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210 Cards in this Set

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A: Why, I am sure if he forfeit thou wilt not take his flesh. What's that good for?
B: To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what's his reason? - I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why revenge.
Shylock, Merchant of Venice (3.1.43-60)

Shylock's promise to Solanio and Salarino that he will outdo the evil that has been done to him. Reminds them that all people are people even if they're not in the majority.
What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts
Because you bought them. Shall I say to you
'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs.'
... You will answer
'The slaves are ours.' So do I answer you.
The pound of flesh which I demand of him
Is dearly bought. 'Tis mine, and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law:
There is no force in the decrees of Venice.
I stand for judgement. Answer: shall I have it?
Shylock, Merchant of Venice (4.1.88-102)

He uses Venice's own law to support his vengeful quest
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway.
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Portia as Balthasar, Merchant of Venice (4.1.179-198)

Portia appeals to Shylock's methodical mind as she asks for mercy. Reasoning vs. emotion. Forgiving would benefit Shylock and elevate him to godlike status.
But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets
For valiant doings in their country's cause
Tamora, Titus Andronicus (1.1112-3)

Role of ancient ritual. Brutality and vengence
And help to set a head on headless Rome
Marcus, Titus Andronicus (1.1.186)

No mechanism for the transfer of power. Titus serving as the voice of the people
My lord, be ruled by me, be won at last,
Dissemble all your griefs and discontents.
You are but newly planted in your throne;
Lest then the people, and patricians too,
Upon a just survey take XXX's part,
And so supplant you for ingratitude,
Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin,
Yield at entreats; and then let me alone:
I'll find a day to massacre them all,
And raze their faction and their family,
The cruel father and his traitorous sons
To whom I sued for my dear son's life,
And make them know what 'tis to let a queen kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.
Tamora, Titus Andronicus (1.1.429-455)

Reveals Tamora's revenge. Encourages Saturnius to play nice in public but destroy Titus in private
Madame, though Venus govern your desires,
Saturn in dominator over mine.
What signifies my deadly-standing eye,
My silence, and my cloudy melancholy,
My fleece of wooly hair that now uncurls
Even as an adder when she doth unroll
To do some fatal execution?
No, madame, there are no venereal signs.
Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.
Aaron, Titus Andronicus (2.3.30-50)

Aaron refuses to make love with Tamora because he is busy planning Bassianus' death. Doesn't reveal what Aaron's motives are though.
Gentle XXX, let me kiss thy lips.
Or make some sign how I may do thee ease:
[...]
Or shall we cut away our hands, like thine?
Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows
Pass the remainder of our hateful days?
What shall we do? let us, that have our tongues,
Plot some device of further misery,
To make us wonder'd at in time to come.
Titus, Titus Andronicus (3.1.120-135)

Titus' first reaction upon seeing his victimized daughter is to seek revenge
A: Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
B: Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
[...]
But I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
Aaron, Titus Andronicus (5.1.122-144)

Is Aaron representative of pure evil? What is his motive?
If there be devils, would I were a devil,
To live and burn in everlasting fire,
So I might have your company in hell
But to torment you with my bitter tongue
Aaron, Titus Andronicus (5.1.147-150)
You know your mother means to feast with me,
And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad:
Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust
And with your blood and it I'll make a paste,
And of the paste a coffin I will rear
And make two pasties of your shameful heads,
And bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam,
Like to the earth swallow her own increase.
This is the feast that I have bid her to,
And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;
Titus, Titus Andronicus (5.3.183-192)
A : Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed!

Kills B

C: Can the son's eye behold his father bleed?
There's meed for meed, death for a deadly deed!
A = Saturnius
B = Titus
C = Lucius

Titus Andronicus (5.3.63-65)
Bloodbath at the end of the play
Now is my turn to speak. Behold this child:
Of this was XXX delivered;
The issue of an irreligious Moor,
Chief architect and plotter of these woes:
The villain is alive in XXX's house,
And as he is, to witness this is true.
Now judge what cause had XXX to revenge
These wrongs, unspeakable, past patience,
Or more than any living man could bear.
Now you have heard the truth, what say you, Romans?
Have we done aught amiss,--show us wherein,
And, from the place where you behold us now,
The poor remainder of XXX
Will, hand in hand, all headlong cast us down.
And on the ragged stones beat forth our brains,
And make a mutual closure of our house.
Speak, Romans, speak; and if you say we shall,
Lo, hand in hand, XXX and I will fall. (5.3.3)
Marcus, Titus Andronicus (5.3.118-135)

Marcus holds up Tamora's baby and uses it as justification of Titus' revenge?
Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,
That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile
Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh,
Before this earthy prison of their bones;
That so the shadows be not unappeased,
Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth.
Lucius, Titus Andronicus (1.1.96-101)

Romans cast the Goths as barbarians but the ritual sacrifice shown here makes us question how civilized the Romans were
You sad-faced men, people and sons of Rome,
By uproar sever'd, like a flight of fowl
Scatter'd by winds and high tempestuous gusts,
O, let me teach you how to knit again
This scatter'd corn into one mutual sheaf,
These broken limbs again into one body;
Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself
Marcus, Titus Andronicus (5.3.66-71)

After all the violence, Rome must now learn how to mend itself.
Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
Defend the justice of my cause with arms,
And, countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my successive title with your swords:
I am his first-born son, that was the last
That wore the imperial diadem of Rome;
Then let my father's honours live in me,
Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.
Saturnius, Titus Andronicus (1.1.1-8)

Titus Andronicus opens with the question of succession.
The play emphasizes the opposition between the imaginative vision its protagonists bear witness to in love and the truth of a world whose order must be enforced at passion's expense.
Edward Snow, Language and Sexual Difference in Romeo and Juliet
The moment is emblematic of the erotic relationship as the play views it: two exposed, vulnerably embodied selves reaching out tentatively across sexual difference and social opposition, while their imaginations mingle in an intersubjective privacy that weaves its boundaries protectively around them.
Edward Snow, Language and Sexual Difference in Romeo and Juliet
What I would like to suggest, however, is that the language of XXXX is most intricately concerned not with the opposition between passion and the social order but with the difference between the sexes: and that its subtler affirmations have to do not with romantic love but with female ontology.
Edward Snow, Language and Sexual Difference in Romeo and Juliet
Well, in that hit you miss: she'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit;
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,
From love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
Romeo (1.1.201)

Talking about how Rosaline has taken a vow of chastity
If love be rough with you, be rough with love.
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in,
A visor for a visor. What care I
What curious eye doth quote deformity?
Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet (1.4.27-31)
O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. . . .
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.
Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet (1.4.53-94)

Queen Mab brings dreams directly related to the dreamer (lovers dream of love). Wild bitterness in which he sees dreams as destructive and delusional
True. I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being angered, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet (1.4.96-103)
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
Romeo, Romeo and Juliet (1.5.41-50)

First time Romeo sees Juliet at the ball. Immediately forgets about Rosaline
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and XXX is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
Romeo, Romeo and Juliet (2.1.44-51)

Romeo sees Juliet on the balcony
She speaks:
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
Romeo, Romeo and Juliet (2.1.68-73)

Romeo watches Juliet on the balcony. The fact that Juliet doesn't know he is there shows the authenticity of her interiority
Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say 'It lightens.' Sweet, good night!
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my breast!
Juliet, Romeo and Juliet (2.1.158-166)

Juliet thinks this love is too sudden and wants to wait. To which Romeo asks, "O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?"
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and XXX
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, XXX; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my XXX; and, when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars.
Juliet, Romeo and Juliet (3.2.1-22)

Juliet waiting on her wedding night to lose her virginity.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
Chorus, Romeo and Juliet (Act 1)
But come, young waverer, come, go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be;
For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households' rancour to pure love.
Friar Lawrence, Romeo and Juliet

agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet to end the family feud
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Juliet, Romeo and Juliet (2.1.151-3)
Revenge Plays
Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—
Let me not think on’t,—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body
Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,—
O God! [...]
Hamlet (1.2)

Hamlet's first soliloquy. Occurs after meeting with Gertrude and Claudius in court and they say he can't return to his studies but must remain in Denmark. He reflects on his father's death and blames his mother for not properly mourning and marring Claudius. This is the first instant that he thinks about suicide but it is forbidden by religion. Touches on motifs of misogyny, incest, and the ominous omen of the marriage for the country as a whole.
Source material for Hamlet
Historiae Danicae by Saxo Grammaticus

Moral difference between Norse culture and Christian culture
Avenger celebrated
Mother involved in the revenge plot
Speech in which Amleth explains his reasons for killing Feng
No ghost figure
Bradley - Shakespeare's Tragic Period - Hamlet
Discusses the two major periods of Shakespeare's tragedies and the linguistic, structural, and thematic differences between them
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,—to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man
Polonius, Hamlet (1.3)

Polonius speaks to his son Laertes before he goes off to France. He gives him a list of advice on how to behave
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
This line is spoken by Marcellus in Act I, scene iv (67), as he and Horatio debate whether or not to follow Hamlet and the ghost into the dark night. The line refers both to the idea that the ghost is an ominous omen for Denmark and to the larger theme of the connection between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the state as a whole. The ghost is a visible symptom of the rottenness of Denmark created by Claudius’s crime.
I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
In these lines, Hamlet speaks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, scene ii (287–298), explaining the melancholy that has afflicted him since his father’s death. Perhaps moved by the presence of his former university companions, Hamlet essentially engages in a rhetorical exercise, building up an elaborate and glorified picture of the earth and humanity before declaring it all merely a “quintessence of dust.” He examines the earth, the air, and the sun, and rejects them as “a sterile promontory” and “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.” He then describes human beings from several perspectives, each one adding to his glorification of them. Human beings’ reason is noble, their faculties infinite, their forms and movements fast and admirable, their actions angelic, and their understanding godlike. But, to Hamlet, humankind is merely dust. This motif, an expression of his obsession with the physicality of death, recurs throughout the play.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?—To die,—to sleep,—
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die,—to sleep;—
To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
Hamlet (3.1)

Perhaps the most famous soliloquy of all time. Moral examination of suicide. Is it nobler to suffer life passively or to actively end one's life?
Question of what happens in the afterlife
The uncertainty of the afterlife is what prevents everyone from committing suicide
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Hamlet (3.1)

The end of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on
Hamlet (1.5)

Warns his friends that he will pretend to be mad as part of his plot to revenge his father's death. But how do we know when he's faking and when he's actually mad?
The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me:
Hamlet (2.2)

Here Hamlet questions whether or not the ghost was actually the devil.
Who's there?
Barnardo, Hamlet (1.1.1)

Opening line of Hamlet
A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets
At stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the Fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen
Horatio, Hamlet (1.1.114)

Speaking of the ill omen of the ghost for the state
A little more than kin and less than kind.
Hamlet (1.2)

Hamlet's first line in the play. Shows his immediate resentment towards Claudius
A: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

B: Murder!

A: Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

B: Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
Hamlet (1.5)

Hamlet's first exchange with the ghost. Hear's that his father was murdered and it seems like he is ready to revenge right away.
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
Ghost, Hamlet (1.5)

Here, the Ghost claims that he's doomed to suffer in Purgatory (often imagined as a fiery place where souls had to "purge" their sins before they could move on to heaven), until young Hamlet avenges his "foul and most unnatural murder" by killing Claudius.
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.
Ghost, Hamlet (1.5)
Though this be madness, yet these is method in't
Polonius, Hamlet (2.2)
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
Hamlet (2.2)

Hamlet's soliloquy after talking to the actors. Shows his interiority. Jealous that the player could manipulate his emotions.
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Hamlet, (3.3)

Doesn't want to murder Claudius while he's praying because then he would go to Heaven.
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 puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. 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 kill'd, a mother stain'd,
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?
Hamlet (4.4)

Marks a turning point for Hamlet as he sees Fortinbras' army marching and he sets a direct course for revenge
Plays with chorus in them
Romeo and Juliet
How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.
Laertes, Hamlet (4.5)

Direct foil to Hamlet
Not a white, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.
Hamlet (5.2)

Hamlet talking to Horatio before he duels Laertes. Predestination, fatalistic, passive
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view,
And let me speak to th'yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning, and for no cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on th'inventors' heads. All this can I
Truly deliver
Horatio, Hamlet (5.2)

Explaining the bloody sight to Fortinbras
Shakespeare's tragedies fall into two distinct groups, and these groups are separated by a considerable interval. Romeo and Juliet, Richard III vs. Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, etc.
Bradley, Shakespeare's Tragic Period
The existence of this distinct tragic period [...] suggests the idea that the 'man' also in these years of middle age was heavily burdened in spirit; that Shakespeare turned to tragedy not merely for change, or because he felt it to be the greatest form of drama and felt himself equal to it, but also because the world had come to look dark and terrible to him
Bradley, Shakespeare's Tragic Period
The later plays are wilder, stormier. Show human nature in commotion. Moral evil is not so intently scrutinized or so fully displayed in them.
Bradley, Shakespeare's Tragic Period
Decided change in style of Shakespeare's later plays. The style is more rapid, vehement, less equable, and less simple
A.C. Bradley, Shakespeare's Tragic Period
It is not that Hamlet is Shakespeare's greatest tragedy or most perfect work of art; it was that Hamlet most brings home to us at once the sense of the soul's infinity, and the sense of the doom which not only circumscribes that infinity but appears to be its offspring.
A.C. Bradley, Shakespeare's Tragic Period
Why does Hamlet delay? That a single question should be seen from one generation to the next as the question to ask of the play is a unique phenomenon in the history of criticism.
Margreta de Grazia, "Hamlet's Delay"
The inaccessibility of the unconscious to consciousness explained why the pensive Hamlet could not himself understand the cause of his delay.
Margreta de Grazia, "Hamlet's Delay"
O God, XXX, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me.
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell me story. [...]
O, I die, XXX.
The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit.
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy th'election lights
On XXX. He has my dying voice.
So tell him, with th'occurrents more or less,
Which have solicited - the rest is silence.
Hamlet, (5.2)

Hamlet's dying words. Concerned with reputation.
And since you know you cannot see yourself
So well as by reflection, I, your glass,
Will modestly discover to yourself
That of yourself which you yet know not of.
Cassius, Julius Caesar (1.2)

Cassius trying to manipulate Brutus
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Collossus, 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.
Cassius, Julius Caesar (1.2)

Cassius trying to manipulate Brutus
If the tag-rag people did not
clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and
displeased them, as they use to do the players in
the theatre, I am no true man.
[...]
Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the
common herd was glad he refused the crown, he
plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his
throat to cut. An I had been a man of any
occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word,
I would I might go to hell among the rogues. And so
he fell. When he came to himself again, he said,
If he had done or said any thing amiss, he desired
their worships to think it was his infirmity.
Casca, Julius Caesar (1.2)

Casca thinks Caesar's refusal of the crown and fainting are all acts
And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire
Begin it with weak straws. What trash is Rome,
What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar?
Cassius, Julius Caesar (1.3)

responsibility of the people to show they won't be sheep. People's jobs to keep leaders in check
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 crown'd:
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 therefore think him as a serpent's egg
Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell.
Brutus, Julius Caesar (2.1)

Brutus' soliloquy in which he compares Caesar to a serpent's egg that must be destroyed before it becomes evil
O constancy, be strong upon my side;
Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue.
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
How hard it is for woman to keep counsel!
Portia, Julius Caesar (2.4)
I could be well moved if I were as you.
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.
But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks;
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world: 'tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion; and that I am he
Let me a little show it even in this -
That I was constant
Caesar, Julius Caesar (3.1)

Just before his assassination. Ironic statement because he is assailed and dies right after this. Comparing himself to the North Star, Caesar boasts of his constancy, his commitment to the law, and his refusal to waver under any persuasion. This comparison implies more than steadfastness, however: the North Star is the star by which sailors have navigated since ancient times, the star that guides them in their voyages, just as Caesar leads the Roman people.
Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!
Cinna, Julius Caesar (3.1)

After killing Caesar
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear XXX, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Cassius, Julius Caesar (1.2)

As Cassius complains about Caesar's power, he claims that it's Rome's own fault for being servile to one man. Men, according to Cassius, are "masters of their fates," which means it's up to them to take down Caesar.
O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy
(Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue)
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And XXX's spirit ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
Antony, Julius Caesar (3.1)

When Antony stands over Caesar's mutilated body, he prophesies that civil war and chaos will ensue in Rome.
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
Antony, Julius Caesar (5.5)

Standing over Brutus' body in the end
[...]How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!
Cassius, Julius Caesar (can't find line 3.1?)

metafictive
Caesar should be a beast without a heart,
If he should stay at home to-day for fear.
No, Caesar shall not: danger knows full well
That Caesar is more dangerous than he:
Julius Caesar (2.2)
Quote #8
ANTONY
Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
They that have done this deed are honorable.
What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,
That made them do it. They are wise and honorable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts.
I am no orator, as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
That love my friend, and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood. I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me.
Antony, Julius Caesar (3.2)
He was my friend, faithful and just to me.
But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honourable man.
. . .
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.
. . .
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honourable man.
. . .
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And sure he is an honourable man.
Antony, Julius Caesar (3.2)
3. [My horse] is a creature that I teach to fight,
To wind, to stop, to run directly on,
His corporal motion governed by my spirit;
And in some taste is XXXX but so.
He must be taught, and trained, and bid go forth—
A barren-spirited fellow, one that feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations,
Which, out of use and staled by other men,
Begin his fashion. Do not talk of him
But as a property.
Antony, Julius Caesar (4.1)

n this passage from Act IV, scene i, in which Antony and Octavius (with Lepidus, who has just left the room) are making plans to retake Rome, the audience gains insight into Antony’s cynicism regarding human nature: while he respects certain men, he considers Lepidus a mere tool, or “property,” whose value lies in what other men may do with him and not in his individual human dignity. Comparing Lepidus to his horse, Antony says that the general can be trained to fight, turn, stop, or run straight—he is a mere body subject to the will of another.
The quote raises questions about what qualities make for an effective or valuable military man, politician, and ally.
We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Brutus, Julius Caesar (4.2)

