Winter's Tale Shakespeare Quotes

Exit, pursued by a bear.

A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance.

I do feel it gone, But know not how it went

What a fool honesty is.

It is an heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in't.

I have drunk and seen the spider.

a wild dedication of yourselves To undiscovered waters, undreamed shores.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Winter’s Tale

I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting

they have seem'd to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embrac'd as it were from the ends of opposed winds.

Well may I get aboard. [He sees a bear.] This is the chase: I am gone for ever! [Exist pursued by a bear.]

I suppose the fundamental distinction between Shakespeare and myself is one of treatment. We get our effects differently. Take the familiar farcical situation of someone who suddenly discovers that something unpleasant is standing behind them. Here is how Shakespeare handles it in "The Winter's Tale," Act 3, Scene 3: ANTIGONUS: Farewell! A lullaby too rough. I never saw the heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour! Well may I get aboard! This is the chase: I am gone for ever. And then comes literature's most famous stage direction, "Exit pursued by a bear." All well and good, but here's the way I would handle it: BERTIE: Touch of indigestion, Jeeves? JEEVES: No, Sir. BERTIE: Then why is your tummy rumbling? JEEVES: Pardon me, Sir, the noise to which you allude does not emanate from my interior but from that of that animal that has just joined us. BERTIE: Animal? What animal? JEEVES: A bear, Sir. If you will turn your head, you will observe that a bear is standing in your immediate rear inspecting you in a somewhat menacing manner. BERTIE (as narrator): I pivoted the loaf. The honest fellow was perfectly correct. It was a bear. And not a small bear, either. One of the large economy size. Its eye was bleak and it gnashed a tooth or two, and I could see at a g. that it was going to be difficult for me to find a formula. "Advise me, Jeeves," I yipped. "What do I do for the best?" JEEVES: I fancy it might be judicious if you were to make an exit, Sir. BERTIE (narrator): No sooner s. than d. I streaked for the horizon, closely followed across country by the dumb chum. And that, boys and girls, is how your grandfather clipped six seconds off Roger Bannister's mile. Who can say which method is superior?" (As reproduced in Plum, Shakespeare and the Cat Chap )

Here's flowers for you; hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram; The marigold.

We were, fair queen, / Two lads that thought there was no more behind / But such a day to-morrow as to-day, / And to be boy eternal.

Here come those I have done good to against my will,

A gross hag And, lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd, That wilt not stay her tongue. ANTIGONUS ~ Hang all the husbands That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself Hardly one subject.

There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords, I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have That honourable grief lodged here which burns Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords, With thoughts so qualified as your charities Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so The king's will be perform'd!

Age, thou hast lost thy labor.

I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful; In every one of these no man is free...

What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet. I'ld have you do it ever: when you sing, I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms, Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, And own no other function: each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens.

O, that is entertainment My bosom likes not, nor my brows!

And my own feelings? Shame. For I had lied. Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eyre over the anonymous stranger with his hand on the lever. Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life. Of course. Unlike Miss Winter, I had been ashamed to say so.

Good my lord, be cured Of this diseased opinion, and betimes. For 'tis most dangerous.

To vice you to't, that you have touch'd his queen Forbiddenly.

One good deed dying tongueless slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.

He says he loves my daughter. I think so too, for never gazed the moon upon the water as he'll stand and read as 'twere my daughter's eyes; and, to be plain, I think there is not half a kiss to choose who loves another best.

CAMILLO                                              Swear his thought over By each particular star in heaven and By all their influences, you may as well Forbid the sea for to obey the moon As, or by oath remove, or counsel shake The fabric of his folly, whose foundation Is pil'd upon his faith, and will continue The standing of his body.

No, madam.

jog on, jog on the footpath way, / And merrily hent the stile-a; / A jovial heart goes all the day, / Your sad tires in a mile-a

Let boors and franklins say it, I'll swear it

my wife's liver Infected as her life, she would not live The running of one glass.

O lords, When I have said, cry 'woe!' the queen, the queen, The sweet'st, dear'st creature's dead, and vengeance for't Not dropp'd down yet.

You pay a great deal too dear for what's given freely.

all the husbands That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself Hardly one subject.

cram's with praise, and make's As fat as tame things. One good deed dying tongueless Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages; you may ride's With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere With spur we heat an acre.

It may take a decade or two before the extent of Shakespeare's collaboration passes from the graduate seminar to the undergraduate lecture, and finally to popular biography, by which time it will be one of those things about Shakespeare that we thought we knew all along. Right now, though, for those who teach the plays and write about his life, it hasn't been easy abandoning old habits of mind. I know that I am not alone in struggling to come to terms with how profoundly it alters one's sense of how Shakespeare wrote, especially toward the end of his career when he coauthored half of his last ten plays. For intermixed with five that he wrote alone, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest, are Timon of Athens (written with Thomas Middleton), Pericles (written with George Wilkins), and Henry the Eighth, the lost Cardenio, and The Two Noble Kinsmen (all written with John Fletcher).

I’ll use that tongue I have if wit flow from ’t/ As boldness from my bosom, let ’t not be doubted/ I shall do good.

and the King shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found.

He makes a July’s day short as December,

am his cupbearer.

I am gone for ever. [Exit, pursued by a bear,

Not so: I am as ignorant in that as you In so entitling me, and no less honest Than you are mad; which is enough, I ’ll warrant, As this world goes, to pass for honest.

Be it concluded, No barricado for a belly. Know't, It will let in and out the enemy With bag and baggage.

You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given 17 freely.

To302 what we wildly do, so we profess Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies Of every wind that blows.

but I am sure ’t is safer to Avoid what’s grown than question how ’t is born.

Embora eu não seja naturalmente honesto, às vezes o sou por acaso".

The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first.

have drunk, and seen the spider.

What we changed 86 Was innocence for innocence.

Leontes’ ultimate salvation: his ability both to ignore what it does not suit him to recognize and to make metaphysical leaps of faith, to move beyond the immediacies of facts and evidence.

I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have That honourable grief lodg'd here, which burns Worse than tears drown:

His mother stared into his eyes and paused for a moment. She stood completely still, as if she'd transformed into a statue. Joseph found himself thinking again about the end of The Winter's Tale and the queen's return to life. He still felt angry that the young prince Mamillius hadn't been saved, too, and he thought about Marcus, but as he looked up at his mother's face, a new thought came to him. Maybe the play wasn't about miracles. No, maybe it was about the passage of time, and the need for patience, and the ability to forgive. Maybe Shakespeare was saying that even in a world where miracles can happen, there's still going to pain, and lost, and regret. Because sometimes people die and you can't bring them back. That's what life is Joseph realized, miracles and sadness, side by side.

In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire with good old folks, and let them tell thee tales of woeful ages long ago betid. And ere thou bid good night, to quite their griefs, tell thou the lamentable tale of me and send the hearers weeping to their beds.

Orange-Scented Rice SERVES 4 … Rice,—what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. THE WINTER’S TALE, 4.3 COSTLY PERFUME INGREDIENTS such as ambergris and musk, with little or no flavor of their own, were often called for in Elizabethan recipes to add fragrance. Here, cooking the rice in orange juice, orange zest, and crystallized ginger adds fragrance as well as a lovely flavor.

I picked and cut most of their festival purses; and had not the old man come in with whoo-bub against his daughter and the king’s son and scared my choughs from the chaff, I had not left a purse alive in the whole army. THE WINTER’S TALE, 4.4 IN SHAKESPEARE’S DAY, meat turnovers like these were called “purses” because they looked like the small change holders people wore attached to their belts. The expression “cut purse” referred to a thief who cut the cord to steal the purse, an all too common occurrence in those days before policed streets. The savory filling of tangy candied ginger and sweet dried fruit make these purses worth stealing!

must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates?— none, that’s out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o’ the sun. THE WINTER’S TALE, 4.3 DURING THE Middle Ages and into Elizabethan times, foods such as Shakespeare’s pear, or “warden” pie, were often colored yellow with saffron or sandalwood. Other dishes were colored green with parsley or spinach juice, white with ground almonds, rice, or milk, and black with prunes. In this recipe the baguettes are brushed with saffron-infused oil to give a hint of color and flavor.

Isn’t that what we all are?’ Martin asked, his voice sympathetic. ‘The victims and villains of our own lives? We have to come to terms with the good and bad inside of us, accept that we’ll never be all one or the other. And if we acknowledge we have a bit of Beast as well as Beauty in there, maybe we can find a way for them both to live together.

I’m trying to make an important point here. The fact is we have to learn to live with the good and bad parts of ourselves, and that brings a certain peace to our lives. The panic and the anger and the destructiveness comes from when we try to fight against ourselves, where we try to cling on to a modicum of control when there really isn’t any there. Acceptance, it’s the key to everything.

All three of them are desperate. Their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now begins to bite the spirits.

Exeunt, pursued by a bear.

When the cold winds of winter made the duke feel the change of his adverse fortune, he would endure it patiently, and say, 'These chilling winds which blow upon my body, are true counsellors, they do not flatter, but represent truly to me my condition; and though they bite sharply, their tooth is nothing like so keen as that of unkindness and ingratitude. I find that, howsoever men speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are to be extracted from it; like the jewel, precious for medicine, which is taken from the head of the venemous and despised toad.' In this manner did the patient duke draw a useful moral from every thing that he saw; and by the help of this moralizing turn, in that life of his, remote from public haunts, he could find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Now one often finds that the beginner, who has just mastered the strict formal rules, is over-punctilious and pedantic about them. And the mere critic, who is never going to begin himself, may be more pedantic still. The classical critics were shocked at the “irregularity” or “licenses” of Shakespeare. A stupid schoolboy might think that the abnormal hexameters in Virgil, or the half-rhymes in English poets, were due to incompetence. In reality, of course, every one of them is there for a purpose and breaks the superficial regularity of the metre in obedience to a higher and subtler law: just as the irregularities in The Winter’s Tale do not impair, but embody and perfect, the inward unity of its spirit.36 In

Phryne spent a blameless evening reading The Winter’s Tale with Ruth, who was still convinced that Shakespeare could bear translation. ‘Why does he take so long to say anything?’ ‘The Elizabethan stage had no scenes and only hand-props. His actors had to create the scene, as well as the action. Look how cleverly he has leafed the innocent conversation of the Queen and Polixenes with the King’s own jealous thoughts. It works very well onstage, I promise. We