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| | Play | Who | First lines
| | Romeo and Juliet | PROLOGUE
| Two households, both alike in dignity, // In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, // From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, // Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. // From forth the fatal loins of these two foes // A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; // Whole misadventured piteous overthrows // Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
| | Taming of the Shrew | LUCENTIO
| Tranio, since for the great desire I had // To see fair Padua, nursery of arts, // I am arrived for fruitful Lombardy, // The pleasant garden of great Italy; // And by my father's love and leave am arm'd // With his good will and thy good company, // My trusty servant, well approved in all, // Here let us breathe and haply institute // A course of learning and ingenious studies.
| | Titus Andronicus | SATURNINUS
| Noble patricians, patrons of my right, // Defend the justice of my cause with arms, // And, countrymen, my loving followers, // Plead my successive title with your swords: // I am his first-born son, that was the last // That wore the imperial diadem of Rome; // Then let my father's honours live in me, // Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.
| | Troilus and Cressida | PROLOGUE
| In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece // The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed, // Have to the port of Athens sent their ships, // Fraught with the ministers and instruments // Of cruel war: sixty and nine, that wore // Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay // Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made // To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures // The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen, // With wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel.
| | Two Gentlemen of Verona | VALENTINE
| Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus: // Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. // Were't not affection chains thy tender days // To the sweet glances of thy honour'd love, // I rather would entreat thy company // To see the wonders of the world abroad, // Than, living dully sluggardized at home, // Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. // But since thou lovest, love still and thrive therein, // Even as I would when I to love begin.
| | Winter's Tale | ARCHIDAMUS
| If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on // the like occasion whereon my services are now on // foot, you shall see, as I have said, great // difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.
| | Henry VIII | THE PROLOGUE
| I come no more to make you laugh: things now, // That bear a weighty and a serious brow, // Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, // Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, // We now present. Those that can pity, here // May, if they think it well, let fall a tear; // The subject will deserve it.
| | Julius Caesar | FLAVIUS | Hence! home, you idle creatures get you home: // Is this a holiday? what! know you not, // Being mechanical, you ought not walk // Upon a labouring day without the sign // Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?
| | Love's Labour's Lost | FERDINAND
| Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, // Live register'd upon our brazen tombs // And then grace us in the disgrace of death; // When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, // The endeavor of this present breath may buy // That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge // And make us heirs of all eternity.
| | Pericles, Prince of Tyre | GOWER
| To sing a song that old was sung, // From ashes ancient Gower is come; // Assuming man's infirmities, // To glad your ear, and please your eyes.
| | Richard II | KING RICHARD II
| Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster, // Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, // Brought hither Henry Hereford thy bold son, // Here to make good the boisterous late appeal, // Which then our leisure would not let us hear, // Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
| | Richard III | GLOUCESTER | Now is the winter of our discontent // Made glorious summer by this sun of York; // And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house // In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
| | Measure for Measure | DUKE VINCENTIO
| Of government the properties to unfold, // Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse; // Since I am put to know that your own science // Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice // My strength can give you:
| | Merchant of Venice | ANTONIO
| In sooth, I know not why I am so sad: // It wearies me; you say it wearies you; // But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, // What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, // I am to learn; // And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, // That I have much ado to know myself.
| | A Midsummer Night's Dream | THESEUS
| Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour // Draws on apace; four happy days bring in // Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow // This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, // Like to a step-dame or a dowager // Long withering out a young man revenue.
| | Much Ado About Nothing | LEONATO
| I learn in this letter that Don Peter of Arragon comes this night to Messina.
| | Othello | RODERIGO | Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindly // That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse // As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.
| | Tempest | Master | Good, speak to the mariners: fall to't, yarely, // or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir.
| | Timon of Athens | Poet/Painter
| [Poet]Good day, sir. // [Painter] I am glad you're well.
| | Twelfth Night | DUKE ORSINO
| If music be the food of love, play on; // Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, // The appetite may sicken, and so die.
| | Merry Wives of Windsor | SHALLOW
| Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star- // chamber matter of it: if he were twenty Sir John // Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.
| | Henry V | Chorus | O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend // The brightest heaven of invention, // A kingdom for a stage, princes to act // And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
| | King John | KING JOHN | Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?
| | King Lear | KENT | I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.
| | Macbeth | First Witch | When shall we three meet again // In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
| | Henry IV, Part 1 | KING HENRY IV
| So shaken as we are, so wan with care, // Find we a time for frighted peace to pant, // And breathe short-winded accents of new broils // To be commenced in strands afar remote.
| | Henry VI, Part 1 | BEDFORD
| Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! // Comets, importing change of times and states, // Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, // And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
| | Henry IV, Part 2 | RUMOUR
| Open your ears; for which of you will stop // The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks? // I, from the orient to the drooping west, // Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold // The acts commenced on this ball of earth: // Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, // The which in every language I pronounce, // Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
| | Henry VI, Part 2 | SUFFOLK
| As by your high imperial majesty // I had in charge at my depart for France, // As procurator to your excellence, // To marry Princess Margaret for your grace, // So, in the famous ancient city, Tours, // In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil, // The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne and Alencon, // Seven earls, twelve barons and twenty reverend bishops, // I have perform'd my task and was espoused: // And humbly now upon my bended knee, // In sight of England and her lordly peers, // Deliver up my title in the queen // To your most gracious hands, that are the substance // Of that great shadow I did represent; // The happiest gift that ever marquess gave, // The fairest queen that ever king received.
| | Henry VI, Part 3 | WARWICK
| I wonder how the king escaped our hands.
| | All's Well that Ends Well | COUNTESS
| In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.
| | Antony and Cleopatra | PHILO
| Nay, but this dotage of our general's // O'erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes, // That o'er the files and musters of the war // Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn, // The office and devotion of their view // Upon a tawny front: his captain's heart, // Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst // The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, // And is become the bellows and the fan // To cool a gipsy's lust.
| | As You Like It | ORLANDO | As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness.
| | Comedy of Errors | AEGEON
| Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall // And by the doom of death end woes and all.
| | Coriolanus | First Citizen
| Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.
| | Cymbeline | First Gentleman
| You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods // No more obey the heavens than our courtiers // Still seem as does the king.
| | Hamlet | BERNARDO | Who's there?
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