Brutus speaks these words in Act IV, scene ii in order to convince Cassius that it is time to begin the battle against Octavius and Antony. He speaks figuratively of a “tide” in the lives of human beings: if one takes advantage of the high tide, one may float out to sea and travel far; if one misses this chance, the “voyage” that one’s life comprises will remain forever confined to the shallows, and one will never experience anything more glorious than the mundane events in this narrow little bay.
Here, Brutus conceives of life as influenced by both fate and free will: human beings must be shrewd enough to recognize when fate offers them an opportunity and bold enough to take advantage of it. Thus, Brutus believes, does man achieve a delicate and valuable balance between fate and free will.
How ill this taper burns! Ha! Who comes here?
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous apparition.
It comes upon me. Are thou any thing?
Are thou some god, some angel, or some devil,
That mak'st my blood cold and hair to staer?
Speak to me what thou art.
Brutus, Julius Caesar (4.2)

Brutus sees the ghost. Lamest ghost scene ever.
Source material for Othello
Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi

Iago wants to kill Desdemona because she rejected his advance. Shift from desire to kill Desdemona to desire to manipulate Othello. Shows Othello and Iago working together to kill Desdemona
what Professor Lerner calls "empathy," Shakespeare calls Iago
Greenblatt, The Improvisation of Power
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.
Iago, Othello (1.1)

In this early speech, Iago explains his tactics to Roderigo. He follows Othello not out of “love” or “duty,” but because he feels he can exploit and dupe his master, thereby revenging himself upon the man he suspects of having slept with his wife. Iago finds that people who are what they seem are foolish. The day he decides to demonstrate outwardly what he feels inwardly, Iago explains, will be the day he makes himself most vulnerable
My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of kisses.
She swore in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.
She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished
That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her.Upon this hint I spake.
She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only in the witchcraft I have used.
Othello (1.3)

Is identity in the story? Real world vs. story world
My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty.
To you I am bound for life and education.
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you. You are the lord of my duty,
I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband,
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.
Desdemona, Othello (1.3)

These words, which Desdemona speaks to her father before the Venetian senate, are her first of the play. Her speech shows her thoughtfulness, as she does not insist on her loyalty to Othello at the expense of respect for her father, but rather acknowledges that her duty is “divided.” Because Desdemona is brave enough to stand up to her father and even partially rejects him in public, these words also establish for the audience her courage and her strength of conviction. Later, this same ability to separate different degrees and kinds of affection will make Desdemona seek, without hesitation, to help Cassio, thereby fueling Othello’s jealousy. Again and again, Desdemona speaks clearly and truthfully, but, tragically, Othello is poisoned by Iago’s constant manipulation of language and emotions and is therefore blind to Desdemona’s honesty.
I hate the Moor:
And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if't be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety.
Iago, Othello (1.3)

ambiguity of Iago's motives for manipulating Othello
Iago's first soliloquy
Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Out bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners, so that if we plant nettles or sow lettuce [...]
why the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the beam of our lives had not one scale of reason to peise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion.
Iago, Othello (1.3)

speaking to Roderigo
Why, why is this?
Think'st thou I'ld make a life of jealousy,
To follow still the changes of the moon
With fresh suspicions? No; to be once in doubt
Is once to be resolved: exchange me for a goat,
When I shall turn the business of my soul
To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,
Matching thy inference. 'Tis not to make me jealous
To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous:
Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;
For she had eyes, and chose me. No, Iago;
I'll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove;
And on the proof, there is no more but this,—
Away at once with love or jealousy! (3.3.31)
Othello (3.3)

Here, Othello claims that he won't be destroyed by jealousy.
The Moor already changes with my poison.
Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons.
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood.
Burn like the mines of Sulphur. I did say so:
Look, where he comes!
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
Iago, Othello (3.3)

Iago realizes the unbelievable power of jealousy. Here, he claims that he has poisoned Othello's mind by suggesting Desdemona may be up to something naughty.
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex'd in the extreme
Othello (5.2)
Haply for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much—
She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapor of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others’ uses. Yet ’tis the plague of great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.
Othello (3.3)

after Iago has raised Othello’s suspicions about his wife’s fidelity, Othello seems to have at least partly begun to believe that he is inarticulate and barbaric
his is also the first time that Othello himself, and not Iago, calls negative attention to either his race or his age. His conclusion that Desdemona is “gone” shows how far Iago’s insinuations about Cassio and Desdemona have taken Othello: in a matter of a mere 100 lines or so, he has progressed from belief in his conjugal happiness to belief in his abandonment.
Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well,
Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinable gum. Set you down this,
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog
And smote him thus.
Othello (5.2)

Othello's final words before stabbing himself
Let me see now,
To get his place, and to plume up my will
In double knavery - how, how? Let's see.
After some time to abuse Othello's ears
That he is too familiar with his wife;
He hath a person and a smooth dispose\
To be suspected, framed to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by th'nose
As asses are.
I ha't. It is ingendered. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.
Iago, Othello (1.3)

Iago's first soliloquy. His role as impersonator. Invading Othello. Plotting to make it seem as though Cassio is too familiar with Desdemona
He takes her by the palm. Ay, well said - whisper. With as little a web as this will I ensare as great a fly as XXX.
Iago, Othello (2.1)

Sees Cassio take Desdemona's hand. Talk of traps
The wine she drinks is made of grapes.
Iago, Othello (2.1)

Talking to Roderigo. reduces Desdemona
Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me
For making him egregiously an ass,
And practising upon his peace and quiet
Even to madness. 'Tis here, but yet confused.
Knavery's plain face is never seen till used.
Iago, Othello (2.1)

Soliloquy. Impostor, plotting
Reputation, reputation, reputation - O, I ha' lost my reputation, I ha' lost the immortal past of myself, and what remains is bestial!
Cassio, Othello (2.3)

After Othello has removed his title as officer
My name, that was as fresh
As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black
As mine own face.
Othello (3.3)

Othello thinks his reputation is sullied because Desdemona is cheating on him
Yet I'll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore.
Othello (5.2)

As Othello resolves to kill Desdemona, he is noticeably preoccupied with Desdemona's "whiter" than snow skin. He implies he won't stab her because he doesn't want to "scar" her flesh. He also seems to think of her as a kind of pale statue – her skin's as "smooth as monumental alabaster."
Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:
From this time forth I never will speak word.
Iago, Othello (5.2)

This is the last time Iago speaks in the play. After Othello demands to know why Iago set out to destroy him, Iago remains silent.
And what's he then that says I play the villain.
[...] Divinity of hell:
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now; [...]
I'll pour this pestilence into his ear:
That she repeals him for her body's lust,
And that by how much she strives to do him god
She shall undo her credit with the Moor.
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.
Iago, Othello (2.3)

soliloquy after talking to Cassio after the brawl

Plotting some more
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy.
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
Iago, Othello (3.3)

Planting jealousy in Othello's mind
King Lear is particularly useful as a source for investigating the question of critical data and for assessing some causes of critical disagreement because there are a number of traditional cruxes in this play for which any critic is likely to feel compelled to provide a solution. Some important ones are these: How are we to understand Lear's motivation in his opening scene? How Cordelia's? Is Gloucester's blinding dramatically justified? What is the relation between the Lear plot and the Gloucester subplot? What happens to the Fool? Why does Edgar delay before revealing himself to his father? Why does Gloucester set out for Dover? Why does France not return with Cordelia? Why must Cordelia die?
Stanley Cavell, "The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear"
Avoidance of love is always, or always begins as, an avoidance of a particular kind of love: Human beings do not just naturally not love, they learn not to. And our lives begin by having to accept under the name of love whatever closeness is offered, and by then having to forgo its object.
Stanley Cavell, "The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear"
...our actions have consequences which outrun our best, and worst, intentions. The drama of King Lear not merely embodies this theme, it comments on it, even deepens it. For what it shows is that the reason consequences furiously hunt us down is not merely that we are half blind, and unfortunate, but that we go on doing the thing which produced these consequences in the first place. What we need is not rebirth, or salvation, but the courage, or plain prudence, to see and to stop. To abdicate. But what do we need in order to that? It would be salvation.
Stanley Cavell, "The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear"
Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.
Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom; and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthened crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,
And you, our no less loving son of Albany
We have this hour a constant will to publish
Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife
May be prevented now. [...]
Tell me, my daughters -
Since now we will divest us, both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state -
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge.
King Lear (1.1)

The love test
What shall XXX speak? Love, and be silent.
Cordelia, King Lear (1.1)

Cordelia's first aside
A: [...} Speak.
B: Nothing, my lord.
A: Nothing?
B: Nothing.
A: Nothing will come of nothing, speak again.
Cordelia and King Lear (1.1)

Much of the tragedy comes form nothing
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more or less.
Cordelia, King Lear (1.1)
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Edmund, King Lear (1.1)

Edmund delivers this soliloquy just before he tricks his father, Gloucester, into believing that Gloucester’s legitimate son, Edgar, is plotting against him.
Deprived by his bastard birth of the respect and rank that he believes to be rightfully his, Edmund sets about raising himself by his own efforts, forging personal prosperity through treachery and betrayals.
He invokes “nature” because only in the unregulated, anarchic scheme of the natural world can one of such low birth achieve his goals.
Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
King Lear (1.1)

When King Lear disowns Cordelia, who refuses to say she loves her father the most, he "disclaim[s] all [his] paternal care" and insists that Cordelia is no more to Lear than a "barbarous Scythian" or a man that eats his parents and/or his children
[…] ever since thou madest thy
daughters thy mothers: for when thou gavest them
the rod, and put'st down thine own breeches
Fool, King Lear (1.4)

Lear's Fool (Lear's personal comedian) seems pretty smart when he points out that Lear's daughters became more like his "mother" when Lear gave up his power and his kingdom to them. The Fool notes that Lear might as well have pulled down his "breeches" (pants) and given his daughters a "rod" to spank him with.
But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manages his revenue.
Edmund, King Lear (1.2)

Edmund manipulating Gloucester against Edgar
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
Edmund, King Lear (1.2)

Scheming, manipulating Gloucester and Edgar
A: Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied--Ha! waking? 'tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?

