Can You Quote Shakespeare from your memory?

Question

And if so what quote comes to mind?

Answer 1

I don’t know a lot of Shakespeare (I’m French) but I know some quotations (I have a book in my car that I read if I get stuck into traffic…). I had to look them up on the Internet to put where they came from because I had no idea for some.

I did not put the obvious ones (what’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. From Romeo and Juliet) I just put those:

O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. (Romeo and Juliet)

Cowards die many times before their deaths.
The valiant never taste of death but once. (Julius Caesar)

‘Tis is mad idolatry to make the service greater than the god. (Troilus and Cressida)

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child! (King Lear)

Wise men never sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms. (Henry VI)

It is excellent to have a giant strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. (Measure for Measure)

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. (Hamlet)

Answer 2

Yes, the soliloquy from the scottish play which contains the lines "out, out brief candle, life's but a walking shadow"
and other lines too, but I can only do this because we were forece-fed Shakespeare at school.

I find Gilbert and Sullivan songs easier to remember!

I know our mythic history, King Arthur and Sir Caradoc's
I answer hard accrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,
I can quote in elegaiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabalous......

In short in matters vegetable, animal and mineral , I am the very model of a

Answer 3

The quality of mercy is not strained
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath
It is twice blessed; it blessed him that gives and him that takes
Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptor shows the force of temporal power; the attribute to awe and majesty. And earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice. Therefore; though justice be thy plea, consider this: that in the course of justice none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.

From Shakespeare's A merchant of Venice

i seriously memorized that!!!!!!!!!

Answer 4

I promise you I have this all memorized from Hamlet

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I,
Is it not monstrous that this player here
but in a fiction, in a dream of passion
could force his soul so to its own conceit
that from her working all his visage wanned
tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
a broken voice and his owl function suiting
with forms to his conceit
and all for nothing!
for Hecuba!
what's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba that he should weep for her
what would he do had he the motive and cue for passion that I have
He would drown the stage with tears
and cleave the general ear with horrid speech
make mad the guilty and appall the free
confound the ignorant and amaze indeed
the very faculties of eyes and ears yet i
a dull and muddy-meddled rascal peat
like john a dreams unpregnant of my cause
and can say nothing--no not for a king
upon whose property and most dear life
a damned defeat was made
am i a coward?
who calls me villian? breaks my pate across?
plucks off my beard and blows it in my face
tweaks me by the nose
gives me lie in the throat, as deep as to the lungs
who does me this?
Ha, swounds
I shouldnt take it, for it cannot be
but I am pigeon livered and lack gall
to make oppression bitter
or ere this, I should ha' fatted all the region kites
with this slaves offal. Bloody, bawdy villian.
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villian.
O, Vengenance!
Why what an *** am I,
this is most brave that I,
the son of a dear father murdered
prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell
must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
and fall a cursing, like a very drab
a scullion! Fie upont foe! about my brains!
Hum,
I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play
have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their malefactions,
for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.
I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle
I'll observe his looks, I'll tent him to the quick
if a do blench, I know my course
the spirit I have seen may be the devil and the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape,
yea and perhaps, out of my weakness and my meloncholy
as he is very potent in such spirits,
abuses me, to damn me
I'll have grounds more relative than this,
the plays the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king!


The second most famous soliloquy of Shakespeare's, behind "to be or not to be"

Answer 5

thrice the brinded cat has mewed
thrice and once the hedgepig whined
harpier cries 'tis time 'tis time
Round about the cauldron go...

I think it depends on how good your memory is and how much you've worked with or studied Shakespeare... poetry is easier to remember than prose. That is why so much oral tradition used rhyme and cadence for it's histories.

Answer 6

"To be, or not to be; that is the question." - Hamlet
"If music be the food of love, play on." - Twelfth Night
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" - Romeo and Juliet
"When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?
When the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.
Where the place?
Upon the heath.
There to meet with Macbeth.
I come, Greymalkin!
Paddock calls!
Anon!" - Macbeth
"Out, damned spot!" - Macbeth
"All the world's a stage" - As You Like It
"What light through yonder window breaks?" - Romeo and Juliet
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on" - The Tempest
"Why, then the world's mine oyster" - The Merry Wives of Windsor
"To sleep, perchance to dream" - Hamlet
"All that glisters is not gold." - The Merchant of Venice
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." - Hamlet
"Is this a dagger which I see before me?" - Macbeth
"Off with his head!" - King Richard III
"Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble." - Macbeth
"Something wicked this way comes" - Macbeth

Answer 7

"Ah, then I see Queen Maab hath been with you. She is the fairiy's midwife, and comes, in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman- Drawn by a team of little atomies, athwart men's noses as they lay asleep."

Mercutio's speech from Romeo and Juliet. I used to know the Whoooole thing...

Answer 8

"A little more than kin, and less than kind." ~Hamlet

"I hate the Moor." ~Othello, Iago

And my favorite...

"No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o' both your houses!" ~Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio

I didn't care too much for Romeo and Juliet, but something about that quote stuck with me...

Answer 9

"To be, or not to be. That is the question." ~Hamlet
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." ~Hamlet
"Me thinks, the lady doth protest too much." ~Hamlet
"To sleep, perchance to dream." ~Hamlet
"Double, double toil and trouble! Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." ~Macbeth
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet." ~ Romeo and Juliet
"Oh Romeo Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?" ~ Romeo and Juliet
"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun." ~ Romeo and Juliet
"Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow." ~ Romeo and Juliet
"Et tu, Brute?" ~ Julius Caesar
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." ~ Julius Caesar
"Beware the ides of March." ~ Julius Caesar
"All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts" ~As You Like It
"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them" ~Twelfth Night
"Lord, what fools these mortals be." ~ Midsummer Night's Dream
"The course of true love never did run smooth". ~Midsummer Night's Dream

Answer 10

o romeo o romeo, where for art thou romeo?
deny thy father, refuse thy name or if thou wilt not be but sworn my love and i will no longer be a capulet. Tis but thy name that is thy enemy. Thou art thouself though not a montegue. what's a montegue? tis not hand nor foot nor arm nor face nor any other part belonging to a man. o be some other name! what's in a name? that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. so romeo would were he not romeo called retain that dear perfection which he owns without that title. romeo doth thy name for thy name that is no longer a part of thee take all of thyself.
- Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet