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  And so I am. Then crushing penury

  Persuades me I was better when a king.

  Then am I kinged again, and by and by

  Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,

  And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,

  Nor I, nor any man that but man is,

  With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased

  With being nothing.

  Timon of Athens, Act I, Scene 1

  POET:

  You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.

  I have in this rough work shaped out a man

  Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug

  With amplest entertainment. My free drift

  Halts not particularly, but moves itself

  In a wide sea of tax. No levelled malice

  Infects one comma in the course I hold,

  But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,

  Leaving no tract behind.

  PAINTER:

  How shall I understand you?

  POET:

  I will unbolt to you.

  You see how all conditions, how all minds,

  As well of glib and slipp’ry creatures as

  Of grave and austere quality, tender down

  Their service to Lord Timon. His large fortune,

  Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,

  Subdues and properties to his love and tendance

  All sorts of hearts. Yea, from the glass-faced flatterer

  To Apemantus, that few things loves better

  Than to abhor himself; even he drops down

  The knee before him, and returns in peace,

  Most rich in Timon’s nod.

  PAINTER:

  I saw them speak together.

  POET:

  Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill

  Feigned Fortune to be throned. The base o’th’mount

  Is ranked with all deserts, all kind of natures

  That labour on the bosom of this sphere

  To propagate their states. Amongst them all

  Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fixed

  One do I personate of Lord Timon’s frame,

  Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her,

  Whose present grace to present slaves and servants

  Translates his rivals.

  PAINTER:

  ’Tis conceived to scope.

  This throne, this Fortune, and this hill methinks,

  With one man beckoned from the rest below,

  Bowing his head against the steepy mount

  To climb his happiness, would be well expressed

  In our condition.

  POET:

  Nay sir, but hear me on.

  All those which were his fellows but of late,

  Some better than his value, on the moment

  Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,

  Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,

  Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him

  Drink the free air.

  PAINTER:

  Ay, marry, what of these?

  POET:

  When Fortune in her shift and change of mood

  Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants,

  Which laboured after him to the mountain’s top

  Even on their knees and hands, let him fall down,

  Not one accompanying his declining foot.

  Henry IV, Part I, Act I, Scene 2

  SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE: Marry then, sweet wag, when thou art king let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty. Let us be ‘Diana’s foresters’, ‘gentlemen of the shade’, ‘minions of the moon’, and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

  PRINCE HARRY: Thou sayst well, and it holds well too, for the fortune of us that are the moon’s men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed as the sea is by the moon. As for proof now: a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning, got with swearing ‘lay by!’ and spent with crying ‘bring in!’, now in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder and by and by in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.

  Richard II, Act III, Scene 4

  GARDENER (to First Man):

  Go, bind thou up young dangling apricots

  Which, like unruly children, make their sire

  Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.

  Give some supportance to the bending twigs.

  (To Second Man) Go thou, and, like an executioner,

  Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays

  That look too lofty in our commonwealth.

  All must be even in our government.

  You thus employed, I will go root away

  The noisome weeds which without profit suck

  The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.

  FIRST MAN:

  Why should we, in the compass of a pale,

  Keep law and form and due proportion,

  Showing as in a model our firm estate,

  When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,

  Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,

  Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,

  Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs

  Swarming with caterpillars?

  GARDENER:

  Hold thy peace.

  He that hath suffered this disordered spring

  Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.

  The weeds which his broad spreading leaves did shelter,

  That seemed in eating him to hold him up,

  Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke –

  I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.

  SECOND MAN:

  What, are they dead?

  GARDENER:

  They are; and Bolingbroke

  Hath seized the wasteful King. O, what pity is it

  That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land

  As we this garden! We at time of year

  Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,

  Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,

  With too much riches it confound itself.

  Had he done so to great and growing men,

  They might have lived to bear, and he to taste,

  Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches

  We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.

  Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,

  Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

  King Lear, Act III, Scene 1

  GONERIL:

  Hear me, my lord.

  What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,

  To follow in a house where twice so many

  Have a command to tend you?

  REGAN:

  What need one?

  LEAR:

  O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars

  Are in the poorest thing superfluous.

  Allow not nature more than nature needs.

  Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady.

  If only to go warm were gorgeous,

  Why, nature needs not what thou, gorgeous, wear’st,

  Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But for true need,

  You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need.

  You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,

  As full of grief as age, wretched in both.

  If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts

  Against their father, fool me not so much

  To bear it tamely. Touch me with noble anger

  And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,

  Stain my man’s cheeks. No, you unnatural hags,

  I will have such revenges on you both

  That all the world shall – I will do such things –

  What they are, y
et I know not; but they shall be

  The terrors of the earth. You think I’ll weep.

  No I’ll not weep. I have full cause of weeping,

  Storm and tempest.

  But this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws

  Or ere I’ll weep. O Fool, I shall go mad!

  Sonnet 94

  They that have power to hurt and will do none,

  That do not do the thing they most do show,

  Who moving others are themselves as stone,

  Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;

  They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces

  And husband nature’s riches from expense;

  They are the lords and owners of their faces,

  Others but stewards of their excellence.

  The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,

  Though to itself it only live and die,

  But if that flower with base infection meet

  The basest weed outbraves his dignity.

  For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds:

  Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

  Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2

  CASSIUS:

  Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

  Like a Colossus, and we petty men

  Walk under his huge legs and peep about

  To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

  Men at sometime were masters of their fates.

  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars

  But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

  Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?

  Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

  Write them together: yours is as fair a name.

  Sound them: it doth become the mouth as well.

  Weigh them: it is as heavy. Conjure with ’em:

  ‘Brutus’ will start a spirit as soon as ‘Caesar’.

