Shakespeare Plays

First lines of plays

Coriolanus

First Citizen: "Before we proceed any further, hear me speak."

Hamlet

Bernardo: "Who's there?"

Henry VI, Part II

Suffolk: "As by your high imperial majesty I had in charge at my depart for France..."

Henry VI, Part III

Warwick: "I wonder how the king escaped our hands.

King John

King John: "Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?"

King Lear

Kent: "I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall."

Measure for Measure

Duke Vincentio: "Escalus."

The Merchant of Venice

Antonio: "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad."

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Shallow: "Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star-Chamber matter of it: if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire."

Much Ado About Nothing

Leonato: "I learn in this letter than Don Peter of Arragon comes this night to Messina."

The Life and Death of Richard the Second

King Richard II: "Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster, hast thou, according to thy oath and band, brought hither Henry Hereford thy bold son, here to make good the boisterous late appeal, which then our leisure would not let us hear, against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?"

The Tempest

Master: "Boatswain!"

Timon of Athens

Poet: "Good day, sir."

Troilus and Cressida

Prologue: "In Troy, there lies the scene."

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Valentine: "Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus: home-keeping youth have ever homely wits."

The Winter's Tale

Archidamus: "If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the like occasion..."

The Comedy of Errors

Aegeon: "Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall and by the doom of death end woes and all."

Henry IV, Part II

Rumour: "Open your ears; for which of you will stop the vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping west, making the wind my post-horse, still unfold the acts commenced on this ball of earth."

Henry VI, Part I

Bedford: "Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!"

Julius Caesar

Flavius: "Hence! home, you idle creatures get you home: is this a holiday?"

Macbeth

First Witch: "When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Theseus: "Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace; four happy days bring in another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow this old moon wanes!"

Othello

Roderigo: "Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindly that thou, Iago, who hast had my purse as if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this."

Taming of the Shrew

Sly: "I'll pheeze you, in faith."

All's Well That Ends Well

Countess: "In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband."

Antony and Cleopatra

Philo: "Nay, but this dotage of our general's o'erflows the measure"

As You Like It

Orlando: "As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness."

Cymbeline

First Gentleman: "You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods no more obey the heavens than our courtiers still seem as does the king."

Henry IV, Part I

King Henry IV: "So shaken as we are, so wan with care, find we a time for frighted peace to pant, and breathe short-winded accents of new broils to be commenced in strands afar remote."

Henry V

Chorus: "O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, a kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars."

Henry VIII

Prologue: "I come no more to make you laugh: things now, that bear a weighty and a serious brow, sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, we now present."

Love's Labours Lost

Ferdinand: "Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, live register'd upon our brazen tombs and then grace us in the disgrace of death; when, spite of cormorant devouring Time, the endeavor of this present breath may buy that honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge and make us heirs of all eternity."

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Prologue: "To sing a song that old was sung, from ashes ancient Gower is come; assuming man's infirmities, to glad your ear, and please your eyes."

Titus Andronicus

Saturninus: "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.

Richard III

Gloucester: "Now is the winter of our discontent

Romeo and Juliet

Prologue: "Two households, both alike in dignity,

Twelfth Night

Duke Orsino: "If music be the food of love, play on;