IF I RAN THE NEW PENGUIN SHAKESPEARE… The NPS is a nice little series of paperbacks with boring woodcuts on their front covers and brief, often startlingly acute quotations from the plays on their back covers. The one for King Lear is probably the best: just the one-liner, “What is the cause of thunder?” Many others are quite good (I remember liking the one for King John, though I can’t recall what it was; and Love’s Labour’s Lost has the “while greasy Joan doth keel the pot” song, yay). But I thought it might be fun to let you all know which lines I would quote if I wanted to a) summarize the plays and b) attract readers. Please do email me if you have better suggestions, or suggestions for other plays. …Some of these will be from memory, though when I get a chance I’ll try to clean them up.

Antony and Cleopatra: Antony: Let’s have one other gaudy night.

Hamlet: Horatio: So Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go to it?

Hamlet: Why, man, they did make love to this employment!

OR The Player King: But, orderly to end as I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Henry IV pt 1: Falstaff: No, my good lord; banish Peto,

banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack

Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff,

valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant,

being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him

thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s

company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

Henry: I do, I will.

Henry IV pt 2: Falstaff: We have heard the chimes at midnight.

Henry V: Henry: Every subject’s duty is the King’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.

Macbeth: Messenger: As I did stand my watch upon the hill,

I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,

The wood began to move.

OR Porter: O! come in, equivocator.

Much Ado About Nothing: Beatrice: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.

Othello: Othello: Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!

OR Iago: Are your doors locked?

Richard II: Richard: O that I were a mockery king of snow,

Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,

To melt myself away in water-drops!

Richard III: Richard: Was ever woman in this humour wooed?

Was ever woman in this humour won?

OR Richard: Shine out, fair sun, ’til I have bought a glass,

That I might see my shadow as I pass!

OR Richard: I am not in the giving vein today.

Romeo and Juliet: Montague: Black and portentous must this humour prove,

Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

The Tempest: Prospero: But this rough magic

I here abjure, and, when I have required

Some heavenly music, which even now I do,

To work mine end upon their senses that

This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I’ll drown my book.

The Winter’s Tale: Mamillius: A sad tale’s best for winter.

OR Leontes: I have drunk, and seen the spider.