUTUS:

  It must be by his death. And for my part

  I know no personal cause to spurn at him

  But for the general. He would be crowned.

  How that might change his nature, there’s the question.

  It is the bright day that brings forth the adder

  And that craves wary walking. Crown him: that!

  And then I grant we put a sting in him

  That at his will he may do danger with.

  Th’abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

  Remorse from power. And to speak truth of Caesar,

  I have not known when his affections swayed

  More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof

  That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,

  Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;

  But when he once attains the upmost round,

  He then unto the ladder turns his back,

  Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

  By which he did ascend. So Caesar may.

  Then lest he may, prevent. And since the quarrel

  Will bear no colour for the thing he is,

  Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,

  Would run to these and these extremities;

  And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg,

  Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous

  And kill him in the shell.

  Henry V, Act IV, Scene 1

  HARRY: I think the King is but a man, as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me. All his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man, and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are. Yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.

  BATES: He may show what outward courage he will, but I believe, as cold a night as ’tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the neck. And so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.

  KING HARRY: By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King. I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.

  BATES: Then I would he were here alone. So should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men’s lives saved.

  KING HARRY: I dare say you love him not so ill to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men’s minds. Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.

  WILLIAMS: That’s more than we know.

  BATES: Ay, or more than we should seek after. For we know enough if we know we are the King’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.

  WILLIAMS: But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day and cry all, ‘We died at such a place’ – some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it – who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

  KING HARRY: So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father, that sent him. Or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation. But this is not so. The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant, for they purpose not their deaths when they propose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrament of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some, peradventure, have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle. War is his vengeance. So that here men are punished for before breach of the King’s laws, in now the King’s quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away, and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the King guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject’s duty is the King’s, but every subject’s soul is his own.

  Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 4

  HAMLET:

  How all occasions do inform against me

  And spur my dull revenge! What is a man

  If his chief good and market of his time

  Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

  Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,

  Looking before and after, gave us not

  That capability and god-like reason

  To fust in us unused. Now whether it be

  Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

  Of thinking too precisely on th’event –

  A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom

  And ever three parts coward – I do not know

  Why yet I live to say, ‘This thing’s to do’,

  Sith I have cause and will and strength and means

  To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me,

  Witness this army of such mass and charge,

  Led by a delicate and tender prince,

  Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed

  Makes mouths at the invisible event,

  Exposing what is mortal and unsure

  To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

  Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great

  Is not to stir without great argument

  But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

  When honour’s at the stake. How stand I, then,

  That have a father killed, a mother stained,

  Excitements of my reason and my blood,

  And let all sleep while, to my shame, I see

  The imminent death of twenty thousand men

  That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,

  Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

  Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

  Which is not tomb enough and continent

  To hide the slain. O from this time forth

  My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!

  Henry IV, Part II, Act I, Scene 3

  LORD BARDOLPH:

  Yes, if this present quality of war,

  Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot,

  Lives so in hope, as in an early spring

  We see th’appearing buds, which to prove fruit

  Hope gives not so much warrant as despair

  That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build

  We first survey the plot, then draw the model;

  And when we see the figure of the house,

  Which if we find outweighs ability,

  What do we then but draw anew the model

  In fewer offices, or at least desist

  To build at all? Much more in this great work –

  Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down

  And set another up – should we survey

  The plot of situation and the model,

  Consent upon a sure foundation,

  Question surveyors, know our own estate,

  How able such a work to undergo,

  To weigh against his opposite; or else

  We fortify in paper and in figures,

  Using the names of men instead of men,

  Like one that draws the model of an house

  Beyond his power to build it, who, half-through,

  Gives o’er, and leaves his part-created cost

  A naked subject to the weeping clouds,

  And waste for churlish winter’s tyranny.

  Macbeth, Act I, Scene 7

  MACBETH:

  If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

  It were done quickly. If th’assassination

  Could trammel up the consequence and catch

  With his surcease success, that but this blow

  Might be the be-all and end-all, here;

  But here upon this bank and shoal of time,

  We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases

  We still have judgement here, that we but teach

  Bloody instructions which, being taught, return

  To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice

  Commends th’ingredience of our poisoned chalice

  To our own lips. He’s here in double trust:

  First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

  Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

  Who should against his murderer shut the door,

  Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan

  Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

  So clear in his great office, that his virtues

  Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against

  The deep damnation of his taking-off,

  And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

  Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed

  Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

  Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye

  That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

  To prick the sides of my intent, but only

  Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself

  And falls on th’other.

  Richard III, Act V, Scene 5

  HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND:

  Why then, ’tis time to arm, and give direction.

  Much that I could say, loving countrymen,

  The leisure and enforcement of the time

  Forbids to dwell on. Yet remember this:

  God and our good cause fight upon our side.

  The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls,

  Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our forces.

  Richard except, those whom we fight against

  Had rather have us win than him they follow.

  For what is he they follow? Truly friends,

  A bloody tyrant and a homicide;

  One raised in blood, and one in blood established;

  One that made means to come by what he hath,

  And slaughtered those that were the means to help him;

  A base, foul stone, made precious by the foil

  Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set;

  One that hath ever been God’s enemy.

  Then, if you fight against God’s enemy,

  God will, in justice, ward you as his soldiers.

  If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,

  You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain.

  If you do fight against your country’s foes,

  Your country’s fat shall pay your pains the hire.

  If you do fight in safeguard of your wives,

  Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors.

  If you do free your children from the sword,

  Your children’s children quites it in your age.

  Then, in the name of God and all these rights,

  Advance your standards! Draw your willing swords!

  For me the ransom of this bold attempt

  Shall be my cold corpse on the earth’s cold face;

  But if I thrive, to gain of my attempt,

  The least of you shall share his part thereof.

  Sound drums and trumpets, bold and cheerfully!

  God and Saint George! Richmond and victory!

  Henry VI, Part II, Act I, Scene 1

  YORK:

  Anjou and Maine are given to the French,

  Paris is lost, the state of Normandy

  Stands on a tickle point now they are gone.

  Suffolk concluded on the articles,

  The peers agreed, and Henry was well pleased

  To change two dukedoms for a duke’s fair daughter.

  I cannot blame them all – what is’t to them?

  ’Tis thine they give away and not their own!

  Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage,

  And purchase friends, and give to courtesans,

  Still revelling like lords till all be gone,

  Whileas the seely owner of the goods

  Weeps over them and wrings his hapless hands,

  And shakes his head, and, trembling, stands aloof,

  While all is shared and all is borne away,

  Ready to starve and dare not touch his own.

  So York must sit and fret and bite his tongue

  While his own lands are bargained for and sold.

  Methinks the realms of England, France, and Ireland

  Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood

  As did the fatal brand Althaea burnt

  Unto the prince’s heart of Calydon.

  Anjou and Maine both given unto the French!

  Cold news for me, for I had hope of France,

  Even as I have of fertile England’s soil.

  A day will come when York shall claim his own

  And therefore I will take the Neville’s parts,

  And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey,

  And, when I spy advantage, claim the crown.

  Then, York, be still a while till time do serve.

  Watch thou, and wake when others be asleep,

  To pry into the secrets of the state –

  Till Henry, surfeit in the joys of love

  With his new bride and England’s dear-bought queen,

  And Humphrey with the peers be fall’n at jars.

  Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose,

  With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed,

  And in my standard bear the arms of York

  To grapple with the house of Lancaster;

  And force perforce I’ll make him yield the crown

  Whose bookish rule hath pulled fair England down.

  The Tempest, Act III, 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 suchlike valour men hang and drown

  Their proper selves.

  Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio draw.

  You fools! I and my fellows

  Are ministers of fate. The elements

  Of whom your swords are tempered may as well

  Wound the loud winds, or with bemocked-at stabs

  Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish

  One dowl 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.

  Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio stand amazed.

  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

  Ling’ring 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’s sorrow

  And a clear life ensuing.

  He ascends and vanishes in thunder. Then, to soft music, enter the spirits again and dance with mocks and mows, and they depart, carrying out the table.

  PROSPERO:

  Bravely the figure of this harpy has thou

  Performed, my Ariel; a grace it had devouring.

  Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated

  In what thou hadst to say. So with good life

  And observation strange my meaner ministers

  Their several kinds have done. My high charms work,

  And these mine enemies are all knit up

  In their distractions. They now are in my power.

  Coriolanus, Act I, Scene 1

  FIRST CITIZEN: We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome we might guess they relieved us humanely, but they think we are too dear. The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance. Our sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes, for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.

  Henry IV, Part I, Act I, Scene 3

  HOTSPUR:

  Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin King

  That wished him on the barren mountains starve.

  But shall it be that you that set the crown

  Upon the head of this forgetful man,

  And for his sake wear the detested blot

  Of murderous subornation, shall it be

  That you a world of curses undergo,