What is your favourite Shakespeare or Marlowe speech and why?

Answer 1

Lear King:
"... under the greenwood tree..."
it is poetry, pure.
jane

Answer 2

Mark Antony's funeral oration. And I don't know why. At the age of 9, I picked the complete works of Shakespeare from my parents' book shelf and learnt the speech by heart.

Answer 3

There is a tide in the affairs of men
That taken at the flood leads on to fortune
Neglected all the voyage of their life
Is spent in shallows and in misery

This may not be exactly correct but has always meant to me that I should act...at the right time, not hastily or without thought.....but get on with it and don't hang back. Good old WS had some good advice for all occasions.

Answer 4

This is beautiful, as are so many of the soliloquy's of Shakespeare.

Romeo:

"But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?......."

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.
It is my lady; O, it is my love!
O that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

Answer 5

I simply love Marlowe. My favorite part of Doctor Faustus is his speech to Helen of Troy. So beautiful.

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Kisses her

Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here I will dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sacked;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colors on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azured arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

That is great poetry from the soul.

Answer 6

act 3 scene 1 in shakespeares Romeo and Juliet because romeo ends up as 'fortunes fool' and it's the turning point in the play.

or Mcbeths soliloquay because I had to memorise it and i think it uses alot of figurative language. 'Is this a dagger I see before me that handle toward my hand..." lol

Answer 7

Shylock's speech from 'The Merchant of Venice' - you could substitute any outcast group of society into this speech; it is a passionate plea for tolerance that we could do with listening to in the world we live in today.

"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die?"

Answer 8

If Shakespeare wrote and read a shopping list to me, I'd hang on every word. I'd have a very hard time choosing only one.

Answer 9

And when he shall die,
take him and cut him out in little stars,
and he will make the face of heaven so fine
that all the world will be in love with the night,
and pay no worship to the garish sun.
Romeo and Juliet--
I used this beautiful quote in my late son's eulogy, because that is how I feel about him--LL

Answer 10

Shakespeare -Henry V

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.


Very inspirational

Answer 11

Shakespeare - The Tempest. 'Our revels now are ended, These our actors, as i foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air ...We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep'.