B: Lear's shadow.
King Lear and Fool King Lear (1.4)

This question suggests that Lear doesn't quite know how to define himself now that he's lost all the power that comes with active kingship. In other words, Lear's retirement results in a kind of identity crisis.
The Fool's response is equally interesting. We can read the Fool's answer ("Lear's shadow") in a couple of ways. On the one hand, it could mean that the Fool, who is thought of as Lear's shadow (he follows or shadows Lear around the countryside) is the person who can tell Lear who he is. The Fool, after all, is the only person who ever tells it like it is and he knows Lear pretty well. Alternatively, we can read the line thus: Lear is nothing but a shadow, which suggests that Lear is merely a shadow of his former self.
I'll tell thee:
Life and death! I am ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus;
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee!
The untented woundings of a father's curse
Pierce every sense about thee! Old fond eyes,
Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck ye out,
And cast you, with the waters that you lose,
To temper clay. Yea, is it to come to this?
Let it be so. Yet have I left a daughter,
Who, I am sure is kind and comfortable.
When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails
She'll flay thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find
That I'll resume the shape which thou dost think
I have cast off for ever; thou shalt, I warrant thee.
King Lear (1.4)

When Goneril reduces Lear's retinue of knights (thus, reducing any power Lear had left after he divided his kingdom), Lear responds as though Goneril has emasculated him – he says his "manhood" has been shaken. For Lear, power and masculinity go hand and hand.
O, sir, you are old.
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine: you should be ruled and led
By some discretion, that discerns your state
Better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you,
That to our sister you do make return;
Say you have wrong'd her, sir.
Regan, King Lear (2.4)

When Regan points out that Lear is "old" and that his life ("nature") is on the verge of "her confine" (Lear doesn't have much longer to live), she implies that Lear's old age makes him unfit to rule a kingdom. Lear would be better off, says Goneril, if he let someone else take care of him.
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
King Lear (1.4)

Here, King Lear is enraged by his daughter's betrayal of him that he curses her with "sterility" (the inability to produce children). If, however, the gods decide she will have children, Lear says he hopes she experiences a painful labor and has a "thankless child" to make her miserable for the rest of her life.
Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to
care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a
figure: I am better than thou art now; I am a fool,
thou art nothing.
Fool, King Lear (1.4)
The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills,
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom!
That's something yet: XXX I nothing am.
Edgar, King Lear (2.3)

When Edgar disguises himself as "Poor Tom," an inmate of Bedlam hospital and the kind of guy who roams about the country "roaring" like a madman and begging for charity, his plight draws our attention to the homelessness in the play and in Shakespeare's England.
Here, Edgar strips himself down to the skin with only a "blanket" to cover his "loins," ties his hair in knots, and smears his face with mud so that he cannot be recognized. "Edgar I nothing am" he announces, meaning, 1) he's no longer Edgar and 2) now that he's a homeless wanderer, he is nothing.
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s . . .

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

If it be you that stir 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,

No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
Lear delivers these lines after he has been driven to the end of his rope by the cruelties of Goneril and Regan (2.4.259–281). He rages against them, explaining that their attempts to take away his knights and servants strike at his heart. “O, reason not the need!” he cries, explaining that humans would be no different from the animals if they did not need more than the fundamental necessities of life to be happy. Clearly, Lear needs knights and attendants not only because of the service that they provide him but because of what their presence represents: namely, his identity, both as a king and as a human being.
Go to; say you nothing. There's a division betwixt
the dukes; and a worse matter than that: I have
received a letter this night; 'tis dangerous to be
spoken; I have locked the letter in my closet:
these injuries the king now bears will be revenged
home; there's part of a power already footed: we
must incline to the king. I will seek him, and
privily relieve him: go you and maintain talk with
the duke, that my charity be not of him perceived:
if he ask for me. I am ill, and gone to bed.
Though I die for it, as no less is threatened me,
the king my old master must be relieved.
Gloucester, King Lear (3.3)

Loyalty
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just
King Lear (3.4)

This is an important moment for King Lear, who has never before contemplated the plight of homelessness. Here, he realizes that he hasn't done enough to solve the homeless problem in his kingdom as he acknowledges that, as king, he had the power and authority to do something about it. This is pretty extraordinary because it suggests that the acts of human beings are the things that prove "the heavens [to be] more just." In other words, there can only be justice in the world when human beings behave justly toward each other.
Quote #10
Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I'll have it come to question:
If he dislike it, let him to our sister,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-ruled. Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be used
With cheques as flatteries,--when they are seen abused.
Remember what I tell you.
Goneril, King Lear (1.3)

Here, Goneril talks about her retired father in a pretty condescending way that reveals some serious anger and resentment. She calls Lear an "idle old man" who is foolish enough to think that he still wields any power now that he's retired and has given his daughters all his land. According to Goneril, old men are just like babies – whiny, weak, and powerless.
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.
Gloucester, King Lear (4.1)

Gloucester speaks these words as he wanders on the heath after being blinded by Cornwall and Regan (4.1.37–38). They reflect the profound despair that grips him and drives him to desire his own death. More important, they emphasize one of the play’s chief themes—namely, the question of whether there is justice in the universe. Gloucester’s philosophical musing here offers an outlook of stark despair: he suggests that there is no order—or at least no good order—in the universe, and that man is incapable of imposing his own moral ideas upon the harsh and inflexible laws of the world. Instead of divine justice, there is only the “sport” of vicious, inscrutable gods, who reward cruelty and delight in suffering. In many ways, the events of the play bear out Gloucester’s understanding of the world, as the good die along with the wicked, and no reason is offered for the unbearable suffering that permeates the play.
O, matter and impertinency mixed!
Reason in madness.
Edgar, King Lear (4.6)

Upon seeing Lear go crazy
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!
Cordelia, King Lear (4.7)

As she bends over her ailing father to revive him with a kiss, Cordelia reveals that she has one of the kindest, loving hearts in English literature. Even after her father unfairly banished her, love and forgiveness come naturally.
Be your tears wet? yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
King Lear (4.7)

This is, perhaps, the most tender of moments in the play. When Lear awakens and finds his daughter at his bedside, he acknowledges the way he's hurt Cordelia and admits that she has "some cause" to wish him harm. Yet, despite everything, Cordelia finds it within herself to utter "no cause, no cause."
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth.
Lear (5.3)

Lear utters these words as he emerges from prison carrying Cordelia’s body in his arms (5.3.256–260). His howl of despair returns us again to the theme of justice, as he suggests that “heaven’s vault should crack” at his daughter’s death—but it does not, and no answers are offered to explain Cordelia’s unnecessary end. It is this final twist of the knife that makes King Lear such a powerful, unbearable play. We have seen Cordelia and Lear reunited in Act 4, and, at this point, all of the play’s villains have been killed off, leaving the audience to anticipate a happy ending. Instead, we have a corpse and a howling, ready-for-death old man. Indeed, the tension between Lear as powerful figure and Lear as animalistic madman explodes to the surface in Lear’s “Howl, howl, howl, howl,” a spoken rather than sounded vocalization of his primal instinct.
My name is Edgar, and thy father's son.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
The dark and vicious place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes.
Edgar, King Lear (5.3)

After Edgar mortally wounds his wicked brother, Edmund, he says "the gods are just" because they punish humans for their wrong doings. This seems to suggest that Edmund deserved what he got (a stab to the guts). Edgar also implies his father, Gloucester, got what he deserved for having an affair with Edmunds mother. Remember, Gloucester's eyes were plucked out after he was accused of treason, and he fathered a wicked child, Edmund, who betrayed him.
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
King Lear (5.3)

In the play, Shakespeare refuses to console us with his answer because there simply is no good explanation for why Cordelia is dead while creatures with less to offer the world get to live. In other words, Cordelia's death, like so many others, simply isn't fair
Hence is is that, when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, when the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate in heard, and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them.
Thomas de Quincy, "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth"
For both heroes heroic masculinity turns on leaving the mother behind. Or on seeming to leave her behind: for both plays construct the exaggerated masculinity of their heroes simultaneously as an attempt to separate from the mother and as the playing out of her bloodthirsty will; both enact the paradox through which the son is never more the mother's creature than when he attempts to escape her.
Janet Adelman, "Escaping the Matrix: The Construction of Masculinity in Macbeth and Coriolanus"
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of a man that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
Macbeth (1.3)

After hearing that he has been given title of Thane of Cawdor. Role of fantastical and imagination. Already thinking of murder and it tears him apart.
The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
Macbeth (1.5)

Once he learns that King Duncan has named Malcolm the Prince of Cumberland and heir to the crown of Scotland, Macbeth isn't content to wait around for "chance" to intervene. He decides that he must take action, or "o'erleap" the obstacles in his path to the throne. By murder.
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it [...]
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.
Lady Macbeth (1.5)

After reading Macbeth's letter (which recounts the witches' prophesy), Lady Macbeth's thoughts immediately turn to murder. Problem: Macbeth has ambition, but he doesn’t have the nerve to see it through. Luckily Lady Macbeth is man enough for both of them.
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 th’access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring 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!’
Lady Macbeth (1.5)

Lady Macbeth speaks these words in Act 1, scene 5, lines 36–52, as she awaits the arrival of King Duncan at her castle. We have previously seen Macbeth’s uncertainty about whether he should take the crown by killing Duncan. In this speech, there is no such confusion, as Lady Macbeth is clearly willing to do whatever is necessary to seize the throne. Her strength of purpose is contrasted with her husband’s tendency to waver. This speech shows the audience that Lady Macbeth is the real steel behind Macbeth and that her ambition will be strong enough to drive her husband forward.
2. 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 the 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, [...
Macbeth (1.7)

Macbeth debates whether he should kill Duncan. When he lists Duncan’s noble qualities (he “[h]ath borne his faculties so meek”) and the loyalty that he feels toward his king (“I am his kinsman and his subject”), we are reminded of just how grave an outrage it is for the couple to slaughter their ruler while he is a guest in their house. At the same time, Macbeth’s fear foreshadows the way that his deeds will eventually come back to haunt him. The imagery in this speech is dark—we hear of “bloody instructions,” “deep damnation,” and a “poisoned chalice”—and suggests that Macbeth is aware of how the murder would open the door to a dark and sinful world. At the same time, he admits that his only reason for committing murder, “ambition,” suddenly seems an insufficient justification for the act. The destruction that comes from unchecked ambition
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 afeard
To be the same in 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?
Lady Macbeth (1.7)
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 much 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.
Lady Macbeth (1.7)

Here, Lady Macbeth takes breastfeeding —one of the fundamental biological traits of women as the Early Modern period saw it—makes it monstrous. She says that she's so good at keeping promises that she would actually kill a nursing child if she'd promised to do it.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made foold o'th' other senses
Macbeth (2.1)

Right before he murders Duncan. Role of the fantastical. imagination
Whence is that knocking?—
How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?
What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Macbeth (2.2)

He has just murdered Duncan, and the crime was accompanied by supernatural portents. Now he hears a mysterious knocking on his gate, which seems to promise doom. (In fact, the person knocking is Macduff, who will indeed eventually destroy Macbeth.) The enormity of Macbeth’s crime has awakened in him a powerful sense of guilt that will hound him throughout the play. Blood, specifically Duncan’s blood, serves as the symbol of that guilt, and Macbeth’s sense that “all great Neptune’s ocean” cannot cleanse him—that there is enough blood on his hands to turn the entire sea red—will stay with him until his death. Lady Macbeth’s response to this speech will be her prosaic remark, “A little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.65). By the end of the play, however, she will share Macbeth’s sense that Duncan’s murder has irreparably stained them with blood.
Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, As the weird women promised, and I fear Thou play'dst most foully for't; yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity, But that myself should be the root and father Of many kings. If there come truth from them (As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine) Why, by the verities on thee made good, May they not be my oracles as well And set me up in hope? But hush, no more.
Banquo, Macbeth (3.1)

Sure, Banquo didn't murder anyone for self gain, but he may not be as honorable as he seems. He suspects Macbeth of foul play, but does he tell anyone? No. In fact, he tells himself to "hush"
O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear: This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, Impostors to true fear, would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire, Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself! Why do you make such faces? When all's done, You look but on a stool.
Lady Macbeth (3.4)

Calling Macbeth out for looking weird when he sees ghost at the dinner table.
Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two,—why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
Lady Macbeth (5.1)

she sleepwalks through Macbeth’s castle on the eve of his battle against Macduff and Malcolm. Earlier in the play, she possessed a stronger resolve and sense of purpose than her husband and was the driving force behind their plot to kill Duncan. When Macbeth believed his hand was irreversibly bloodstained earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth had told him, “A little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.65). Now, however, she too sees blood. She is completely undone by guilt and descends into madness. It may be a reflection of her mental and emotional state that she is not speaking in verse; this is one of the few moments in the play when a major character—save for the witches, who speak in four-foot couplets—strays from iambic pentameter. Her inability to sleep was foreshadowed in the voice that her husband thought he heard while killing the king—a voice crying out that Macbeth was murdering sleep.
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth (5.5)

These words are uttered by Macbeth after he hears of Lady Macbeth’s death, in Act 5, scene 5, lines 16–27. Given the great love between them, his response is oddly muted, but it segues quickly into a speech of such pessimism and despair—one of the most famous speeches in all of Shakespeare—that the audience realizes how completely his wife’s passing and the ruin of his power have undone Macbeth. His speech insists that there is no meaning or purpose in life. Rather, life “is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” One can easily understand how, with his wife dead and armies marching against him, Macbeth succumbs to such pessimism. Yet, there is also a defensive and self-justifying quality to his words. If everything is meaningless, then Macbeth’s awful crimes are somehow made less awful, because, like everything else, they too “signify nothing.”
Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth (5.5)
Such passages resonate with the Roman view of her as a predator, but they also remind us that Cleopatra is not Anthony's Egyptian conquest. The role reversal complicates the pattern of representing the colonized land as a sexually available female.
Loomba, "The Imperial Romance of Anthony and Cleopatra"
It draws attention to the politics of performance - who is allowed to perform? Who is allowed to represent and appropriate others? Whose performance is effective?
Loomba, "The Imperial Romance of Anthony and Cleopatra"
Antony's fatal attraction to Cleopatra speaks to contemporary English fears about the erosion of racial identity and masculinity.
Loomba, "The Imperial Romance of Anthony and Cleopatra"
The play suggests that to be an Egyptian or a Roman is to play certain roles which are defined by their difference from one another. But this does not mean that these roles can be chosen at will, put on and discarded when one likes. Rather, they are shaped by long histories as well as political and cultural antagonisms. Individuals give these roles their peculiar meanings and force, but do not entirely control them. By showing us how identities which we call ethnic, or cultural or racial are fluid and yet not, for that reason, easy to manipulate, Antony and Cleopatra captures the contradiction that lies at the heart of race.
Loomba, "The Imperial Romance of Anthony and Cleopatra"
I will to Egypt;
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I' th' East my pleasure lies.
Antony

Antony makes this proclamation after listening to a soothsayer tell him Caesar’s fortunes are better than his, so he should go to Egypt. It’s a rare case where reason coincides with passion; Antony proclaims he’ll go to Egypt, not because of the reason the soothsayer has given him, but because his love and pleasure is there.
But stirr'd by Cleopatra.
Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours,
Let's not confound the time with conference harsh:
There's not a minute of our lives should stretch
Without some pleasure now. What sport tonight?
Antony talking to Cleopatra (1.2)

Antony’s reputation at one time rested on his noble work as a soldier, with all the Roman austerity and severity that came with it. His life in Egypt (or his love) has transformed him into a man that wants pleasure all the time, which is indulgent, but also completely contrary to the Roman way.
Why should I think you can be mine and true,
Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,
Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness,
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
Which break themselves in swearing!
Cleopatra (1.3)

Cleopatra recognizes that Fulvia’s marriage to Antony should carry more weight than her love as his mistress, but she still feels betrayed by Antony’s recognition of this fact. Worse, she admits she should never have expected Antony to be loyal to her, when Antony wasn’t even loyal to his wife.
Courteous lord, one word.
Sir, you and I must part- but that's not it.
Sir, you and I have lov'd- but there's not it.
That you know well. Something it is I would-
O, my oblivion is a very Antony,
And I am all forgotten!
Sometimes love steals our words from us. It seems the nature of love is to be driven to distraction, even for the best of us.
Let’s grant it is not
Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,
To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit
And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,
To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet
With knaves that smells of sweat. Say this becomes him—
As his composure must be rare indeed
Whom these things cannot blemish—yet must Antony
No way excuse his foils when we do bear
So great a weight in his lightness. If he filled
His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones
Call on him for’t. But to confound such time
That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud
As his own state and ours—’tis to be chid
As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to the present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgement.
n Act I, scene iv, Caesar meets with Lepidus to discuss the threat that Pompey poses to the empire. Here, he chastises Antony for staying in Egypt, where he pursues pleasure at the expense of his duty to the state. Caesar’s speech is significant for two reasons. First, it defines the Western sensibilities against which Cleopatra’s Egypt is judged and by which Antony is ultimately measured. As Caesar dismisses Antony’s passion for Cleopatra as boyish irresponsibility, he asserts the Roman expectation of duty over pleasure, reason over emotion. These competing worlds and worldviews provide the framework for understanding the coming clashes between Caesar and Antony, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cleopatra and Caesar.
Second, Caesar’s speech to Lepidus is significant for its suggestion that the oppositional worlds delineated here are a result of perception.
You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,
It is not Caesar's natural vice to hate
Our great competitor. From Alexandria
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he;
Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra (1.4)

Caesar criticizes Antony’s decadent actions in Egypt, but the hint is that these are things natural to Egypt (and thus unbefitting a Roman). This decadence is also characterized by its femininity, which is linked to an Eastern way of life, and a polar opposite to the Roman austere ideal, which is linked to masculinity.
I must not think there are
Evils enow to darken all his goodness.
His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,
More fiery by night's blackness; hereditary
Rather than purchas'd; what he cannot change
Than what he chooses.
Ledpius, Antony and Cleopatra (1.4)

Lepidus is loyal to a fault, and always trying to see the sunny side of things. This is in contrast to Caesar’s very practical acts of betrayal. Even in this early scene, we get the sense that Lepidus’s loyalty and trust will lead him to be betrayed.
My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
To say as I said then
Cleopatra (1.5)

Cleopatra and Charmian compare Cleopatra’s love for Antony with her love for Julius Caesar. Charmian points out that she once cried over Julius Caesar as she does now over Antony. Cleopatra counters that the former love affair was just the bad judgment of youth.
O Charmian,
Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?
Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?
O happy horse, to bear the weight of XXX!
Do bravely, horse; for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st?
The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
And burgonet of men.
Cleopatra (1.5) talking to Charmian

Cleopatra is clearly a lovesick puppy, but in her swooning over Antony, she calls him a demi-Atlas. Remember that Atlas bears the world on his shoulders, which Hercules did in a myth for at least a few minutes. Antony claims Hercules as his ancestor, and it seems Cleopatra is conscious of that power he holds and is enchanted by it as much as any other part of him.
I should have known no less.
It hath been taught us from the primal state
That he which is was wish'd until he were;
And the ebb'd man, ne'er lov'd till ne'er worth love,
Comes dear'd by being lack'd.
Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra (1.4)

Caesar repeats what’s become a motif in the play: men out of power are wished into power until they get there, and men in power are never missed or appreciated until they’ve left it. People are ungrateful, or unable to see the good in front of them, especially when it comes to those who rule them. It’s easier to complain against those in power than to praise their good.
Those his goodly eyes,
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front. His captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy's lust.
Philo, Antony and Cleopatra (1.1)

Antony’s men marvel at the change that’s come over him, how his temper rages and cools to suit Cleopatra’s needs. They claim love has made him a fool, but what of the idea that his life has been transformed and given new meaning by this new love? He no longer has to dwell on Roman power, but instead can stop repressing his human feelings.
See where he is, who's with him, what he does.
I did not send you. If you find him sad,
Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick.
Cleopatra (1.3)

Cleopatra is again tempestuous – she constantly judges how Antony should see her and transforms herself accordingly. She’s not driven by the truth of how she’s feeling, but how she imagines she should feel or be given the circumstances of their relationship.

Theatricality
XXX,
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink
The stale of horses and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou brows'd. On the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on. And all this-
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now-
Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.
Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra (1.4)

Caesar describes just how ideal Antony used to be, which emphasizes how much he has changed by avoiding his duty as a soldier. Love has transformed Antony into a less-than-ideal Roman.
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description. She did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold, of tissue,
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy out-work nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
Enobarbus, Antony and Cleopatra (2.2)

The barge speech!
Egypt is the seat of decadence, but there’s more tied into this Orientalism than material excess. Enobarbus’s description betrays the fact that the winds and waters, even the creatures of heavenly thoughts (like cherubs and mermaids) attend to the Queen. He touches on the heart of Orientalism’s duality. It might seem contrary to man’s living that he be so decked with material goods (instead of human assets, like love, honor, etc.), but actually the Orientalist view is that nature is lush and when people revel in that lushness, they worship nature, not man. Unlike the Roman view, celebrating the good and rich world around you doesn’t detract from your goodness, but is a necessary part of it.
Upon her landing Antony sent to her,
Invited her to supper. She replied
It should be better he became her guest,
Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,
Whom ne’er the word of ‘No’ woman heard speak,
Being barbered ten times o’er, goes to the feast,
And for his ordinary pays his heart
For what his eyes eat only.
. . .
I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street,
And having lost her breath, she spoke and panted,
That she did make defect perfection,
And breathless, pour forth breath.
. . .
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. For vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
Enobarbus, Antony and Cleopatra (2.2) speaking to Agrippa

Enobarbus makes this speech, one of the most famous of the play. The lines before this oft-quoted passage begin with the description of Cleopatra floating down the Nile on her gilded barge. Enobarbus moves on to tell the men gathered on Pompey’s ship how Antony met Cleopatra. It seems that the general, particularly susceptible to the wants of women, fell under the queen’s spell immediately. Whatever power Antony had in relation to the queen, he surrenders it almost immediately—in fact, before the two even meet
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
Enobarbus, Antony and Cleopatra (2.2)

Maecenas and Enobarbus’s conversation highlights the contrast between Octavia and Cleopatra. They represent two different types, as linked to the ideals of their home cultures, and those cultures’ expectations and judgments of women’s gender identities. In Egypt, Cleopatra’s "riggishness," or her propensity for sex, is a thing to be blessed by the priests. Her sexual desire isn’t foul, but rather fits her nature (which isn’t foul either). Octavia, by contrast, is wise and modest, which is a comparison to Cleopatra’s rashness and flashiness. Still, the play doesn’t set these personal characteristics up in a hierarchy with one is better than the other.
To hold you in perpetual amity,
To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
With an unslipping knot, take Antony
Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims
No worse a husband than the best of men;
Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
That which none else can utter. By this marriage
All little jealousies, which now seem great,
And all great fears, which now import their dangers,
Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales,
Where now half tales be truths. Her love to both
Would each to other, and all loves to both,
Draw after her.
Agrippa, Antony and Cleopatra (2.2)

Agrippa seizes on the notion that the love of a woman can hold everyone together. He hopes Octavia might be the bond that keeps her brother and her husband attached to each other, as she would love them both dearly. Sadly, we know that love does not conquer all in this play, as it is too often confounded by questions of power and politics.
My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope
Says it will come to th' full. Mark Antony
In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make
No wars without doors. Caesar gets money where
He loses hearts. Lepidus flatters both,
Of both is flatter'd; but he neither loves,
Nor either cares for him.
Pompey (2.1)

Pompey knows his powers are strong by themselves, but they’re helped by the sorry state of his enemies. Antony’s power is hurt by his devotion to Egypt, Caesar is deceived and gains money from his people through their fear rather than love, and Lepidus simply has no power. Power is diminished by diverse causes.
Noble friends,
That which combin'd us was most great, and let not
A leaner action rend us. What's amiss,
May it be gently heard. When we debate
Our trivial difference loud, we do commit
Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners,
The rather for I earnestly beseech,
Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,
Nor curstness grow to th' matter.
Lepidus, Antony and Cleopatra (2.2)

Lepidus appeals to the friendship between the three men as the basis for their civility.
There is my hand.
A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother
Did ever love so dearly. Let her live
To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never
Fly off our loves again!
Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra (2.2)

Caesar pledges he and Antony will be joined by Octavia, as he loves her dearly. Yet no sooner than Antony leaves for Athens do we hear that Caesar has already moved to betray Antony. Octavia’s own brother should be more tied to his declared bond of love for her than to immediately start a war with her new husband.
I will to Egypt;
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I' th' East my pleasure lies.
Antony, Antony and Cleopatra (2.5)

Antony makes this proclamation after listening to a soothsayer tell him Caesar’s fortunes are better than his, so he should go to Egypt. It’s a rare case where reason coincides with passion; Antony proclaims he’ll go to Egypt, not because of the reason the soothsayer has given him, but because his love and pleasure is there.
Give me mine angle. We'll to th' river. There,
My music playing far off, I will betray
Tawny-finned fishes. My bended hooks shall pierce
Their slimy jaws, and as I draw them up
I'll think them every one an XXX,
And say, 'Ah ha, you're caught!'
Cleopatra (2.5)

Talking to her friends. Fishing for Antony.
He
will to his Egyptian dish again; then shall the sighs of Octavia
blow the fire up in Caesar, and, as I said before, that which is
the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of
their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is; he
married but his occasion here.
Enobarbus, Antony and Cleopatra (2.6) talking to Menas

Enobarbus and Menas confer on Antony’s marriage to Octavia, noting that it will not add to the loyalty between Caesar and Antony, but only push them into further hatred because Antony is bound to leave Octavia for Cleopatra. Additionally, Octavia’s disposition doesn’t suit Antony; he will be loyal to Cleopatra because they share the passion that Octavia lacks. Loyalty has to be founded in something, and for Antony and Cleopatra, it’s based on their mutual passion.
The beds i' th' East are soft; and thanks to you,
That call'd me timelier than my purpose hither;
For I have gained by't.
Antony (2.6), Antony and Cleopatra
Talking to Pompey

Antony thanks Pompey for being the occasion by which he is a changed man – he wouldn’t have left the East if there hadn’t been something worthy to draw his attention to his duty as a soldier over his pleasure as a lover.
You take from me a great part of myself.
Use me well in’t. Sister, prove such a wife
As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest bond
Shall pass on thy aproof. Most noble Antony,
Let not the piece of virtue which is set
Betwixt us as the cement of our love
To keep it builded, be the ram to batter
The fortress of it; for better might we
Have loved without this mean if on both parts
This be not cherished.
Caesar (3.2)

Caesar offers Antony his sister. Following the advice that Agrippa offers him in Act II, scene ii, Caesar offers Antony his sister, Octavia, as a means of securing peace between them. This gesture attests to the power that men ascribe to women and female sexuality in this play. What men consider the wrong kind of female sexuality—embodied proudly and openly by Cleopatra—stands as a threat to men, their reason, and sense of duty. What they consider the right kind, however, as represented by the modest “piece of virtue” Octavia, promises to be “the cement” of Caesar’s love for Antony. Caesar’s language, here, is particularly important: the words he chooses to describe Antony’s union to Octavia and, by extension, his reunion with Caesar, belong to the vocabulary of builders:
What though you fled
From that great face of war, whose several ranges
Frighted each other? Why should he follow?
The itch of his affection should not then
Have nick'd his captainship, at such a point,
When half to half the world oppos'd, he being
The mered question. 'Twas a shame no less
Than was his loss, to course your flying flags
And leave his navy gazing.
Enobarbus, Antony and Cleopatra (3.13)

Enobarbus seems rather enraged by Antony’s own lack of reason or willpower. (Enobarbus uses "will" to refer to Antony’s desire.) In fleeing along with Cleopatra, Antony let his passion overrule his reason. Enobarbus charges he had no reason to do this, and in following his passion, Antony has incurred shame as well as loss.
Fare thee well, dame, whate'er becomes of me.
This is a soldier's kiss. Rebukeable,
And worthy shameful check it were, to stand
On more mechanic compliment; I'll leave thee
Now like a man of steel.
Antony (4.4)

Antony doesn’t dote, but leaves Cleopatra in an austere and honorable fashion, as a gallant man going to face his fate, armed with his confidence, not pride. The call of the battle has reaffirmed his manhood that had previously been called into question.
A more unhappy lady,
If this division chance, ne'er stood between,
Praying for both parts.
The good gods will mock me presently
When I shall pray 'O, bless my lord and husband!'
Undo that prayer by crying out as loud
'O, bless my brother!' Husband win, win brother,
Prays, and destroys the prayer; no mid-way
'Twixt these extremes at all.
Octavia, Antony and Cleopatra (3.4)

Octavia refuses to choose between her brother and her husband; her loyalty to both is driven by her love for both. She’s honorable and pitiable to be so loyal in a time so guided by treachery and betrayal.
Egypt, thou knew'st too well
My heart was to thy rudder tied by th' strings,
And thou shouldst tow me after. O'er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knew'st, and that
Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods
Command me.
Antony (3.11), Antony and Cleopatra

Love and power are inextricably tied. Antony’s love for Cleopatra forces him to follow her. She is the commander of his actions, even in the political and military arenas of his life, because of his overpowering love for her.
Friends, be gone;
I have myself resolv'd upon a course
Which has no need of you; be gone.
My treasure's in the harbour, take it. O,
I follow'd that I blush to look upon.
My very hairs do mutiny; for the white
Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them
For fear and doting.
Antony (3.11), Antony and Cleopatra

Antony rails against himself for becoming a different person – he’s just fled the sea battle chasing after Cleopatra, and he admits he’s no longer a respectable soldier. Further, even his transformation into old age rebels against him – his wiser side (white hairs) condemns his youth (brown hairs) for their rashness, and his youth condemns his age for it’s cowardice in the battle, and the fact that his age lets his affection for Cleopatra overpower his strength and nobility.
4. Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish,
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon’t that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper’s pageants.
. . .
That which is now a horse even with a thought
The rack disdains, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water.
. . .
Here I am Antony,
Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
I made these wars for Egypt, and the Queen—
Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine,
Which whilst it was mine had annexed unto’t
A million more, now lost—she, Eros, has
Packed cards with Caesar, and false-played my glory
Unto an enemy’s triumph.
Nay, weep not, gentle Eros. There is left us
Ourselves to end ourselves.
After Cleopatra’s ships abandon Antony in battle for the second time, the general faces the greatest defeat of his military career. Antony is accustomed only to victory, and his understanding of self leaves little room for defeat, either on the battlefield or in terms of love. As a Roman, Antony has a rigid perception of himself: he must live within the narrowly defined confines of the victor and hero or not live at all. Here, he complains to his trusted attendant, Eros, about the shifting of his identity. He feels himself helplessly changing, morphing from one man to another like a cloud that turns from a dragon to a bear to a lion as it moves across the sky. He tries desperately to cling to himself—”Here I am Antony”—but laments he “cannot hold this visible shape.” Left without military might or Cleopatra, Antony loses his sense of who he is. Rather than amend his identity to incorporate this loss, rather than become an Antony conquered, he chooses to end his life. In the end, he cli
I am alone the villain of the earth,
And feel I am so most. O XXX,
Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid
My better service, when my turpitude
Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.
If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean
Shall outstrike thought; but thought will do't, I feel.
I fight against thee? No! I will go seek
Some ditch wherein to die; the foul'st best fits
My latter part of life.
Enobarbus (4.6)

Enobarbus feels how deeply his betrayal runs when Antony shows how deeply his loyalty goes. Even betrayed, Antony is understanding, and tries to do right by his friend. Antony blames himself rather than the traitor, and so teaches Enobarbus a lesson in true loyalty.
Triple-turn'd whore! 'tis thou
Hast sold me to this novice; and my heart
Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly;
For when I am reveng'd upon my charm,
I have done all.
Antony (4.12)

Antony believes Cleopatra has betrayed him, causing him to lose the battle. He does not blame the soldiers for their actions, but Cleopatra alone. That Antony calls Cleopatra a "triple turn’d whore" is particularly interesting – he refers to the fact that she’s had three lovers, and likely treated the two before him with the same kind of indignity. Had she been faithful (to them or their memory), she would never have been available to him.
My good knave Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body. Here I am Antony;
Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.
I made these wars for Egypt; and the Queen-
Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine,
Which, whilst it was mine, had annex'd unto't
A million moe, now lost- she, Eros, has
Pack'd cards with Caesar, and false-play'd my glory
Unto an enemy's triumph.
Antony (4.15)

Antony’s failure has transformed him from the strong and resolute man he once was; now he is no more substantial than the clouds. He has also changed his thoughts on Cleopatra; thinking he now sees her as she really is, he realizes she made him a fool, and it has cost him his honor.
The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I liv'd the greatest prince o' th' world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman- a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going
I can no more.
Antony (4.16) -> his last words

Antony’s final act of suicide, though it was induced by others and not himself, is held up as a vindicating act. He seems to think that, because he took his own life, he is carrying on the tradition of nobility that characterized his life. He also admits that he’s now a broken man.
No more but e'en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks
And does the meanest chores. It were for me
To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods,
To tell them that this world did equal theirs
Till they had stol'n our jewel. All's but naught.
Patience is scottish, and impatience does
Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin
To rush into the secret house of death
Ere death dare come to us? [...]
Our lamp is spent, it's out! Good sirs, take heart.
We'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's noble,
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us.
Cleopatra's words after Antony's death (4.16)

Cleopatra thinks of the nobility of a Roman burial (which is a big deal, because she’s really serious about being Egyptian), but she also alludes to the fact that she’ll kill herself. Interestingly, she describes her suicide as a Roman death, characterized by honor, nobility, and sacrifice. It’s important that this is contrary to the relaxed Egyptian view: there’s a kernel of evidence here that Antony’s Roman-ness might have affected Cleopatra, where all other evidence seems to indicate that Antony was only being changed by Egypt. This is especially cool if you think about it as the basis for an argument that Antony is a true representative of Rome. It makes sense that Egypt should impact Antony, because he lives there, but if Antony is able to spread Roman values, even when he’s out of Rome and surrounded by Egyptians, then his Roman values are strong indeed.
The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack. The rived world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens. The death of XXX
Is not a single doom; in the name lay
A moiety of the world.
Caesar's words in response to Antony's death (5.1)

Antony's death doesn't crack the world as Caesar would expect
Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors
Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers
Ballad us out o’ tune. The quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us, and present
Our Alexandrian revels. Antony
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I’ th’ posture of a whore.
Cleopatra (5.2)

Soon after Antony’s death, Cleopatra determines to follow her lover into the afterlife. She commits to killing herself and, in Act V, scene ii, convinces her handmaids of the rightness of this decision. She conjures up a horrific image of the humiliation that awaits her as Caesar’s trophy, employing the vocabulary of the theater, fearing that “quick comedians / Extemporally will stage us.” She imagines that Antony will be played as a drunk, and a squeaking boy will portray her as a whore. Given that, throughout the play, Cleopatra is a consummate actress—we are never quite sure how much of her emotion is genuine and how much theatrical fireworks—her refusal to let either Antony or herself be portrayed in such a way is especially significant. To Cleopatra, the Roman understanding of her character and her relationship with Antony is a gross and unacceptable wrong. It does not mesh with the grandness of her self--perception—rather than being a queen of the order of Isis
Shall they hoist me up,
And show me to the shouting varletry
Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus' mud
Lay me stark-nak'd, and let the water-flies
Blow me into abhorring! Rather make
My country's high pyramides my gibbet,
And hang me up in chains!
Cleopatra is loyal to Egypt until the end. It isn’t just her temperament, but her heart that’s Egyptian. She would rather die an ignoble death in Egypt than suffer through a victory parade for Rome that would signify Egypt’s submission to that empire.
Quote #9
CLEOPATRA
His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear'd arm
Crested the world. His voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like: they show'd his back above
The element they liv'd in. In his livery
Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropp'd from his pocket.
Cleopatra dreams of Antony after he dies

Now that Antony is finally gone for good, Cleopatra can heap all the praise on him that she didn’t dare while he lived. She was once afraid that being honest about her feelings would push him away.
You taught me language, and my profit on’t
Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
Caliban (1.2)

This speech, delivered by Caliban to Prospero and Miranda, makes clear in a very concise form the vexed relationship between the colonized and the colonizer that lies at the heart of this play. The son of a witch, perhaps half-man and half-monster, his name a near-anagram of “cannibal,” Caliban is an archetypal “savage” figure in a play that is much concerned with colonization and the controlling of wild environments. Caliban and Prospero have different narratives to explain their current relationship. Caliban sees Prospero as purely oppressive while Prospero claims that he has cared for and educated Caliban, or did until Caliban tried to rape Miranda. Prospero’s narrative is one in which Caliban remains ungrateful for the help and civilization he has received from the Milanese Duke. Language, for Prospero and Miranda, is a means to knowing oneself, and Caliban has in their view shown nothing but scorn for this precious gift.
There be some sports are painful, and their labour
Delight in them sets off. Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends. This my mean task
Would be as heavy to me as odious, but
The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead
And makes my labours pleasures.
Ferdinand speaks these words to Miranda, as he expresses his willingness to perform the task Prospero has set him to, for her sake. The Tempest is very much about compromise and balance. Prospero must spend twelve years on an island in order to regain his dukedom; Alonso must seem to lose his son in order to be forgiven for his treachery; Ariel must serve Prospero in order to be set free; and Ferdinand must suffer Prospero’s feigned wrath in order to reap true joy from his love for Miranda.
[I weep] at mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give, and much less take
What I shall die to want. But this is trifling,
And all the more it seeks to hide itself
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning,
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence.
I am your wife, if you will marry me.
If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow
You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant
Whether you will or no
Miranda delivers this speech to Ferdinand in Act III, scene i, declaring her undying love for him. Remarkably, she does not merely propose marriage, she practically insists upon it. This is one of two times in the play that Miranda seems to break out of the predictable character she has developed under the influence of her father’s magic. The first time is in Act I, scene ii, when she scolds Caliban for his ingratitude to her after all the time she has spent teaching him to speak. In the speech quoted above, as in Act I, scene ii, Miranda seems to come to a point at which she can no longer hold inside what she thinks. It is not that her desires get the better of her
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again
This speech is Caliban’s explanation to Stephano and Trinculo of mysterious music that they hear by magic. Though he claims that the chief virtue of his newly learned language is that it allows him to curse, Caliban here shows himself capable of using speech in a most sensitive and beautiful fashion. This speech is generally considered to be one of the most poetic in the play, and it is remarkable that Shakespeare chose to put it in the mouth of the drunken man-monster. Just when Caliban seems to have debased himself completely and to have become a purely ridiculous figure, Shakespeare gives him this speech and reminds the audience that Caliban has something within himself that Prospero, Stephano, Trinculo, and the audience itself generally cannot, or refuse to, see. It is unclear whether the “noises” Caliban discusses are the noises of the island itself or noises, like the music of the invisible Ariel, that are a result of Prospero’s magic.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Prospero speaks these lines just after he remembers the plot against his life and sends the wedding masque away in order to deal with that plot. The sadness in the tone of the speech seems to be related to Prospero’s surprising forgetfulness at this crucial moment in the play: he is so swept up in his own visions, in the power of his own magic, that for a moment he forgets the business of real life. From this point on, Prospero talks repeatedly of the “end” of his “labours” (IV.i.260), and of breaking his staff and drowning his magic book (V.i.54–57). One of Prospero’s goals in bringing his former enemies to the island seems to be to extricate himself from a position of near absolute power, where the concerns of real life have not affected him. He looks forward to returning to Milan, where “every third thought shall be my grave” (V.i.315). In addition, it is with a sense of relief that he announces in the epilogue that he has given up his magic powers.
Know thus far forth.
By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,
Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore; and by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence
If now I court not but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.
Prospero's magic does not rely on his ability alone. Instead, nature has a great impact on his ability, and he is humbled and attendant to this fact. He also realizes that, though he is powerful, he is not omnipotent, and he is accordingly respectful of nature.
What? I say,
My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor;
Who makest a show but darest not strike, thy conscience
Is so possess'd with guilt: come from thy ward,
For I can here disarm thee with this stick
And make thy weapon drop.
Prospero here uses his magic to protect him in a very simple way, though obviously he is much more powerful than this action implies. He is willing to use his magic as a dumb-show when necessary, in this case to convince Ferdinand that he's not playing around.
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art.
Before Prospero announces his plans to retire, he delivers a stunning speech that recalls the ways in which he's used his art to harness the forces of nature.
But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.
Here, Prospero promises to break his staff and give up his magic forever but immediately after delivering this speech, Prospero holds Alonso in a "charm" and later orders Ariel to make sure the seas are calm so the cast can enjoy a peaceful and safe passage back to Italy.
Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
If The Tempest is read, as it often is, as a celebration of creativity and art, the aging Shakespeare’s swan song to the theater, then this closing benediction may have a much broader application than just to this play, referring to the breadth of humanity that inspired the breadth of Shakespeare’s characters. Similarly, Prospero’s final request for applause in the monologue functions as a request for forgiveness, not merely for the wrongs he has committed in this play. It also requests forgiveness for the beneficent tyranny of creativity itself, in which an author, like a Prospero, moves people at his will, controls the minds of others, creates situations to suit his aims, and arranges outcomes entirely in the service of his own idea of goodness or justice or beauty.
When the sea is. Hence! What cares these
roarers for the name of king? To cabin! silence!
trouble us not.
Boatswain, The Tempest

In nature, none of the rules apply from the court. Court members must adjust to the fact that nature is the great equalizer.
I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty—
Gonzalo has hit upon the primary problem with egalitarian rule: If it is based on egalitarian standards and rules that originate by nature, not law, then there can be no ruler who sets such laws.
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
Antonio, The Tempest

Being sea-swallowed and removed from the court gives the traitors the freedom to do what would otherwise be an unthinkable act. The island has no rules.
Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in't which
good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deservedly confined into this rock,
Who hadst deserved more than a prison.
Miranda

Here, the speaker suggests that because Caliban had no language of his own when Prospero and Miranda arrived on the island, he somehow deserves to be a slave "confined into this rock." Scholars often point out that this is the same kind of rationale European colonizers used to enslave new world inhabitants.
The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further.
Prospero is honest here, as he forgives everyone that's wronged him as soon as they're in front of him. It is pretty clear, though, that neither Antonio nor Sebastian is penitent about their awful behavior. Does it make sense that Prospero entirely ignores this?
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:
Lingering 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-sorrow
And a clear life ensuing
Harpy? (3.3)

hat is the purpose of Prospero furthering Alonso's belief that Ferdinand is dead? This seems particularly merciless, and it makes Prospero seem as though he wants his enemies to suffer before he forgives them. Does this undermine the very point of being merciful and forgiving? Does this also indicate that his decision to choose virtue over vengeance later is entirely because of Ariel's persuasion?
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 such-like valour men hang and drown
Their proper selves.
Ariel (3.3)

Anyone whose conscience yelled at him for being a traitor would see this reality as a punishment for his wrongdoing. Sebastian and Antonio have such warped views of reality that only Alonso actually benefits from the reality check of the harpy. The other men have no consciences worth noting, and feel their reality is beyond moral consequence.