KING HENRY V: Let us swear

That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not,

For there is none of you so mean and base,

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

— Henry V, III, i

During a short break in rain that is expected to last all day, I indulged Guapo’s wish to keep his dainty feet off the wet grass of my backyard and instead urinate on the leg of an Adirondack chair on my concrete patio. Following advice from Sir John Falstaff of Shakespeare that “the better part of valor is discretion,” I may have thus avoided Guapo peeing inside the house.
#Dogs #Shakespeare

ULYSSES: And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself.

— Troilus and Cressida, I, iii

LEAR: How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child!

— King Lear, I, iv

Now free for all to read... Sitting under stained glass windows representing Shakespeare's seven ages of man, I admired the decor and reflected on the 'cultural cringe':

Shakespeare in the library https://www.patreon.com/posts/shakespeare-in-122513420

PORTER: 'Faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

MACDUFF: What three things does drink especially provoke?

PORTER: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.

— Macbeth, II, iii

Sonnet 120 - CXX
That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've passed a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
O! that our night of woe might have remembered
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tendered
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

bot by @davidaugust

New Book (free to download on Kindle Unlimited):
Woke Shakespeare: Rethinking #Shakespeare for a New Era
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DZW4JN6H

BASTARD: 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.

— King John, II, i

Sonnet 102 - CII
My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear;
That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:
Because I would not dull you with my song.

bot by @davidaugust

SECOND CITIZEN: I fear, I fear 'twill prove a giddy world.

— Richard III, II, iii

Sonnet 139 - CXXXIX
O! call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:
Use power with power, and slay me not by art,
Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might
Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

bot by @davidaugust

MACBETH: I am afraid to think what I have done;

Look on't again I dare not.

— Macbeth, II, ii

Sonnet 018 - XVIII
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

bot by @davidaugust

FIRST WITCH: “Give me,” quoth I:

“Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries.

— Macbeth, I, iii

Ophelia among the Flowers (1900s) by French Symbolist artist Odilon Redon (1840-1916). He creates a deliberately ambiguous and dream-like response to Shakespeare’s drama, rather than a literal illustration of it. He makes full use of the rich colors of pastel to create a glowing and almost abstract design that evokes the effect of music.

https://stellar-art.pixels.com/featured/ophelia-among-the-flowers-1900s-odilon-redon.html

Sonnet 127 - CXXVII
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on Nature's power,
Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

bot by @davidaugust

Analysis of Hamlet's Soliloquy : Hamlet is indecisive because he becomes existentially stuck, "To glue, or not to glue/That is the question".

#GlueASongPoemOrLimerick
#HashTagGames #Shakespeare #Hamlet #DadaistExistentialism #Existentialism #Literature

Lady Macbeth: But glue your courage to the sticking place
And we'll not fail,

#GlueASongPoemOrLimerick
#HashTagGames #Shakespeare #Macbeth #LadyMacbeth #Literature