Shakespeare Lines Through the Lens of Succession
I needed to weave together the many quotes and parallels that have been on my mind into a single piece. There might be oversimplifications but there is also so much more…
King Lear
What shall Cordelia do?
Love, and be silent.
my love’s
More richer than my tongue.
what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.
KING LEAR
How, how, Cordelia! mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes.
You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Better thou
Hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.
machinations, hollowness, treachery, and allruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.
KENT
This is nothing, fool.
Fool
Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer; you gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?
KING LEAR
Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.
Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool
All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
Fool
I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o’ thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o’ both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle: here comes one o’the parings.
KING LEAR
When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools
Fool
Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a figure: I am better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing.”
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
Thou shalt find
That I’ll resume the shape which thou dost think
I have cast off for ever
Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadstbeen wise.
Fortune, good night: smile once more: turn thy wheel!
KING LEAR
Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?I am mightily abused. I should e’en die with pity, To see another thus. I know not what to say.
Fathers that wear rags
Do make their children blind;
But fathers that bear bags
Shall see their children kind.
Fortune, that arrant whore,
Ne’er turns the key to the poor.
But, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours
for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year.
She hath abated me of half my train; Look’d black upon me; struck me with her tongue, Most serpent-like, upon the very heart: All the stored vengeances of heaven fall On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones, You taking airs, with lameness!
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter; Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh, Which I must needs call mine: thou art a boil, A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle, In my corrupted blood.
KING LEAR
I gave you all —
REGAN
And in good time you gave it.
“Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour’d, When others are more wicked: not being the worst Stands in some rank of praise.
Tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest,
And must needs taste his folly
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.
This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all: The younger rises when the old doth fall.
I had a son, Now outlaw’d from my blood; he sought my life, But lately, very late: I loved him
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile: Filths savour but themselves.
GLOUCESTER
O, let me kiss that hand!
KING LEAR
Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office.
We are not the first Who, with best meaning, have incurr’d the worst.
Out, vile jelly!
Where is thy lustre now?
ALBANY
All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings.
Macbeth
Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
Fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it!
look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t
unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it!
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
MACBETH
We will speak further.
LADY MACBETH
Only look up clear;
To alter favour ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me.
LADY MACBETH
What’s to be done?
MACBETH
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night.
Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad.
MACBETH
Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care
LADY MACBETH
You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
MACBETH
Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:
We are yet but young in deed.
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid
Richard III
The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind;
Insulting tyranny begins to jet
Upon the innocent and aweless throne:
Welcome, destruction, death, and massacre!
I see, as in a map, the end of all.
England hath long been mad, and scarr’d herself;
The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood,
The father rashly slaughter’d his own son,
The son, compell’d, been butcher to the sire:
All this divided York and Lancaster,
Divided in their dire division,
O, now, let Richmond and Elizabeth,
The true succeeders of each royal house,
By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together!
I’ll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders Ere I will see the crown so foul misplaced. But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it?
First if all obstacles were cut away,
And that my path were even to the crown,
As my ripe revenue and due by birth
Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,
So mighty and so many my defects,
As I had rather hide me from my greatness
So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin:
Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.
King Henry IV
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
KING HENRY IV
Where is the crown? who took it from my pillow
PRINCE HENRY
I never thought to hear you speak again.
KING HENRY IV
Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought:
I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair
That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours
Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!
Thou seek’st the greatness that will o’erwhelm thee.
bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
That thou art crowned, not that I am dead
PRINCE HENRY
My gracious liege,
You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;
Then plain and right must my possession be:
Which I with more than with a common pain
‘Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.
He hath more worthy interest to the state
Than thou the shadow of succession
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
Thy due from me
Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously:
My due from thee is this imperial crown,
Which, as immediate as thy place and blood,
Derives itself to me.
put the world’s whole strength
Into one giant arm, it shall not force
This lineal honour from me
King Lear/Logan / Roman/Cordelia/The Fool/ / Shiv/Goneril / Tom/Albany Shivtom/Macbeth & lady macbeth / Kendall/Richard III/Henry IV/
A reference article that compares various Shakespearean tragedies to different elements of the show.
