Shakespearean Tragedy Quotes part 1

“Bear Mistress Arden unto Canterbury / Where her sentence is she must be burnt”

arden of faversham, mayor of faversham, scene xviii, sentencing prisoners

“husband, what mean you to get up so early? / summer nights are short, and yet you rise ere day / had I been wake you had not risen so early”

ardern of faversham, alice, scene i, first on stage meeting with arden, challenged for saying Mosby’s name in her sleep

“sweet love, thou know’st that we two, Ovid-like/ have often chid the morning when it gan to peep / and often wished that dark Night’s purblind steeds/ would pull her by the purple mantle back / and cast her in the ocean to her love”

arden of faversham, arden, scene i, first confronting alice for saying mosby’s name in her sleep

“a month? ay me! sweet xxx, come again / within a day or two or else I die”

arden of faversham, alice, scene i, replying to arden saying he is going to London for business

“but did you mark me then how i brake off?” “ay, xxx, and it was cunningly performed”

arden of faversham, alive speaking to mosby, scene i, discussing her feigned grief at arden leaving

“desire of wealth is endless in his mind / and he is greedy-gaping still for gain./ nor cares he though young gentlemen do beg / so he may scrape and hoard up in his pouch”

arden of faversham, scene i, greene, about arden and his acquisition of land from the abbey which was formerly leased to Greene and Reede

“A botcher, and no better at the first / who, by base brokage getting some small stock / crept into service of a nobleman / and by his servile flattery and fawning / is not become the steward of his house / and bravely jets it in his silken gown.”

arden of faversham, scene i, arden, telling franklin about mosby since he fears alice is cheating on him

“…were he by the Lord Protector backed / he should not make me to be pointed at. / I am by birth a gentleman of blood / and that injurious ribalt that attempts / to violate my dear wife’s chastity - / For dear I hold her love, as dear as heaven - / shall on the bed which he thinks to defile / see his dissevered joints and sinews torn / whilst on the planchers pants his weary body / smeared in the channels of his lustful blood”

arden of faversham, scene i, arden, telling Franklin about his suspicions of Mosby’s affair with Alice

“Ere noo he means to take horse and away! / Sweet news is this. Oh, that some airy spirit / would, in the shape and likeness of a horse / Gallop with XXX ‘cross the ocean / and throw him from his back into the waves! / Sweet XXX is the man that hath my heart / and he usurps it, having nought but this -/ That I am tied to him by marriage./ Love is a god, and marriage is but words / and therefore XXX’s title is the best. / Tush! Whether it be or no, he shall be mine / In spite of him, of Hymen, and of rights”

arden of faversham, scene i, alice’s first soliloquy, talking about arden leaving and her plans to be with Mosby in the meantime

“thus feeds the lamb securely on the down / whilst through the thicket of an arbour brake / the hunger-bitten wold o’erpries his haunt / and takes advantage to eat him up”

arden of faversham, scene iii, michael, his soliloquy about reluctantly planning to help black will and shakebag kill arden by unlocking the doors for them - in order to win hand of susan, mosby’s sister

“This night I dreamed that being in a park / A toil was pitched to overthrow the deer / And I upon a little rising hill / Stood whistly watching for the herd’s approach. / Even there, methoughts, a gentle slumber took me,/ And summoned all my parts to sweet repose. / But in the pleasure of this golden rest / An ill-thewed foster had removed the toil, [forester] / And rounded me with that beguiling home [net] / Which late, methought, was pitched to cast the deer. / With that he blew an evil-sounding horn / And at the noise another herdman came / With falchion drawn, and bent it at my breast, / Crying aloud, ‘Thou art the game we seek…”

arden of faversham, scene vi, arden, relating a dream he had the night black will and shakebag were intending to kill him had michael unlocked the doors

“…the forlorn traveller / Whose lips are glued with summer’s parching

heat / Ne’er longed so much to see a running brook / As I to finish XXX’s tragedy. / Seest thou this gore that cleaveth to my face, / From hence ne’er will I wash this bloody stain / Till XXX’s heart be panting in my hand.

arden of faverhsam, scene iii, black will, vowing to greene that he will kill arden for him

“my coming to you was about the plot of ground

Which wrongfully you detain from me.

