What a piece of work is a man!

Hamlet dangles his antic disposition in front of his boys.

This being one of the most famous of Hamlet's speeches--and one often taken out of the very sarcastic context in which it is meant to be absorbed--I decided to go with the entirety of the monologue to keep it in perspective: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive at Elsinore unexpectedly, and Hamlet immediately figures them out, so he decides to play the ultra emo role he's set up for himself to throw them off the scent of what's really going down.

These two famously indistinguishable flunkies have been summoned to the court by Claudius and Gertrude. They are asked to kindly spy on young Hamlet and report back on the troubled prince's disposition. Starstruck as they are, they agree to this charge and "make love to this employment" as Hamlet puts it. They do this because they are the type of school friend who sends a friend request on Facebook just because they want to increase their friend count and include every single person they ever remembered from middle school and love to point out that "Look, me and the Prince go way back." Imagine if one of those people showed up at your house in the midst of family turmoil. You know your Facebook-troglodytic parents only friended them because they're the only friends they remember you had before college and have no clue that you've actually blocked their updates from your home timeline because their statuses are so soporific and banal you'd rather write whole soliloquies about grass growing than read them and be reminded that you were once inseparable.

Hamlet is insulted by this blatant conspiracy and complete lack of insight into his current social circle. He perhaps wonders if they had asked Horatio at first, and trusts that Horatio turned them down. He knows he has a role to continue playing, so that Claudius does not suspect that Hamlet suspects him of murder. Naturally, he interrogates his old buddies and goes on a non-specific rant about how horrible the world is and laments about the gross, arrogant fallibility of humankind. This way, the boys are no more wise about Hamlet's feigned motivation or his real one. But, methinks there's quite a bit of truth in the cynicism presented for them. Hamlet's disgusted by the state of humanity, or at least the representatives surrounding him, and with very good reason.


Hamlet, Act II, Sc. II
Hamlet: I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, 
and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. 
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 a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! 
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? man delights not me: 
no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so. 

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more

A sight that has many ladies sighing.

I won't promise this won't melt into an infatuative drivel about Sir Ken, because my heart did just that when I first saw his film version of Much Ado About Nothing. I had always adored the antics of Benedick and Beatrice on the page, so imagine the ovarian explosions that occurred when I heard that he had, of course, taken the best male role in the play. Indeed, the film is Sir Ken in fine form, at the top of his game, as a most dashing mofo riding horses and getting baths and wearing tight pants...*ahem*... and this film represents perhaps his most successful achievement in making Shakespeare accessible to modern audiences. 

Much Ado being the original romantic comedy, and a quintessential one at that, it was a perfect choice for adaptation to the screen. And even considering Sir Ken's often... eccentric... casting decisions, this film's actors and actresses actually turned out more or less perfect for their roles. It's a grand delight and I don't believe I have to heap on any more praise than it already has to convince any lover of Shakespeare (or beautifully executed romcoms, which I usually distrust) to watch it for themselves. 

The song featured within the text has a naturally lilting quality that makes it so easy to memorize that I actually made myself memorize a second passage in a week. I chose one of Beatrice's shrewd rants against marriage, which suits my personal tongue-in-cheek position quite nicely. She and her antagonizing lover Benedick spend the entire play railing about love and the differences between men and women. Their war-like wooing is immediately a more passionate and emotional foreplay than the sweet, kind, and honest couple--Hero and Claudio--could ever muster. Their spiteful, witty, verbal thrusts and parries represent the most satisfying love story in all of Shakespeare, IMHO. They are the most intelligent individuals in the story, and the surface tension of their cynycism breaks with the catalyst of dishonor laid upon Hero and Claudio at their doomed wedding. Some things are sacred to these two, and as they eventually find out, they find each other more sacred than anything else.

As Benedick says, "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably." In that small statement, using the formal "thou" instead of "you," he betrays the deep respect he has always had for Beatrice. They may ride off into the proverbial sunset knocking each other's heads with frying pans, but when they join forces, all is well... and fantastically entertaining.

Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Sc. III

Balthasar: Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey, nonny nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo

Of dumps so dull and heavy.

The fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leavy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey, nonny nonny.


Act II, Sc. I
Beatrice: 
Just, if he send me no husband, for the which blessing I am

at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I

could not endure a husband with a beard on his face! I had

rather lie in the woollen...

What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and

make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard

is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than

a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and

he that is less than a man, I am not for him. Therefore I will

even take sixpence in earnest of the bearherd, and lead his

apes into hell...

No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an

old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, “Get you to

heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here’s no place for you

maids.” So deliver I up my apes and away to Saint Peter. For

the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there

live we as merry as the day is long.

The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night

Friar Lawrence: priest, gardener, apothecary, trouble-maker.

I knew from the start that I didn't want to learn anything too obvious from Romeo & Juliet. Like Hamlet, this play has so much of it infused in the zeitgeist, but each has dark corners that are as remarkable as they are uncelebrated. As gorgeous as the lovers' exchanges are (their first lines spoken to one another forms a sonnet, for Jebus' sake), I wanted something more personal.

Enter the good friar and his garden of good intentions. The man has a lot of choice words for Romeo and his love life, but ultimately backs the hasty teenager to a degree that borders on unwise. In the Baz Luhrmann film, Friar Lawrence nurses this most infamous of star-cross'd relationships with the same zeal as he has for growing his questionable botanicals. He later employs one of his concoctions to help Juliet fake her death, but his secret letter to Romeo explaining the ruse doesn't quite make its way into the lover's hands.

In this speech, the hapless gardener waxes about the overlapping attributes of men and plants, and how each is often host to antithetical qualities. Life in fair Verona has made him quite the expert on such things, as everyone is so equally loyal and loving to their families and so resentful and hateful toward their neighbor.

Every Saturday, I go out on my patio and water and fertilize my collection of orchids. I spend a fair amount of time documenting their growth, taking pictures and making notes on what seems to make each one happy and healthy. Ever since I learned this speech, I recite it to my plants as go about my work. After a long week, these words serve as a reminder that not all things are as they appear, but we must keep tending our lives with diligence, for even the bad can be distilled and made useful.


Romeo & Juliet, Act II, Sc. III
Friar Lawrence: The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels:
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb,
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

O that this too too solid flesh would melt

Our dear Hamlet, the most emo kid on the block--who actually has very legitimate reasons for being so emo--is the master of soliloquizing, and he lays down his first track with uncompromising skill. He's pissed at his mom for marrying his uncle so soon after King Hamlet died, an event so hastily and thriftily executed that "the funeral-baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." In this speech, he praises his father to the sky, compares his seemingly grief-proof new "parents" to beasts, calls them incestuous, and then laments that he must keep his trap shut... a self-imposed rule which he proceeds to ignore for five acts.

Hamlet is THIS distraught even BEFORE Horatio conveys the sighting of the king's ghost. And later, Polonius fucks up his love life by berating Ophelia, basically calls her a whore, and forbids her to hang out with Hamlet anymore. Then Claudius and Gertrude set two of Hamlet's flunkies to spy on him because they have no idea why Hamlet is so upset.

This whole family needs an intervention. Or a year's supply of Xanax. Or both.

This soliloquy, for me, is one of the easiest to remember. Its emotion is embedded in the text so deeply and clearly, and the context so plain in its resentment and bemusement that you can't help but begin to chew the scenery as you speak it aloud. Also, I just play Sir Kenneth Branagh's performance of it through my head and it comes naturally. 

Hamlet, Act I, Sc. II

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! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world
Fie on't! ah, 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! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn'd longer) married with my uncle;
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue! 

Virtue? A fig!

Only Sir Olivier has the stones (and the talent) to play Othello in blackface. Do not try this at home, kids.

Every deceitful villain in literature, film, and pop culture has Iago's DNA in their blood. From Professor Moriarty to Loki, Dennis Nedry to Gollum, anyone who presents themselves as trustworthy while they smile and smile and work to betray our heroes has descended from that granddaddy of evil genius who could drive a man to murder with nought but a wave of a handkerchief. 

With 1097 lines,* Iago is third only to Richard III (1152) and Hamlet (1422) in pure lung power (per play... Hal/Henry V, whose breath sweeps through three plays, has over 1800 lines, and Falstaff has over 1600 in his three appearances). What does he accomplish with all this vocal ability, other than a whole lot of soap operatic trouble?

As with all Shakespearean villains, he speaks hard truths that cannot be cast aside with all his lies. The speech I chose strikes me as one of those particularly obvious observations of human nature. He is honest after all, since Iago is well aware that he is a perfect example of one who has chosen to sow his own seeds of villainy. He is the quintessential example of how WRONG Polonius** is when he utters   

"To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Iago is true to himself, and yet is false to everyone. 

After all his silver-tongued philosophizing, one line haunts me the most. It's Iago's final line in the play, directed at Othello after Iago's one-man complot has been exposed: 

"Demand me nothing; what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word."

Lodovico's immediate response is "What, not to pray?" and Gratiano grumbles "Torments will ope your lips." But Othello stares at Iago and says "Well, thou dost best."

Iago's felt slighted the entire time, ever since Othello made Cassio his lieutenant, and perhaps even before that, as this line suggests. They appear to have a secret between them, and despite Iago's attempt to ruin Othello's good name, when Iago's honesty is finally stained, the bastard decides to zip his lip. What  have they seen and done together in their battles and voyages? What makes Iago loathe and love Othello so much? Why do I love Iago more than Polonius? Because in the end, Iago is honest.

Othello, Act I, Sc. III

Iago: Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus

or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise 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.

*The actual numbers of lines depend on the version/edition you read, but you get the idea.
**I fucking HATE this quote because everyone uses it out of context and they never seem to realize that everyone in Shakespeare's time understood it to be an empty, banal platitude worthy of so much eye-rolling.

The quality of mercy is not strained

The nonpareil Maggie Smith as the eloquent Portia

Honestly, there are two things I remember most about The Merchant of Venice: the test of the three caskets to win Portia's hand, and the repeated line "pound of flesh" because the taking of which is graphically illustrated in the David Fincher film Se7en. Indeed, the concept of giving a pound of flesh for anything harkens back to this reference in Shakespeare, and the idiom today is meant to convey the idea of an excessive, cruel, and ultimately impossible payment for a debt. It's this debt that the moneylender Shylock wishes the hapless Antonio to pay. Of course, it takes the reasoning of a woman, albeit in drag (doubly so, since the women in Shakespeare's time were played by young boys), to convince Shylock that this is not the best idea on the planet.

The speech I chose feels philosophical, but it's delivered as a legal argument. This logical, articulate monologue doesn't convince Shylock, however, and it takes the threat of losing his material wealth to make him stand down. Portia boldly adopts Shylock's cold literalism and points out that his original bond with Antonio does not include blood, and if he were to take a single drop of blood with the flesh, he would break the contract.

Portia's plea of mercy-seasoned justice is as humanist as they come, and in a canon richly populated by many mighty, merciless males, her words stand up and stand out. I'm proud to make hers the first lady's speech I copy to the book and volume of my brain.

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Sc. I

Portia (as Bellario): The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed.
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
It is mightiest in the mightiest,
It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
An 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 dost then become likest God's,
Where mercy seasons justice. Therefore Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice we all must see salvation,
We all do pray for mercy
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.
I have spoke thus much to mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou dost follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentance gainst the merchant there.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains

Bottom and his buddies.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to see Benedict Cumberbatch's Titania and Hugh Laurie's Bottom. And I mean that in exactly the double entendre you're thinking of right now. Too bad my favorite actors aren't always followed around by cameras from the first day they are cast into high school plays. I'd also much rather see what Ben Whishaw would do with Puck than The Tempest's Ariel, but that's another post.

For now, consider Theseus, Duke of Athens, and his dilemma: a bunch of love-sick and drugged-up teenagers from his court get lost in the woods just when the faeries are in the throes of a civil war of the sexes. The kids wake from their stupor and with their fanciful recollection of their "dreams," simply confirm Theseus' worldview that faeries are bullshit. That's the speech I chose--a romantic diatribe about the idiocy of romance. He's such a hipster.


A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Sc. I
Theseus: More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Now is the winter of our discontent

Dali's tribute to Sir Laurence of Olivier's Richard III

I saw this play my first year of college as a requirement of a fun summer session History of Theatre class at UF. The guy who played Richard was one of the TAs in the class, and was quite remarkable. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, and all the essential scenes (the wooing of Anne, the murder of Clarence, the ghosts on the field of battle) stuck out even though, at the time, I had no background information about the play whatsoever.

The first 41 lines of Richard III are possibly the most famous first 41 lines in the history of drama. I wasn't even thinking of that when I stared at the seemingly endless mass of words before me. It wasn't a terribly difficult decision to make--it is a glorious statement of a soliloquy and in a play full of memorable moments ("A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"), it still stands out as the epitome of a (flawed and twisted) heart unpacked with words.

INTIMIDATION ALERT!

Keep calm and carry on, Caity. Time to break out some technique: tap into the code of the prose, aka, iambic pentameter. By identifying the underlying rhythm of each line, I found the words stuck in my brain like song lyrics, and the task became much easier.

now IS the WINter OF our DISconTENT
made GLORious SUMmer BY this SON of YORK

Now we're cooking with lime.

Following the meter, this modern reader often tripped on syllables ("glorious" is three syllables, no?) that were probably not there 400 years ago. Therefore, something like "glorious" would be crammed into "GLOR-yus" and the difference between "supposed" and "suppos'd" became glaringly obvious after a while. I love English. It's so achingly anal sometimes.

So I tackled this bugger, and though it was a mother of a bastard while I was wrestling with it, it's now one of my favorite ones to recite aloud. Its potential for scene chewing is evident in the words, and for an untrained solo actress like me, it makes the speech that much easier to remember.

Richard III, Act I, Sc. I

Gloucester: Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreathes,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes...

Why, all delights are vain

"Heaven... I'm in heaven..." from Branagh's 2000 film adaptation

Sir Ken is a god of some sort, obviously, but when I realized he had made Love's Labour's Lost into a bonafide Irving berlin-esque musical, I was saying "What's all this now?" Aside from the subjective opinion that Fred-and-Ginger movies are AWESOMESAUCE and Shakespeare is AMAZEBALLS, I initially thought the combination might be less than peanut butter and chocolate perfection.

I was wrong.

My dear Sir Ken made something I personally adore even more than Much Ado About Nothing (amazingly enough, since that's near perfect anyways). Now, LLL is notoriously wordy and while the monologues and dialogues are poetic and clever and beauteous to the nth degree, they can be a tad long-winded. So Ken's vision was a film that replaced the more ludicrously protracted speeches (mostly recited by the incorrigible but whip-smart Berowne) with musical numbers that could more succinctly convey the feelings of the characters in the moment. It totally worked.

There was one speech from Berowne, however, that I was looking forward to hearing Kenneth deliver but never heard because it was usurped by "I'd Rather Charleston," which, honestly, is a darling song I truly enjoy because I had a recording of Fred Astaire singing it with his sister Adele that's just insanely adorable.

That speech, wherein Berowne pleads with Navarre and his buddies about the supposed virtues of study over engaging in more carnal pursuits, amounts to what I'd call a Shakespearean tongue-twister for me. It's light and quick and meant to bewitch and beguile his friends so they don't wish to adopt the rather Spartan rules of their three years of intense study. It's fun to say as quickly as you're able and still is a challenge to deliver.

There's one other lovely speech I considered, from Act 4, Scene 3. Sir Ken, in all his talent and wisdom, decided to include an abridged version of this 77-line mouthful in the film, and begins it by tap dancing in iambic pentameter. Needless to say, this blew my mind and fangirlish ovaries to bits. I promised myself to learn it one day, but for now, I have the following under my belt:

Love's Labour's Lost, Act I, Sc. I

Berowne: Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,

Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain:

As, painfully to pore upon a book

To seek the light of truth; while truth the while

Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look:

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:

So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,

Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

Study me how to please the eye indeed

By fixing it upon a fairer eye,

Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed

And give him light that it was blinded by.

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks:

Small have continual plodders ever won

Save base authority from others' books

These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights

That give a name to every fixed star

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Too much to know is to know nought but fame;

And every godfather can give a name.