Being the agents or base second means,

  The cords, the ladder, or the hangman, rather?

  O pardon me that I descend so low

  To show the line and the predicament

  Wherein you range under this subtle King!

  Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,

  Or fill up chronicles in time to come,

  That men of your nobility and power

  Did gage them both in an unjust behalf,

  As both of you, God pardon it, have done:

  To put down Richard, that sweet, lovely rose,

  And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke?

  And shall it in more shame be further spoken

  That you are fooled, discarded, and shook off

  By him for whom these shames ye underwent?

  No, yet time serves wherein you may redeem

  Your banished honours and restore yourselves

  Into the good thoughts of the world again,

  Revenge for the jeering and disdained contempt

  Of this proud King, who studies day and night

  To answer all the debt he owes to you

  Even with the bloody payment of your deaths.

  Therefore I say –

  WORCESTER:

  Peace cousin, say no more.

  Richard III, Act IV, Scene 3

  TYRELL:

  The tyrannous and bloody act is done –

  The most arch deed of piteous massacre

  That ever yet this land was guilty of.

  Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn

  To do this piece of ruthless butchery,

  Albeit they were fleshed villains, bloody dogs,

  Melted with tenderness and mild compassion,

  Wept like two children in their deaths’ sad story.

  ‘O thus’, quoth Dighton, ‘lay the gentle babes’;

  ‘Thus, thus’, quoth Forrest, ‘girdling one another

  Within their alabaster innocent arms.

  Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

  And in their summer beauty kissed each other.

  A book of prayers on their pillow lay,

  Which once’, quoth Forrest, ‘almost changed my mind.

  But O, the devil’ – there the villain stopped,

  When Dighton thus told on, ‘We smothered

  The most replenished sweet work of nature,

  That from the prime creation e’er she framed.’

  Hence both are gone, with conscience and remorse.

  They could not speak, and so I left them both,

  To bear this tidings to the bloody king.

  And here he comes. All health my sovereign lord.

  Enter King Richard.

  KING RICHARD:

  Kind Tyrell, am I happy in thy news?

  TYRELL:

  If to have done the thing you gave in charge

  Beget your happiness, be happy then,

  For it is done.

  KING RICHARD:

  But didst thou see them dead?

  TYRELL:

  I did my lord.

  KING RICHARD:

  And buried, gentle Tyrell?

  TYRELL:

  The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them,

  But where, to say the truth, I do not know.

  KING RICHARD:

  Come to me, Tyrell, soon, at after-supper,

  When thou shalt tell the process of their death.

  Meantime, but think how I may do thee good,

  And be inheritor of thy desire.

  Farewell till then.

  TYRELL:

  I humbly take my leave.

  KING RICHARD:

  The son of Clarence have I pent up close.

  His daughter meanly have I matched in marriage,

  The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom,

  And Anne, my wife, hath bid this world goodnight.

  Now for I know the Breton Richmond aims

  At young Elizabeth, my brother’s daughter,

  And by that knot looks proudly o’er the crown,

  To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer.

  Timon of Athens, Act V, Scene 5

  ALCIBIADES:

  Sound to this coward and lascivious town

  Our terrible approach.

  A parley sounds. The senators appear upon the walls.

  Till now you have gone on and filled the time

  With all licentious measure, making your wills

  The scope of justice. Till now myself and such

  As slept within the shadow of your power

  Have wandered with our traversed arms and breathed

  Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,

  When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong,

  Cries of itself ‘No more’. Now breathless wrong

  Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease

  And pursy insolence shall break his wind

  With fear and horrid flight.

  FIRST SENATOR:

  Noble and young,

  When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,

  Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,

  We sent to thee to give thy rages balm,

  To wipe out our ingratitude with loves

  Above their quantity.

  SECOND SENATOR:

  So did we woo

  Transformed Timon to our city’s love

  By humble message and by promised means.

  We were not all unkind, nor all deserve

  The common stroke of war.

  FIRST SENATOR:

  These walls of ours

  Were not erected by their hands from whom

  You have received your grief, nor are they such

  That these great tow’rs, trophies, and schools should fall

  For private faults in them.

  SECOND SENATOR:

  Nor are they living

  Who were the motives that you first went out.

  Shame that they wanted cunning, in excess,

  Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,

  Into our city with thy banners spread.

  By decimation and a tithed death,

  If thy revenges hunger for that food

  Which nature loathes, take thou the destined tenth,

  And by the hazard of the spotted die

  Let die the spotted.

  Richard II, Act III, Scene 3

  BOLINGBROKE (to Northumberland):

  Noble lord,

  Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle,

  Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley

  Into his ruined ears, and thus deliver:

  Henry Bolingbroke

  Upon his knees doth kiss King Richard’s hand

  And sends allegiance and true faith of heart

  To his most royal person, hither come

  Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,

  Provided that my banishment repealed

  And lands restored again be freely granted.

  If not, I’ll use the advantage of my power,

  And lay the summer’s dust with showers of blood

  Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen,

  The which how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke

  It is such crimson tempest should bedrench

  The fresh green lap of fair King Richard’s land,

  My stooping duty tenderly shall show.

  Go, signify as much, while here we march

  Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.

  Let’s march without the noise of threat’ning drum,

  That from this castle’s tottered battlements

  Our fair appointments may be well perused.

  Methinks King Richard and myself should meet

  With no less terror than the elements

  Of fire and water when their thund’ring shock

  At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.

  Be he the fire, I’ll be the yielding water.

  The rage be his, whilst on the earth I rain

  My waters: on the earth, and not on him.

  Coriolanus, Act IV, Scene 5

  CORIOLANUS:

  My name is Caius Martius, who hath done

  To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces,

  Great hurt and mischief. Thereto witness may

  My surname Coriolanus. The painful service,

  The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood

  Shed for my thankless country, are requited

  But with that surname – a good memory

  And witness of the malice and displeasure

  Which thou shouldst bear me. Only that name remains.

  The cruelty and envy of the people,

  Permitted by our dastard nobles, who

  Have all forsook me, hath devoured the rest,

  And suffered me by th’voice of slaves to be

  Whooped out of Rome. Now this extremity

  Hath brought me to thy hearth. Not out of hope –

  Mistake me not – to save my life, for if

  I had feared death, of all the men i’th’world

  I would have ’voided thee, but in mere spite

  To be full quit of those my banishers

  Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast

  A heart of wreak in thee that wilt revenge

  Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims

  Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight,

  And make my misery serve thy turn. So use it

  That my revengeful services may prove

  As benefits to thee; for I will fight

  Against my cankered country with the spleen

  Of all the under-fiends. But if so be

  Thou dar’st not this, and that to prove more fortunes

  Thou’rt tired, then, in a word, I also am

  Longer to live most weary and present

  My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice,

  Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,

  Since I have ever followed thee with hate,

  Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country’s breast,

  And cannot live but to thy shame unless

  It be to do thee service.

  Henry IV, Part II, Act IV, Scene 1

  WESTMORLAND:

  Then, my lord,

  Unto your grace do I in chief address

  The substance of my speech. If that rebellion

  Came like itself, in base and abject routs,

  Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,

  And countenanced by boys and beggary,

  I say, if damned commotion so appeared

  In his true native and most proper shape,

  You, reverend father, and these noble lords

  Had not been here to dress the ugly form

  Of base and bloody insurrection

  With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop,

  Whose see is by a civil peace maintained,

  Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath tutored,

  Whose white investments figure innocence,

  The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,

  Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself

  Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace

  Into the harsh and boist’rous tongue of war,

  Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,

  Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine

  To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

  ARCHBISHOP OF YORK:

  Wherefore do I this? So the question stands.

  Briefly, to this end: we are all diseased,

  And with our surfeiting and wanton hours

  Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,

  And we must bleed for it; of which disease

  Our late King Richard, being infected, died.