Although the rent of it be very small,

Yet will it help my wife and children,

Which here I leave in XXXX, God knows,

Needy and bare. For Christ’s sake, let them have

it!”

arden of faversham, scene xiii, reede, pleading with arden about getting to keep his land

“God, I beseech thee, show some miracle

On thee or thine in plaguing thee for this.

That plot of ground which thou detains from me –

I speak it in an agony of spirit –

Be ruinous and fatal unto thee!

Either be butchered by thy dearest friends,

Or else be brought for men to wonder at.

Or thou and thine miscarry in that place,

Or there run mad and end thy cursed days.”

arden of faversham, scene xiii, reede, cursing arden’s refusal to let him keep renting land

“But this above the rest is to be noted:

XXX lay murdered in that plot of ground

Which he by force and violence held from

XXX;

And in the grass his body’s print was seen

Two years and more after the deed was

done.”

arden of faversham, epilogue, franklin

“…mistress, tell her whether I live or die,

I’ll make her more worth than twenty painters can,

For I will rid mine elder brother away,

And then the farm of Bolton is mine own.

Who would not venture upon house and land

When he may have it for a right-down blow?”

arden of faversham, scene i, michael speaking to alice about winning susan’s hand instead of clarke the painter

“What, shall an oath make thee forsake

my love?

As if I have not sworn as much myself,

And given my hand unto him in the church.

Tush, XXX. Oaths is words, and words is

wind,

And wind is mutable. Then I conclude

Tis childishness to stand upon an oath.”

arden of faversham, scene i, alice, telling Mosby he need not keep the oath he made to arden that he would not court alice

“Trust me, you show a noble mind

That rather than you’ll live with him you hate

You’ll venture life and die with him you love.”

arden of faversham, scene i, clarke, talking to alice about her desire to kill arden

“Might I without control / Enjoy him still, then XXX should not

die / But seeing I cannot, therefore let him die”

arden of faversham, scene i, alive, explaining her determination to kill arden

“A: let me meditate upon my Saviour Christ,

Whose blood must save me for the blood I shed.

B: How long shall I live in this hell of grief?

Convey me from the presence of that strumpet.

A: Ah, but for thee I had never been strumpet.

What cannot oaths and protestations do

When men have opportunity to woo?

I was too young to sound thy villainies.”

arden of faversham, scene xviii, alice and mosby arguing with each other

“A. But leaving these vain trifles of men’s souls,
Tell me, what is that Lucifer thy lord?
B: Arch-regent and commander of all spirits.

A: Was not that Lucifer an angel once?

B: Yes A, and most dearly loved of God.

A: How comes it then that he is prince of devils?

B: O, by aspiring pride and insolence
For which God threw him from the face of heaven.

A: And what are you that live with Lucifer?

B: Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer
Conspired against our God with Lucifer,
And are for ever damned with Lucifer”

Dr Faustus, scene iii, faustus and mephistophilis, first meeting

“Why this is hell nor am I out of it.

Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells

In being deprived of everlasting bliss!

O XXX, leave these frivolous demands,

Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.”

Dr faustus, scene iii, mephistophilis, first meeting with faustus

“Now is he born of parents base of stock
In Germany, within a town called Rhodes.
At riper years, to Wittenberg he went,
Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up.
So much he profits in divinity
That shortly he was graced with doctor’s name,
Excelling all, and sweetly dispute
In heavenly matters of theology,
Till, swollen with cunning of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And, melting, heavens conspired his overthrow.
For falling to a devilish exercise
And glutted now with learning’s golden gifts
He surfeits upon cursed necromancy.
Nothing so sweet as magic is to him
Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss.
And this the man that in his study sits.”

dr faustus, prologue, chorus, describing faustus and the plot of the play

“Why, Faustus, hast thou not attained that end?
Is not thy common talk sound aphorisms?
Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague,
And thousand desperate maladies been eased?
Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.
Wouldst thou make men to live eternally,
Or, being dead, raise them to life again,
Then this profession were to be esteemed.
Physic, farewell!”

dr faustus, scene i, faustus first soliloquy, discussing his desire to learn sorcery etc