  Now in the names of all the gods at once,

  Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed

  That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed.

  Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods.

  When went there by an age since the great flood,

  But it was famed with more than with one man?

  When could they say till now, that talked of Rome,

  That her wide walls encompassed but one man?

  Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough

  When there is in it but one only man.

  O you and I have heard our fathers say

  There was a Brutus once that would have brooked

  Th’eternal devil to keep his state in Rome

  As easily as a king.

  Coriolanus, Act II, Scene 3

  BRUTUS (to the citizens):

  Could you not have told him

  As you were lessoned? When he had no power

  But was a petty servant to the state

  He was your enemy, ever spake against

  Your liberties and the charters that you bear

  I’th’body of the weal; and now arriving

  A place of potency and sway o’th’ state,

  If he should still malignantly remain

  Fast foe to th’ plebeii, your voices might

  Be curses to yourselves. You should have said

  That as his worthy deeds did claim no less

  Than what he stood for, so his gracious nature

  Would think upon you for your voices and

  Translate his malice towards you into love,

  Standing your friendly lord.

  SICINIUS (to the citizens):

  Thus to have said

  As you were foreadvised had touched his spirit

  And tried his inclination, from him plucked

  Either is gracious promise, which you might,

  As cause had called you up, have held him to,

  Or else it would have galled his surly nature,

  Which easily endures not article

  Tying him to aught. So putting him to rage,

  You should have ta’en th’advantage of his choler

  And passed him unelected.

  BRUTUS (to the citizens):

  Did you perceive

  He did solicit you in free contempt

  When he did need your loves, and do you think

  That his contempt shall not be bruising to you

  When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies

  No heart among you? Or had you tongues to cry

  Against the rectorship of judgement?

  SICINIUS (to the citizens):

  Have you

  Ere now denied the asker, and now again,

  Of him that did not ask but mock, bestow

  Your sued-for tongues?

  THIRD CITIZEN:

  He’s not confirmed, we may deny him yet.

  SECOND CITIZEN:

  And will deny him.

  I’ll have five hundred voices of that sound.

  FIRST CITIZEN:

  I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece ’em.

  BRUTUS:

  Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends

  They have chose a consul that will from them take

  Their liberties, make them of no more voice

  Than dogs that are as often beat for barking

  As therefor kept to do so.

  Othello, Act I, Scene 1

  IAGO:

  I follow him to serve my turn upon him.

  We cannot all be masters, nor all masters

  Cannot be truly followed. You shall mark

  Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave

  That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,

  Wears out his time much like his master’s ass,

  For naught but provender, and when he’s old, cashiered.

  Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are

  Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty,

  Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,

  And throwing but shows of service on their lords

  Do well thrive by ’em, and when they have lined their coats

  Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul,

  And such a one do I profess myself; for, sir,

  It is as sure that you are Roderigo,

  Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.

  In following him I follow but myself.

  Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

  But seeming so for my peculiar end.

  For when my outward action doth demonstrate

  The native act and figure of my heart

  In compliment extern, ’tis not long after

  But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

  For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

  Richard III, Act III, Scene 7

  BUCKINGHAM:

  Know then, it is your fault that you resign

  The supreme seat, the throne majestical,

  The sceptred office of your ancestors,

  Your state of fortune and your due of birth,

  The lineal glory of your royal house,

  To the corruption of a blemished stock,

  Whiles in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts –

  Which here we waken to our country’s good –

  The noble isle doth want her proper limbs.

  Her face defaced with scars of infamy,

  Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants

  And almost shouldered in the swallowing gulf

  Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion,

  Which to recure we heartily solicit

  Your gracious self to take on you the charge

  And kingly government of this your land,

  Not as Protector, steward, substitute,

  Or lowly factor for another’s gain,

  But as successively, from blood to blood,

  Your right of birth, your empery, your own.

  For this, consorted with the citizens,

  Y
our very worshipful and loving friends,

  And by their vehement instigation,

  In this just cause come I to move your grace.

  RICHARD GLOUCESTER:

  I cannot tell if to depart in silence

  Or bitterly to speak in your reproof

  Best fitteth my degree or your condition.

  Your love deserves my thanks, but my desert,

  Unmeritable, shuns your high request.

  First, if all obstacles were cut away

  And that my path were even to the crown,

  As the ripe revenue and due of birth,

  Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,

  So mighty and so many my defects,

  That I would rather hide me from my greatness –

  Being a barque to brook no mighty sea –

  Than in my greatness covet to be hid,

  And in the vapour of my glory smothered.

  But, God be thanked, there is no need of me,

  And much I need to help you, were there need.

  The royal tree hath left us royal fruit,

  Which, mellowed by the stealing hours of time,

  Will well become the seat of majesty

  And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign.

  On him I lay that you would lay on me,

  The right and fortune of his happy stars,

  Which God defend that I should wring from him.

  BUCKINGHAM:

  My lord, this argues conscience in your grace,

  But the respects thereof are nice and trivial,

  All circumstances well considered.

  You say that Edward is your brother’s son,

  So say we too, but not by Edward’s wife,

  For first was he contract to Lady Lucy,

  Your mother lives a witness to his vow,

  And afterward, by substitute, betrothed

  To Bona, sister to the King of France.

  These both put off, a poor petitioner,

  A care-crazed mother to a many sons,

  A beauty-waning and distressed widow

  Even in the afternoon of her best days,

  Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,

  Seduced the pitch and height of his degree

  To base declension and loathed bigamy.

  By her in his unlawful bed he got

  This Edward, whom our manners call the Prince.