  But my most noble lord of Westmorland,

  I take not on me here as a physician,

  Nor do I as an enemy to peace

  Troop in the throngs of military men,

  But rather show a while like fearful war

  To diet rank minds, sick of happiness,

  And purge th’obstructions which begin to stop

  Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.

  I have in equal balance justly weighed

  What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,

  And find our griefs heavier than our offences.

  We see which way the stream of life doth run,

  And are enforced from our most quiet shore

  By the rough torrent of occasion;

  And have the summary of all our griefs,

  When time shall serve, to show in articles,

  Which long ere this we offered to the King,

  And might by no suit gain our audience.

  When we are wronged and would unfold our griefs

  We are denied access unto his person,

  Even by those men that most have done us wrong.

  The dangers of the days but newly gone,

  Whose memory is written on the earth

  With yet appearing blood, and the examples

  Of every minute’s instance, present now,

  Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms,

  Not to break peace, or any branch of it,

  But to establish here a peace indeed,

  Concurring both in name and quality.

  Power of love, between men and women

  Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 2

  TROILUS:

  Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?

  CRESSIDA:

  Hard to seem won, but I was won, my lord,

  With the first glance that ever – pardon me,

  If I confess much you will play the tyrant.

  I love you now, but till now not so much

  But I might master it. In faith, I lie.

  My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown

  Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!

  Why have I blabbed? Who shall be true to us,

  When we are so unsecret to ourselves?

  But though I loved you well I wooed you not.

  And yet, good faith, I wished myself a man,

  Or that we women had men’s privilege

  Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,

  For in this rapture I shall surely speak

  The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,

  Cunning in dumbness, in my weakness draws

  My soul of counsel from me. Stop my mouth.

  TROILUS:

  And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.

  He kisses her.

  Sonnet 150

  O from what power hast thou this powerful might

  With insufficiency my heart to sway,

  To make me give the lie to my true sight

  And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?

  Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,

  That in the very refuse of thy deeds

  There is such strength and warrantise of skill

  That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?

  Who taught thee how to make me love thee more

  The more I hear and see just cause of hate?

  O though I love what others do abhor,

  With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.

  If thy unworthiness raised love in me,

  More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

  The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III, Scene 1

  VALENTINE:

  And why not death, rather than living torment?

  To die is to be banished from myself,

  And Silvia is my self. Banished from her

  Is self from self, a deadly banishment.

  What light is light if Silvia be not seen?

  What joy is joy if Silvia be not by?

  Unless it be to think that she is by,

  And feed upon the shadow of perfection.

  Except I be by Silvia in the night

  There is no music in the nightingale.

  Unless I look on Silvia in the day

  There is no day for me to look upon.

  She is my essence, and I leave to be

  If I be not by her fair influence

  Fostered, illumined, cherished, kept alive.

  I fly not death to fly his deadly doom,

  Tarry I here I but attend on death,

  But fly I hence, I fly away from life.

  Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene 1

  HERO:

  O god of love! I know he doth deserve

  As much as may be yielded to a man.

  But nature never framed a woman’s heart

  Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.

  Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,

  Misprising what they look on, and her wit

  Values itself so highly that to her

  All matter else seems weak. She cannot love,

  Nor take no shape nor project of affection,

  She is so self-endeared.

  URSULA:

  Sure, I think so.

  And therefore certainly it were not good

  She knew his love, lest she’ll make sport at it.

  HERO:

  Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,

  How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,

  But she would spell him backward. If fair-faced,

  She would swear the gentleman should be her sister;

  If black, why nature, drawing of an antic,

  Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed;

  If low, an agate very vilely cut;

  If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;

  If silent, why, a block moved with none.

  So turns she every man the wrong side out,

  And never gives to truth and virtue that

  Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

  URSULA:

  Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.

  HERO:

  No, not to be so odd and from all fashions

  As Beatrice is cannot be commendable.

  But who dare tell her so? If I should speak

  She would mock me into air. O, she would laugh me

  Out of myself, press me to death with wit.

  Therefore let Benedick, like covered fire,

  Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly.