Twelfth Night Love Quotes

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more: 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe'er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical.

a young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief

Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.

How does he love me? With adoration, with fertile tears, With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.

She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; and, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say more, swear more; but indeed our shows are more than will; for we still prove much in our vows but little in our love.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you? Sebastian: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.

But rather reason thus with reason fetter: Love sough is good but given unsought is better.

I pity you That's a degree to love

A murderer's guilt is easier to hide than feelings of love. Midday is like nighttime for love—that's how brightly passion shines.

I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love   To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.

Too well what love women to men may owe. In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter loved a man – As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship.

Observe him, for the love of mockery

Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times Thou never shouldst love woman like to me. VIOLA:And all those sayings will I overswear; And those swearings keep as true in soul As doth that orbèd continent the fire That severs day from night.

By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall carve of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.

Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses, whose fair flower, Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.

Love's night is noon.

What use are tears? Ying had murmured to her once, back when they had just crossed their twelfth cycle of life and the wounds of Lan’s losses still cut deep every night. The dead will neither feel them nor be called by them. Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.

see you what you are, you are too proud. 240   But if you were the devil, you are fair. My lord and master loves you – O, such love Could be but recompensed, though you were crowned The nonpareil of beauty!

When I was a boy in the midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them. I guess every boy does that. When I wasn't looking at the stars, I was running in the my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or time machines. I guess every boy has done that, too. This is a book about those stars and those tennis shoes. Mainly about the stars, beacuse that is the way I grew up, getting more and more involved with rockets and space as I moved toward my twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years. Not that I have forgotten the tennis shoes and their powerful magic, as you will see in the last story here, which I have included not because it concerns the future, but because it gives you some sort of idea of the kind of boy I was when I was looking at the stars and thinking of the years ahead. Nor have I forgetten the dinosaurs that all boys love; they are here, too, along with a machine that travels back in time to step on a butterfly. This is a book then by a boy who grew up in a small illinois town and lived to see the space age arrive, as he hoped and dreamt it would. I dedicate these stories to all boys who wonder about the past, run swiftly in the present, and have high hopes for our future. The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.

What is love? 'tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty; Youth's a stuff will not endure.

For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, Than women's are. ... For women are as roses, whose fair flow'r Being once display'd doth fall that very hour. Viola: And so they are; alas, that they are so! To die, even when they to perfection grow!

Что любовь? Любви не ждётся; Тот, кто весел, пусть смеётся; Завтра — ненадёжный дар.

Love make his heart of flint that you shall love, And let your fervor, like my master’s, be Placed in contempt. Farewell, fair cruelty.

A blank, my lord. She never told her love, 110   But let concealment, like a worm i’the bud, Feed on her damask cheek.

Love thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.

I am the man - if it be so, as 'tis, poor lady, she were better love a dream.

and, assure thyself, there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man’s commendation with woman than report of valour.

There is no woman’s sides Can bide the beating of so strong a passion As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart

The devil a puritan that he is, or anything, constantly, but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swathes; the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him – and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.

A contract of eternal bond of love,   Confirmed by mutual joinder of your hands,   Attested by the holy close of lips,   Strengthened by interchangement of your rings,   And all the ceremony of this compact   Sealed in my function, by my testimony;

Sebastian says modestly that though his twin resembled him very much , she was reputed to be beautiful. But more importantly, she had a mind that was just and beautiful. she drowned in salt water, leaving sebastian to drown her memories in the salt water of his tears.

What use are tears? Ying had murmured to her once, back when they had just crossed their twelfth cycle of life and the wounds of Lan’s losses still cut deep every night. The dead will neither feel them nor be called by them. Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.

Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death, Kill what I love? —A savage jealousy That sometimes savors nobly.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting, Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—

We men may say more, swear more, but indeed / Our shows are more than will, for still we prove / Much in our vows, but little in our love.

A murd’rous guilt shows not itself more soon Than love that would seem hid. Love's night is noon.

After him I love More than I love these eyes, more than my life, More, by all mores, than e'er I shall love wife. If I do feign, you witnesses above, Punish my life for tainting of my love!

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter. Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty. Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

I left no ring with her. What means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her. She made good view of me; indeed, so much That, as methought, her eyes had lost her tongue, For she did speak in starts distractedly. She loves me sure; the cunning of her passion Invites me in this churlish messenger. None of my lord's ring? Why, he sent her none. I am the man. If it be so, as 'tis, Poor lady, she were better love a dream. Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper false In women's waxen hearts to set their forms! Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, For such as we are made of, such we be. How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly; And I (poor monster) fond as much on him; And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me. What will become of this? As I am man, My state is desperate for my master's love. As I am woman (now alas the day!), What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe? O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.

Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper false
 In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms! Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we,
 For such as we are made of, such we be.

O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou / That, notwithstanding thy capacity / Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there, / Of what validity and pitch so e'er, / But falls into abatement and low price / Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy / That it alone is high fantastical.

She did not press me to do so, she had often said that as she got older she took what she could of life but expected little. Then I was gone. Every time I was tempted to go to her I went to the Casino instead and watched some fool humiliating himself at the tables. I could gamble on another night, reduce myself a little more, but after the tenth night would come the eleventh and the twelfth and so on into the silent space that is the pain of never having enough. The silent space full of starving children. She loved her husband.

CYRANO: Thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell, And as I ever tremble, thinking of thee, Ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth! All things of thine I mind, for I love all things; I know that last year on the twelfth of May-month, To walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits! I am so used to take your hair for daylight That,--like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk, One sees long after a red blot on all things-- So, when I quit thy beams, my dazzled vision Sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted. ROXANE (agitated): Why, this is love indeed!. . . CYRANO: Ay, true, the feeling Which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly Love,--which is ever sad amid its transports! Love,--and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion! I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down, --E'en though you never were to know it,--never! --If but at times I might--far off and lonely,-- Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you! Each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue,-- A novel, unknown valor. Dost begin, sweet, To understand? So late, dost understand me? Feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting? Too fair the night! Too fair, too fair the moment! That I should speak thus, and that you should hearken! Too fair! In moments when my hopes rose proudest, I never hoped such guerdon. Naught is left me But to die now! Have words of mine the power To make you tremble,--throned there in the branches? Ay, like a leaf among the leaves, you tremble! You tremble! For I feel,--an if you will it, Or will it not,--your hand's beloved trembling Thrill through the branches, down your sprays of jasmine! (He kisses passionately one of the hanging tendrils.) ROXANE: Ay! I am trembling, weeping!--I am thine! Thou hast conquered all of me! --Cyrano de Bergerac III. 7

I Have Seen Bengal’s Face - Poem by Jibanananda Das Autoplay next video I have seen Bengal’s face, that is why I do not seek Beauty of the earth any more: I wake up in the dark And see the dawn’s magpie-robin perched under the parasol-like huge leaf Of the fig tree – on all sides I see mounds of leaves of Black plum – banyan – jackfruit – oak – pipal lying still; Their shadows fall on the spurge bushes on zedoary clumps; Who knows when Chand near Champa from his madhukar boat Saw such oaks – banyans – gamboge’s blue shades Bengal’s beauty incomparable. Behula too someday floating on raft on Gangur’s water – When the fullmoon of the tenebrous twelfth night died on the river’s shoal – Saw countless pipals and banyans beside the golden corn, Alas, heard the tender songs of shama – and one day going to Amara. When she danced like a torn wagtail in Indra’s court Bengal’s river field, wild violets wept at her feet like anklet bells.

Season's Greetings by Stewart Stafford Season's Greetings To those we are needing, While I am leading The Festive charge. Christmas love is fleeting, The snow is sleeting, And there's every chance of feeling, A thaw in my cold heart. Season's Greetings everywhere, Let War cease and all be fair, A heart that's full of Christmas cheer, Bravely faces the New Year. And so, we feast and celebrate, For those we've lost, we contemplate, Christmas is an emotional stocktake, Of those still here and those that are late. The year winds down to that last date, Resolutions tempting fate, New Fear's Eve, many hate, And choose to socially-isolate. Season's Greetings while you can, To every woman, child, and man, Season's Greetings, don't you wait Hold back now, and it's too late. And in the end, all we do, Is create memories for the few, Who mattered while we strode this earth, Then back to the place before our birth. Season's Greetings, decorations down, Bittersweet crunching sounds, Topple the tree to live again, Twelfth Night, the inevitable end. © Stewart Stafford, 2020. All rights reserved.

Nine nights I hung on the bare tree, my side pierced with a spear's point. I swayed and blew in the cold winds and hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the worlds opened to me. 'For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again. 'An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearth and their home. 'A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. ' A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child's head, that child will not fall in battle. 'A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them. 'A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams.' His voice was so low now that Shadow had to strain to hear it over the plane's engine noise. 'A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. 'A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. 'And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.

I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving. “I know a charm that will heal with a touch. “I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy. “I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks. “A fifth charm: I can catch a bullet in flight and take no harm from it.” His words were quiet, urgent. Gone was the hectoring tone, gone was the grin. Wednesday spoke as if he were reciting the words of a religious ritual, as if he were speaking something dark and painful. “A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender. “A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it. “An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship. “A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore. “Those were the first nine charms I learned. Nine nights I hung on the bare tree, my side pierced with a spear’s point. I swayed and blew in the cold winds and the hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the worlds opened to me. “For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again. “An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearth and their home. “A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. “A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child’s head, that child will not fall in battle. “A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them. “A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams.” His voice was so low now that Shadow had to strain to hear it over the plane’s engine noise. “A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. “A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. “And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.” He sighed, and then stopped talking. Shadow could feel his skin crawl. It was as if he had just seen a door open to another place, somewhere worlds away where hanged men blew in the wind at every crossroads, where witches shrieked overhead in the night.

ANTONIO: Will you stay no longer? Nor will you not that I go with you? SEBASTIAN: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.   —William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

You will be receiving your reward for the rest of your life. No one will ever love you, honour you, or cherish you as I will.” “Promises,

hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.

Brisbane’s nature tended towards the serious, but there was a graveness to his manner that told me he was speaking entirely from his heart. “I would like to work with Morgan. On a regular footing.” Sir Morgan Fielding. Secret advisor to the Prime Minister, my distant cousin, and Brisbane’s sometime employer in activities that could only be termed espionage . “You have given this a great deal of thought,” I temporised. “I have.” He began to walk, pulling me slowly along, his hand covering mine. “The threat in Germany grows. I don’t know how long we have, but something is stirring, something ugly and dangerous. Morgan is worried, too. He is in Berlin now.” ---- “Morgan is not terribly trusting at the best of times, even of us.” “But you want to work for him.” “With him,” he corrected . “Times are changing, and we both believe that the methods that have been used in the past will no longer serve. It’s time to create a new agency with new operatives, young minds that can be trained properly to sleuth out information and pass it back to London.” “You have thought this through,” I said, a trifle tartly. “I suppose it even has a name.” “Morgan likes the notion of the industriousness of bees. He was thinking of calling it the Apiary.” I thought a moment then shook my head. “No. Call it the Vespiary. After a nest of wasps. They have a more ferocious sting. If we are going to take on Germany, let them know we mean it.” He stopped, openmouthed. “You’re serious. You raise no objection.” “To what? You taking on dangerous work? You’ve done that since before I knew you. It was half the reason I fell in love with you, I expect. I could no more ask you to give up your work than I could hold back the tides. It is the stuff of which you are made.” He embraced me then, and when he drew back, my lips were tingling in the cold. “There’s something else,” he said. “Tell me.” “Morgan and I shall want your help.” It was my turn to stare, mouth agape. “You mean it?” “I do. You bungle into my cases with no method or order, and yet you have the instincts of a bloodhound. You understand people and what drives them. The Apiary will have need of people like you.” I pressed a kiss to his cheek. “The Vespiary,” I corrected. He grinned. “We shall see.” Just then he cocked his head. “And I would like to go up to the nursery and see the child.” I smiled in return.

Brisbane said nothing for a long moment. Then he spoke, his voice resolved. “I will tell Morgan the Apiary cannot be. I will keep to private enquiry work. It isn’t much safer but it will keep me closer to home, I suspect. And we will need a bigger house than Mrs. Lawson’s in Half Moon. I will tell her we rescind the offer, and we’ll start looking for lodgings tomorrow.” “No,” I said firmly. “No?” One handsome black brow quirked upward. “No. We must begin as we mean to go on. We are neither of us happy without purposeful work, and we shall have it. There will be those to care for him when we are not there, and he will learn the value of a job well done from both of us. We will move into Half Moon Street as we planned, and you will work with Morgan to form the Vespiary,” I said, stressing the correction. He smiled. “And what will you do? You will never be happy with teething biscuits and silver spoons.” “No more than you,” I agreed. “But I will do as I have done. I will organise our household because, let us be frank, my love, I am better at it than you. I will work with you on cases that interest me. I will advise on the Vespiary when you think I can be useful. I will have my photography. And we will have...” I hesitated then said it for the first time and with ringing conviction, “our son.” He looked down at the sleeping boy. “Our son,” he said, and in his voice was a note of wonder.

ANTONIO: Will you stay no longer? Nor will you not that I go with you? SEBASTIAN: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therfore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I reread Twelfth Night,” Wren said. “We all know how it ends—happily, of course—but there’s sadness there, too. Olivia has lost a brother. So has Viola, but they handle it very differently. Viola changes her name, her whole identity, and almost immediately falls in love. Olivia shuts herself away from the world, and refuses to let love in at all. Viola is trying desperately to forget her brother. Olivia is maybe remembering him too much. So what do you do? Ignore your grief, or indulge it?” She looked up from the sand and found us, gaze drifting from face to face. Meredith, Alexander, Filippa, me, and finally James. “You all know that Richard refuses to be ignored,” she said, speaking to us, and no one else. “But maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again. At least, that’s how Shakespeare would tell the story. Hamlet says, Absent thee from felicity awhile. But just awhile. The show’s not over. Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight. The rest of us must go on.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate And call upon my soul within the house, Write loyal cantons of contemnéd love, And sing them loud even in the dead of night; Holla your name to the revereberate hills, And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out "Olivia!

The students had been to Villaviciosa but what they wanted was to find the highway to Ures or Hermosillo. Each night they made love to her, in the car or on the warm desert sand, until one morning she came to meet them and they were gone. Three months later, when her great-grandmother asked her about the father of the child she was expecting, the young María Expósito had a strange vision: she saw herself small and strong, she saw herself fucking two men in the middle of a salt lake, she saw a tunnel full of potted plants and flowers. Against the wishes of the family, who wanted to baptize the boy Rafael, María Expósito called him Olegario, the patron saint of hunters and a Catalan monk in the twelfth century, bishop of Barcelona and archbishop of Tarragona, and she also decided that the first half of her son’s last name wouldn’t be Expósito, which was a name for orphans, as the students from Mexico City had explained to her one of the nights she spent with them, said the voice, but Cura, and that was how she entered it in the register at the parish of San Cipriano, twenty miles from Villaviciosa, Olegario Cura Expósito, despite the questioning to which she was subjected by the priest and his incredulity about the identity of the alleged father. Her great-grandmother said it was pure arrogance to put the name Cura before Expósito, which was the

wandered through Stratford, waiting to hear back. The main downtown area was small and pedestrian, centered on the local tourist industry. Most of the buildings were in the half-timbered Tudor style, lending an air of Renaissance authenticity to the town. Quaint street signs helpfully funneled bumbling tourists toward the attractions: “Shakespeare’s Birthplace” or “Holy Trinity Church and Shakespeare’s Grave.” On High Street, I passed the Hathaway Tea Rooms and a pub called the Garrick Inn. Farther along, a greasy-looking cafe called the Food of Love, a cutesy name taken from Twelfth Night (“ If music be the food of love, play on”). The town was Elizabethan kitsch—plus souvenir shops, a Subway, a Starbucks, a cluster of high-end boutiques catering to moneyed out-of-towners, more souvenir shops. Shakespeare’s face was everywhere, staring down from signs and storefronts like a benevolent big brother. The entrance to the “Old Bank estab. 1810” was gilded ornately with an image of Shakespeare holding a quill, as though he functioned as a guarantee of the bank’s credibility. Confusingly, there were several Harry Potter–themed shops (House of Spells, the Creaky Cauldron, Magic Alley). You could almost feel the poor locals scheming how best to squeeze a few more dollars out of the tourists. Stratford and Hogwarts, quills and wands, poems and spells. Then again, maybe the confusion was apt: Wasn’t Shakespeare the quintessential boy wizard, magically endowed with inexplicable powers?

Thus in Twelfth Night the fact that Malvolio is called demon-possessed, and is associated with the devil over and over again, points to his thematic role in the play. Like Satan, he is sick with self-love, falling by the force of his own gravity, as Chesterton said. Of course, Malvolio is a comic devil, not nearly so threatening as Iago or Shylock, but he is a devil nonetheless. And his devilry is manifest particularly in his desire to end the gaiety of Olivia’s house. Here especially the title of the play comes into its own. Twelfth Night is named for the last night of the Christmas season, the final celebration of the Incarnation. It is a night for carnival, for suspension of the serious and structured. Malvolio wants to stop the merriment, and so it is fitting that he is ultimately excluded from it. But more: Malvolio is not only excluded from the comic climax of the play. He is excluded and overcome through trickery, practical joking, mirth. Satan digs a pit for the merry, but Satan falls into the very pit of merriment. And it tortures him forever. In the final analysis, that is the practical import of all that has been said in this little book: the joy of Easter, the joy of resurrection, the joy of trinitarian life does not simply offer an alternative “worldview” to the tragic self-inflation of the ancients. Worked out in the joyful life of the Christian church, deep comedy is the chief weapon of our warfare. For in the joy of the Lord is our strength, and Satan shall be felled with “cakes and ale” and midnight revels.

each Shakespearean reference is taken from a specific Shakespearean character. These are the characters I paired together: Cady: Miranda in The Tempest. Miranda is an ingenue who has lived most of her life secluded with her father in a remote wilderness, not unlike Cady. (I broke this pairing once, when Cady uses lines borrowed from Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. The quote from Hero was so perfect for the moment that I had to use it. Can you find it?) Janis: Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Beatrice has a caustic, biting wit and a fierce loyalty to her friends. Regina: Kate in Taming of the Shrew. Kate, the titular shrew, starts off the play as a harsh woman with a sharp tongue. Gretchen: Viola in Twelfth Night. Viola, dressing as a man, serves as a constant go-between and wears a different face with each character. Karen: Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet is the youngest of Shakespeare’s heroines. She is innocent and hopeful. Mrs. Heron: Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra is the regal, intelligent woman who has come from Africa. Mrs. George: Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s cruelest, most cunning villains. Yes, this is unfair to Amy Poehler’s portrayal of Mrs. George, who is nothing but positive and fun. My thought was that anyone who could raise Regina must be a piece of work. Ms. Norbury: Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There’s little textual connection here—I just love Tina Fey so much that I thought, “Who could represent her except a majestic fairy queen?

The enemy came towards us thick as mercury poured into a channel; a simmering tide oozing from the furnace of the risen sun into the pass below us. I felt Syrion tighten his grip on the banner haft, we were that close, that closely knit. On my left, I felt Tears... I felt him breathe, I felt his heartbeat, I felt when he smiled, and when he did my soul sang in joy and glory and my only regret – I swear this to you now as the perfect truth – my sole regret was that the night could not have lasted longer. I did not crave another night, only that the one we had might have been stretched a little, giving us time to learn more of each other, and perhaps with more privacy than a hollow in the woods where we could hear that other men were trying to sleep as easily as they could hear that we were not.

My sister’s voice pierced the lovely morning hush of the bedchamber with all the delicacy of a gong. I reached out one finger to poke my husband’s naked shoulder. “Brisbane. Portia is here.” He heaved a sigh into the eiderdown. “You’re dreaming. Portia wouldn’t dare.” “Wouldn’t I?” she asked. “And, Julia, this is the first time I’ve seen your husband entirely unclothed. May I offer my congratulations?” With a violent oath, Brisbane flung himself under the bedclothes. “Modest as a virgin, I see,” Portia remarked. “Julia, I’m still counting. Silently. I’ve reached seven. Are you awake yet?” I flapped a hand at her but didn’t raise my head. “Eight.” Brisbane’s voice was muffled but distinct. “If you don’t leave this room, Portia, I will toss you out the nearest window. If memory serves, it’s forty feet down, and I won’t be gentle.” Portia clucked her tongue. “How high will you count?” “I won’t,” he told her flatly. He sat up, bedclothes pooling about his waist, grim determination etched on his face. Portia backed up swiftly. “Very well. But do hurry, both of you. You’re terribly late for the Revels rehearsal and two of our sisters have resorted to fisticuffs. Oddly, not the two you would think.” I sat bolt upright, and Portia winced. “For God’s sake, Julia, have a little shame and put your breasts away.