It being spring, the time of lovers and greenery and flowers and sun, it is also the time of sonnets and poetry (probably why April is National Poetry Month), and who better to embody the poetry of love and spring as well as the Bard?

In this thread, I invite everyone to share their favorite works of Shakespeare, from sonnets and "songs" within plays, to soliloquies and even scene excerpts (as much as will fit on BookTalk), or even links to your favorite plays online, in text or even video! Everybody is welcome to share the love, and I can't wait to see all the awesome Shakespeareness that this thread will soon contain!

So here we go, everybody, I'll start us off with a springtime favorite (which can also be found in the Top 500 Poems on page 20 somewhere, because posting there is what prompted me to start this thread). So without further ado...

It Was a Lover and His Lass
IT was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
These pretty country folks would lie,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

This carol they began that hour,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
How that life was but a flower
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

And, therefore, take the present time
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
For love is crown & grave'd with the prime
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

Best. Speech. Ever.
(in my humble opinion)

from Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene iv

ROMEO: I dream'd a dream to-night.
MERCUTIO: And so did I.
ROMEO: Well, what was yours?
MERCUTIO: That dreamers often lie.
ROMEO: In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
MERCUTIO: O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she--

ROMEO: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talk'st of nothing.
MERCUTIO: True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
(just for fun, I'll close out the scene, because Romeo's foreboding is amazingly written and gives us a taste for the tragedy to come)
BENVOLIO: This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves;
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
ROMEO: I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.
BENVOLIO: Strike, drum.
Exeunt

***

Ah, my dear friend, Mercutio, I believe I shall post more from you before the week is out.

Even if this thread is only for me, I will be happy sharing my favorite Shakespeare with myself, and if anyone else comes to play, I will welcome them with warm and open arms.

Shakespeare =

Thanks, Eden! Enjoyed that very much!

Yay!!!

There will be much more to come, and you're welcome to share your own favorite Shakespeare, too!

My favorite sonnet, which I once chose to memorize for a poetry assignment in my first college poetry class.
Here, Shakespeare asks how he can handle knowing that, since Time "makes fools of us all," as they say, how his love for his lady can last when even her beauty will fade, like everything else, concluding that nothing can change the aging process, and all we can do as humans is to enjoy life, and live and love until it is our time to die.

Take a look!

***

Sonnet 12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

***

Good to see any sonnet by Shakespeare. I recall this one as being from that string of sonnets where the speaker is trying desperately to convince his young and beautiful male friend to get married and make kids! That is the only way we have to reach anything like immortality.

We should have Randy come back to talk about the sonnets. He was a big fan of them and was reading a book about them. The sonnets are varied, but one thing that unites them is Shakespeare's brilliant execution. Some of the themes are actually conventional, but he manages to make them shine through his exposition. Some express universal emotions, while others do the opposite, expressing the somewhat peculiar passions of what appears to be an actual love affair. I don't know how it could be that the writer who wrote the best plays in the world could also write perhaps the best book of poetry. And such a mysterious man at that, about whom relatively little is known.

You got down the gist of this sonnet quite well, DWill. I remember discussing it in class, and the professor (who was one of the oddest women I have ever met, go figure), ended her analysis of the work by saying, "He's trying to say there's nothing we can do to stop death, so we should go make babies!" It was just so odd the way she said it...I guess you had to be there.

More sonnets and ....well, more...to come!

I've picked the second most famous of Hamlet's soliloquies. He says these anguished, bitter words before he learns from the Ghost the truth of how his his father died. Hamlet is a shattered idealist, the philosophy student who sees with horror how the world really is, and he doesn't get over it. A lot of other texts have the word "sullied" for "solid" in line one. I much prefer solid.

(bleachededen, have you seen Zeffereli's film of Romeo and Juliet (late 60s, I think)? The actor playing Mercutio was fabulous and unforgettably delivered the lines you quoted.)


Act 1 Scene2: O That This Too Solid Flesh Would Melt (Spoken by Hamlet)

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

DWill wrote: (bleachededen, have you seen Zeffereli's film of Romeo and Juliet (late 60s, I think)? The actor playing Mercutio was fabulous and unforgettably delivered the lines you quoted.)

YES! I loved that guy!

I'm pretty sure that actor is actually the reason I love Mercutio so much. I had a huge crush on him as a kid, despite him not being the most attractive guy around, because of the way he portrayed that character. No one has ever spoken that speech better, in my opinion, and every time I read the play I hear all of Mercutio's lines in his voice.

I actually have that version on dvd. I have a great version of Hamlet portayed in India. Works well.