Imperfect, poetical and real, the characters of this genius of literature, whose death took place 400 years ago, exceeds the archetype to reflect the complexity of the human condition.
Only Shakespeare was capable of creating such a great catalogue of characters who have become a model of human nature. He was able to show the infinite diversity of the human heart and shape creatures full of strength, truth and poetry, without forgetting about their peculiarities. His characters are gods and demons, heroes and buffoons. Hardly do they tell us anything about their creator while they say a lot about our condition.
So far, and at the same time so close. Thank you for Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Ofelia, Horatio and so many others who speak about us and become part of us wherever we “read” them.
For those of you who are taking part in the project of photo-literature on April 22nd in our school, I share with you my favourite quotes in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my favourite Shakespeare’s plays.
Hamlet
- “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
- “To be, or not to be: that is the question”
- “To die, to sleep –
To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub,
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…” - “Sweets to the sweet.”
- “When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”
- “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Romeo and Juliet
- “Don’t waste your love on somebody, who doesn’t value it.”
- “Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.”
- “O teach me how I should forget to think “
- “Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.”
Macbeth
- “Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
- “Life … is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” - “Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.” - “What’s done cannot be undone.”
- “The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”
The Merchant of Venice
- “You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”
- “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
- “love is blind
and lovers cannot see
the pretty follies
that themselves commit” - “All that glisters is not gold.”
- “The moon shines bright. In such a night as this. When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise, in such a night…”
Julius Caesar
- “Experience is the teacher of all things”
- “What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also”.
- “As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can”.
- “Which death is preferably to every other?” “The unexpected”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
- “My soul is in the sky.”
- “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”
- “Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream”
- “For you, in my respect, are all the world; Then how can it be said I am alone, When all the world is here to look on me?”
Much Ado About Nothing
- “I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?”
- “Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.”
- “For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?”
- “I can see he’s not in your good books,’ said the messenger.
‘No, and if he were I would burn my library.”
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