Schols Exam Quotations

Lear on nothing

"Nothing will come of nothing." (I.i)

Edmund on nature

"Thou, Nature, art my goddess." (I.ii)

The Fool on wisdom

"Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise." (I.v)

Lear on man

"Man's life is as cheap as beast's." (II.iv)

Lear commanding nature

"Blow winds and crack your cheeks!" (III)

Lear on sin

"I am a man more sinned against than sinning." (III.ii)

Lear on nature

"Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" (III.vi)

Gloucester on Gods

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport." (IV.i)

Lear on life

"When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools." (VI.iv)

Lear's curse

"Into her womb convey sterility." (I.iv)

Gloucester on sight

"I have no way and therefore want no eyes. I stumbled when I saw." (IV.i)

Kent on sight

"See better Lear." (I.i)

Lear to nature

"I tax not you, elements, with unkindness. I never gave you kingdom, called you children; you owe me no subscription." (III.ii)

Egdar on Tom

"'Poor Tom!' That's someting yet. 'Edgar' I nothing am." (II.iii)

Trinculo on Caliban

"Not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man." (II.ii)

Caliban on language

"You taught me language, and my profit on't is I know how to curse." (I.ii)

Caliban on Prospero

"I must obey. His [Prospero's] art is of such power." (I.ii)

Caliban on the island

"This island is mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou tak'st from me." (I.ii)

Prospero's forgiveness

"I do forgive thy rankst fault." (V.i)

Prospero on vengeance

"The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance." (V.i)

Caliban on tyrants

"I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer." (III.ii)

Gonzalo and Sebastian

"Here is everything adventageous to life." (II.i) - "True save means to live." (II.i)

Prospero leaving the island

"I'll break my staff… I'll drown my book." (V.i)

Prospero epilogue

"Let your indulgence set me free." (Epilogue)

Richard on Death

"For within the hollow crown/ that rounds the mortal temples of a king/ keeps Death his court." (III.ii)

Carlisle on Bolingbroke's rule

"And if you crown him, let me prophesy/ The blood of English shall manure the ground." (IV.i)

Richard questioning

"Am I not king?… Is not the king's name twenty thousand names?" (III.ii)

Duke of York on conference of power

"The king is left behind/ And in my loyal bosom lies his power." (II.iii)

Richard on divine power

"The breath of wordly men cannot depose/ the deputy elected by the lord." (III.ii)

Bolingbroke and Richard

"Are you contended to resign the crown?" (IV.i) - "Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be." (IV.i)

Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare's charaacters

"In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species."

Dorothy Hockey on Richard II

"Richard falls because of the kind of mind he has… his poetry, then, is single in this play."

Deborah Willis on colonialism in The Tempest

"The threatening "other" is used by colonial power to display its own godliness, to ensure aristocratoc class solidarity, to justify the colonial project morally…"

L.M. Storozynsky on King Lear

"Lear's sententious 'Nothing can come of nothing,' meant to be a practical observation, intended to prevent, not lead to disorder, turns out to be prophetic; the fulfillment of this accidental prophecy is what the play examines."