The Reactionary Utopian

You Be the Judge

April 3, 2007

Some of my detractors have compared me unfavorably with Shakespeare. Well, they’re certainly entitled to their opinion. I think I turn a pretty good phrase; but Shakespeare is undeniably good too. The obvious way to settle this dispute is to quote some of his stuff and let the reading public judge for themselves.

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“Good night, sweet prince”; “An ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own”; “O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?” “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”; “Your ‘if’ is the only peace-maker; much virtue in ‘if’”; “So young, and so untender?” “In the dark backward and abysm of time”; “I am dying, Egypt, dying”; “the choice and master spirits of this age”; “Time’s thievish progress to eternity.”

“In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke”; “For I am nothing if not critical”; “Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise”; “The evil that men do lives after them”; “smooth as monumental alabaster”; “the insane root That takes the reason prisoner”; “alms for oblivion”; “the surly sullen bell”; “mischief, thou art afoot”; “I am giddy, expectation whirls me round”; “wise enough to play the fool”; “Hear you this Triton of the minnows”; “And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.”

“Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges”; “the king’s English”; “like patience on a monument”; “One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book”; “If music be the food of love, play on”; “And art made tongue-tied by authority”; “A local habitation and a name”; “misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”; “I understand a fury in your words, But not the words”; “the world’s mine oyster”; “O most lame and impotent conclusion.”

“Speak low, if you speak love”; “cunning’st pattern of excelling nature”; “A Daniel come to judgment!” “so light a foot Will ne’er wear out the evelasting flint”; “To be wise, and love, Exceeds man’s might”; “Present mirth hath present laughter”; “Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope”; “I am a feather for each wind that blows”; “russet yeas and honest kersey noes”; “the chronicle of wasted time”; “Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.”

“Othello’s occupation’s gone”; “this other Eden, demi-paradise”; “Come not between the dragon and his wrath”; “Bring forth men-children only”; “Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desir’st”; “There is a tide in the affairs of men”; “a scurvy politician”; “Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war”; “What! Will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?” “Is it a world to hide virtues in?” “a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles”; “A little touch of Harry in the night.”

[Breaker quote for You Be the Judge: Giving Shakespeare a chance]

[Breaker quote for You Be the Judge: Giving Shakespeare a chance]

“My library Was dukedom large enough”; “midsummer madness”; “Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell”; “made myself a motley to the view”; “These blessed candles of the night”; “This precious stone set in the silver sea”; “full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”; “fit for treasons stratagems, and spoils”; “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

“O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!” “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well”; “Nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice”; “Few love to hear the sins they love to act”; “Antony, that revels long o’ nights, Is notwithstanding up”; “There is a world elsewhere”; “Eating the bitter bread of banishment”; “a man can die but once; we owe God a death”; “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care”; “And seem a saint when most I play the devil”; “Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed”; “Absent thee from felicity a while”; “Golden lads and girls”; “Write sorrow in the bosom of the earth.”

“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece”; “A largess universal, like the sun”; “the be-all and the end-all”; “What’s past is prologue”; “God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man”; “Not a mouse stirring”; “We have heard the chimes at midnight”; “He that dies pays all debts”; “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncles”; “Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripped”; “Commit The oldest sins the newest kind of ways.”

“Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say”; “a blinkiing idiot”; “The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!” “devouring Time”; “He thinks too much; such men are dangerous”; “Wilt thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant?” “The world is still deceived with ornament”; “as patient as the female dove”; “silken, sly, insinuating Jacks”; “We must not make a scarecrow of the law”; “Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear”; “Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.”

Well, there you have it. A fair sampling, I think. Please don’t judge him too harshly.

Joseph Sobran

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