Sassy Shakespeare: My favorite one-liners

There's a lot of these "Shakespearean insult generator" memes out there, where you choose one item from each column to create a sufficiently archaic-sounding verbal poo-fling. Gems such as "gleeking knotty-pated harpy" or "puking beef-witted apple-john" or "yeasty tardy-gaited moldwarp." Most of these sound more like Harry Potter incantations than insults.

As giggle-inducing as some of them are, they aren't genuine, actual lines from the plays. And after you'e heard some of the more pointed and exotic barbs, you begin to find it a tragedy that these colorful words and phrases aren't used more today. For example, I was irrationally tickled that the word "clotpole" is often utilized in one of my favorite BBC series: Merlin. Lear used it, as did Guderius in Cymbeline. Having encountered it before, and read about its very bawdy origins, I gasped when I heard it uttered in such a family-friendly TV show. Of course, no one outside an English Lit professor would normally pick up on it.

But it's not just the bawdy stuff I love. It's the clever throw-away lines and the chronically taken-out-of-context quotes that I've highlighted throughout my Complete Works that I feel could be useful in everyday conversation. Enjoy!

"I like this place, And willingly could waste my time in it."
--Celia, "As You Like It," Act II, Sc. IV

"You do assist the storm."
--Boatswain, "The Tempest," Act I, Sc. I

"In nature, there's no blemish but the mind; None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind."
--Antonio, "Twelfth Night," Act III, Sc. IV

"Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall..."
--Escalus, "Measure for Measure," Act II, Sc. I

"Scratching could not make it worse and 'twere such a face as yours were."
--Beatrice, "Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Sc. I

"This is the fruit of rashness!"
--Gloster, "King Richard III," Act II, Sc. II

"He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer."
--Apemantus, "Timon of Athens," Act I, Sc. I

"For defect of judgment Is oft the cure of fear." 
--Belarius, "Cymbeline," Act. IV, Sc. II

"O, pardon me; For when no friends are by, men praise themselves."
--Lucius, "Titus Andronicus," Act V, Sc. III

"Where's hourly trouble for a minute's ease."
--Helicanus, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," Act II, Sc. IV

"No sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I do bite my thumb, sir."
--Sampson, "Romeo and Juliet," Act. I, Sc. I

"Most spend their mouths when what they seem Runs far before them."
--Dauphin, "King Henry V," Act II, Sc. IV

"Unquiet meals make ill digestions."
--Abbess, "The Comedy of Errors," Act V, Sc. I

"More matter with less art."
--Queen, "Hamlet," Act II, Sc. II

"Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmation strong As proofs of holy writ."
--Iago, "Othello," Act III, Sc. III

"...didst thou ever hear that things ill got had ever bad success?"
--King Henry VI, "3 King Henry VI," Act II, Sc. II

"'Tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation."
--Falstaff, "1 King Henry IV," Act I, Sc. II

Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!

Ian McKellen as the "Bastard" Philip Faulconbridge

Where King Lear's Edmund was Chaotic Neutral at best, King John's "Bastard" is Chaotic Good at worst. The advantage of being illegitimate in a world of monarchic illegitimacy is that you're not born into a mould of pre-destined loyalty. You get to choose sides. And that side may simply be yourself. You choose the square on the alignment matrix that best suits your ambitions.

Philip Faulconbridge, re-dubbed Sir Richard Plantagenet by King John when Lady Faulconbridge admits to an affair with Richard Coeur-de-Lion, is some kind of hero. He's essentially Tony Stark--the guy who knows how to use "commodity" and his own intellect to his advantage, as well as to the advantage of the country he holds dear. Like Tony, he is cynical about how the world works, but still holds up loyalty, truth, and justice as the ideal paradigm for how he executes his powers. Unbeholden to anyone unless his experience of them proves their worthiness, the Bastard is a fresh contrast to the stuffy kings and advisors that populate the rest of the play with their stiff allegiances.

His famously insightful soliloquy on "commodity" and politics appears early in the play, proving that this kid's quick on the uptake. He has a bright future because he clearly recognizes how the system works without kidding himself. This speech begins as a righteous Jon Stewart-esque rant and ends with an epiphany. He gains the resolve to navigate the thorny world and still pick the fruits from the vines.


King John, Act II, Sc. I

Bastard: Mad world! mad kings! mad composition! 

John, to stop Arthur's title in the whole, 

Hath willingly departed with a part, 

And France, whose armour conscience buckled on, 

Whom zeal and charity brought to the field

As God's own soldier, rounded in the ear 

With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil, 

That broker, that still breaks the pate of faith, 

That daily break-vow, he that wins of all, 

Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,

Who, having no external thing to lose 

But the word 'maid,' cheats the poor maid of that, 

That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity, 

Commodity, the bias of the world, 

The world, who of itself is peised well,

Made to run even upon even ground, 

Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias, 

This sway of motion, this Commodity, 

Makes it take head from all indifferency, 

From all direction, purpose, course, intent:

And this same bias, this Commodity, 

This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, 

Clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France, 

Hath drawn him from his own determined aid, 

From a resolved and honourable war,

To a most base and vile-concluded peace. 

And why rail I on this Commodity? 

But for because he hath not woo'd me yet: 

Not that I have the power to clutch my hand, 

When his fair angels would salute my palm;

But for my hand, as unattempted yet, 

Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich. 

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail 

And say there is no sin but to be rich; 

And being rich, my virtue then shall be

To say there is no vice but beggary. 

Since kings break faith upon commodity, 

Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.

This is the excellent foppery of the world

Draco and Ursa Major, duking it out.

In the long tradition of Shakespearean villains and tricksters spouting truth, King Lear gives us Edmund: Gloucester's bastard son. He's intelligent, sexy, and utterly unscrupulous, believing he deserves no less respect (and money) than his legitimate half-brother Edgar. He succeeds in convincing his father that Edgar wishes to kill him for his lands, betraying Gloucester to Cornwall, and getting named Earl. Though a practicing douche-bag, Edmund is an effective fighter and his ambition gets him far before his fall. 

In the soliloquy I chose, Edmund mocks his father's insistence that the "late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us." Ironically(and as they always do in Shakespeare) the predictions laid out by Gloucester--that love will cool, friendships will fail, brothers will divide, and the King will rail against nature--come true. But that's the beauty of fiction, to write in vague prophecies that match up with real events.

Astrology was the mysterious science of the day, and professional astrologers were hired by the state to serve the kings and queens and provide "wisdom" written in the stars. One of my heroes, Carl Sagan, explained in the documentary series Cosmos thusly:

"Astrology developed into a strange discipline--a mixture of careful observations, mathematics and record-keeping, with fuzzy thinking and pious fraud. Nevertheless, astrology survived and flourished. Why? Because it seems to lend a cosmic significance to the routine of our daily lives. It pretends to satisfy our longing to feel personally connected with the universe. Astrology suggests a dangerous fatalism--if our lives are controlled by a set of traffic signals in the sky, why try to change anything?"

Edmund's speech provides a rant worthy of Sagan's appeal to reason.

King Lear, Act I, Sc. II

Edmund: This is the excellent foppery of the world 

that when we are sick in fortune—

often the surfeit of our own behavior—

we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, 

as if we were villains by necessity, 

fools by heavenly compulsion, 

knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, 

drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, 

and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting-on. 

An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, 

to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! 

My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail 

and my nativity was under Ursa Major, 

so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. 

Fut, I should have been that I am, 

had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Coming in a close second place for "Most Emo Shakespeare Speech EVAR" is.... Macbeth and his melancholy-saturated bucket of resentment toward that horrible journey he calls life! Hamlet's Act I soliloquy about his incestuous uncle and mom takes first, of course. And Othello a close third, I'd think. You may argue about King Lear's weepfests, but once you're past a certain age, your rants against the world turn more downright sad than college-student-just-wants-material-for-his-late-night-guitar-busking-to-impress-dorm-girls emo.

Not that either Macbeth or Hamlet have no good reason to be sad sacks--they have more reason than any 19-year-old sk8terboi on campus could ever dream of having. Mr. Thane of Glamis, Cawdor, and newly crowned King of Scotland has just been informed that his ball-breaking Lady Macbeth finally died of her cray cray, and he just needs to poeticize his feels. I mean, he did everything she asked in order to satisfy HER voracious desire for power and then SHE has the gall to let that damned spot knock her off the merry-go-round. If you're fortunate enough to experience the McKittrick Hotel's Sleep No More in NYC, you know all this at least led to some great make-up acrobatics in the bedroom before the daggers came out. Not sure it was worth it in the end for Macbeth, however. What, with the beheading and all.

Macbeth, Act V, Sc. V
Macbeth: 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.