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I dare now call my own.

O Cromwell, Cromwell,

Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
CROM. Good Sir, have patience.
WOL.
The hopes of court! My hopes in heaven do dwell.

19. LEAR.

So I have. Farewell

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage, blow!
You cataracts, and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world!
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ungrateful man!

Rumble thy bellyful! spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children;
You owe me no subscription: then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters joined
Your high-engender'd battles, 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul.
Let the great gods,

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That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipp'd of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjured and thou simular man of virtue,
That art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming,

Hast practised on man's life-close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and ask

Those dreadful summoners grace. - I am a man

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More sinn'd against than sinning.

20.

MACBETH'S SOLILOQUY.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee · I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshallest me the way that I was going :
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest :-I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing.
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er one half the world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep: witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings: and withered murder,
(Alarum'd hy his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch) thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my where-about,
And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whilst I threat, he lives--
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath give

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

21. ANTONY'S FUNERAL ORATION OVER CESAR'S

BODY.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; 1 come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interréd with their bones;
So let it be with Cæsar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you, Cæsar was ambitious :
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Cæsar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man ;
So are they all, all honourable men,)
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see, that on the Lupercal,
I thrice presented him a kingly crown;

Which he did thrice refuse.

Was this ambition ?

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause;

What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgment ! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me:
My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now,
You all do know this mantle: I remember

The first time ever Cæsar put it on;
"Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,

That day he overcame the Nervii.—

Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through.

See, what a rent the envious Casca made-
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed;
And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar follow'd it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no;
For Brutus as you know, was Cæsar's angel.
Judge, oh ye gods, how dearly Cæsar lov'd him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all:

For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitor's arms,
Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart
And in his mantle muffling up his face,

Even at the base of Pompey's statue,

Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
O, now you weep: and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity; these are gracious drops.
Kind souls! what, weep you, when you but behold
Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To any sudden flood of mutiny.

They that have done this deed are honourable ;
What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,
That made them do it: they are wise and honourable;
And will, no doubt, with reason answer you.

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts;

I am no orator, as Brutus is;

But as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on:
I tell you that which you yourselves do know ;
Show
you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths,

And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

22. HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON HIS MOTHER'S MARRIAGE.

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, O God
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world.

Fie on't! oh 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 permitted not 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: yet within a month

Let me not think on't-Frailty, thy name is woman-
A little month! or ere these shoes were old,
With which she followed 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—

It is not, nor it cannot come to good:

But break my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
23. HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.
To be, or not to be-that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;

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