Works by Title Flashcards
(31 cards)
Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare. Major characters: Romeo, Juliet, Friar Laurence, Juliet’s nurse, Benvolio (Romeo’s cousin), Mercutio (Romeo’s friend), Tybalt (Juliet’s cousin).
Montagues and Capulets feuding for a long time. Tybalt kills Mercutio. Romeo kills Tybalt and is exiled. Juliet fakes death, suicides ensue.
Prologue: Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona, where we lay our scene
Romeo (balcony scene): “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?/It is the East, and Juliet is the sun”
Hamlet
Shakespeare. Major characters: Hamlet, Claudius (Hamlet’s uncle, the king), Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother, and Claudius’s queen), Ghost of Hamlet’s father, Ophelia (object of Hamlet’s obsession), Polonius (Ophelia’s father), Laertes (Ophelia’s brother), Horatio (Hamlet’s best friend)
Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark; his uncle took over for his now dead father. Father’s ghost appears and tells Hamlet that he was murdered. Hamlet stages a play re-enacting the murder scene to gauge Claudius’s reaction, which convinces Hamlet of his guilt. Bloodbath ensues. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius. Ophelia kills herself. Laertes attacks Hamlet, Hamlet kills Claudius before Laertes kills him. Gertrude kills herself.
“To be or not to be: that is the question”
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
Macbeth
Shakespeare. Major characters: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, King Duncan, Macduff, Three Witches
Macbeth’s ambition and his wife’s urging lead him to murder his way to monarchy. Three witches predict his rise to power. Macbeth and his Lady plot to kill King Duncan. They do. Macbeth gets elected king but becomes increasingly insecure and guilt-ridden. Eventually, Macduff, the Thane of Fife, does him in. Lady Macbeth kills herself.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Othello
Shakespeare. Major characters: Othello, Desdemona (wife of Othello, daughter of the Duke of Venice), Duke of Venice, Cassio, Iago, Roderigo
Othello makes Cassio his lieutenant, upsetting Iago, who wanted the job. Iago gets Cassio removed by staging a fight with Roderigo, and then convinces Othello that Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio. Othello kills Desdemona, then himself when he realizes he’s been duped.
Iago: “For when my outward action doth demonstrate/The native act and figure of my heart/In compliment extern, ‘tis not long after/But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve/For daws to peck at. I am not what I am”
Othello: “She swore in faith ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange,/’Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondrous pitiful”
Iago: “O! beware, my lord of jealousy;/It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on…”
Othello: “I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this,/Killing myself, to die upon a kiss”
The Taming of the Shrew
Major characters: Kate, Baptista (her father), Bianca (her babe sister), Petruccio (Kate’s suitor and then husband)
*lots of names ending in -io
Kate: “Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,/And place your hands below your husband’s foot,/In token of which duty, if he plase,/My hand is ready, may it do him ease.”
Petruccio: “Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.”
The Tempest
Shakespeare. Major characters: Prospero (former Duke of Milan), Alonso (king of Naples), Miranda (Prospero’s daughter), Antonio (brother and usurper of Prospero), Caliban (native of the island, enslaved by Prospero), Ariel (a spirit on the island), Sycorax (Caliban’s mother), Ferdinand
Alonso and his group shipwreck on the island. Prospero tells his daughter the story of his downfall as the duke. He has enslaved Caliban and basically Ariel. Caliban tries to overthrow Prospero with newfound cronies from the shipwreck, but Ariel warns Prospero. Ferdinand, from the shipwreck, falls in love with Miranda, and they eventually marry. Ariel is set free and Caliban forgiven. Everyone sails back to Italy.
“All lost! to prayers, to prayers! All lost!”
Prospero: “I, this neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated/To closeness and the bettering of my mind…”
Caliban: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you/For learning me your language!”
Miranda: “O wonder!/How many goodly creatures are there here!/How beauteous mankind is!/O brave new world/That such people in’t”
The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare. Major characters: Bassanio, Portia, Antonio, Shylock, Jessica, Lorenzo
Bassanio, a young Venetian, wants to marry Portia. He doesn’t have the money to pay the price of wooing. He asks Antonio, a merchant, for the money. Antonio borrows it from Shylock, a Jew, with the caveat that if Antonio doesn’t pay back his pound of gold, he must pay him a pound of flesh. Portia’s father’s will requires a suitor of of Portia to pick the correct one of three casks (with her picture in it). Bassanio does. Antonio can’t pay Shylock back when his ships wreck; Shylock is extra angry because his daughter Jessica has run off with Lorenzo. Portia saves Antonio, disguising herself as a lawyer and arguing that Shylock must be able to extract the flesh without drawing blood. Shylock can’t figure this out, and then he’s found guilty for conspiring to murder. He loses his fortune to Antonio and to Venice, but Antonio gives him half back as long as Shylock gives it to his daughter and converts to Christianity.
Richard III
Shakespeare. Major characters: Richard III (Duke of Gloucester at the beginning of the play), Edward IV, George (Duke of Clarence and Richard’s brother), child princes, Elizabeth (Edward IV’s widow), Elizabeth (older Elizabeth’s daughter and apple of Richard’s eye), Henry Tudor (ultimately Henry VII)
Richard, hunchbacked Duke of Gloucester, seeks the throne, occupied by Edward IV. He murders his brother George, and then when Edward falls ill, only Edward’s children stand between him and the throne. Richard is made Regent and locks the children in the Tower of London (for their “protection”). When Edward dies, Richard becomes king, and he kills the children. He then woos the younger Elizabeth. Henry Tudor kills him in battle and becomes King Henry VII.
*Shakespearian character plotting evil-doing? Probably either Richard or Iago.
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried…
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks
Nor made to court and amorous looking-glass,
I that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph,
I that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature…
And therefore since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoke days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Sonnet 18 (Shakespeare)
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare)
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
The Iliad
Homer. Major characters: Achilles, Agamemnon, Priam, Paris, Helen, Menealus (Helen’s husband, Agamemnon’s brother), Bryseis, Patroclus, Hector, Odysseus
The Odyssey
Homer.
After the sacking of Troy, O attempts to return to Ithaca. When his ships land on the isle of the Cyclops and O blinds a Cyclops in his escape, this angers Poseidon, Cyclops’s father. 11/12 ships are lost in battle with giants. O and remaining men reach isle of Aenea, where Circe turns O’s men into animals. O manages to get them turned back and after a year, they leave. O navigates between Scylla and Charibdes and resists the Sirens’ song, but his men kill sacred cows of Helios, and Zeus strikes them down. Only O survives. He washes up on Calypso’s isle. After 7 years, Zeus commands her to let him go. He builds a raft and gets to Sceria, where he is received kindly, and then returns to Ithaca. Suitors have been plotting to kill Telemachus, but he survives. O and Telemachus kill the suitors. Athena intervenes when townspeople wan to take revenge. O lives happily with his fam.
The Aeneid
Aeneas recounts the final events of the Trojan war from Carthage. Trojan Horse described, followed by slaughter of Trojans by Greeks. Aeneas’s mother Venus intervened in combat and told him to flee. He has reached Carthage. Here, he engages in a love affair with Dido, the queen, but ultimately, he leaves when Jupiter and Mercury remind him of his destiny. Dido kills herself and vows revenge for Carthage. Aeneas gets to Italy. He teams up with Evander, king of the Latins, to combat Turnus and the Rutuli. He wins and sets up shop in Italy.
*References to Dido: Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech; Dante’s Inferno (second circle of hell for lust); Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage; inspiration for Lil in the “A Game of Chess” section of The Waste Land.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Christopher Marlowe, 1599.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields
Woods or steepy mountain yields
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flower, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Sir Walter Raleigh, 1600.
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author William Shakespeare
Ben Jonson, 1623. Jonson mourns the loss of Shakespeare. He says Shakespeare is best buried by himself becuase he stands apart from others; best dramatist of his day; deserving of classical comparisons despite lacking Latin/Greek; a poet not only born but made; Shakespeare not just a poet for an age but for all time.
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can praise too much;
‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne’er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem’d to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
Above th’ ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great, but disproportion’d Muses,
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus,
Euripides and Sophocles to us;
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Tri’umph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs
And joy’d to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature’s family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet’s matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses’ anvil; turn the same
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame,
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;
For a good poet’s made, as well as born;
And such wert thou. Look how the father’s face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish’d at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanc’d, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn’d like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.
Julia Poems
Robert Herrick, 1648. Herrick invents a mistress and writes bawdy poems about/to her. Other poets mimic this in the future. References to Julia are likely at least a nod in his direction.
Upon Julia’s Breasts
DISPLAY thy breasts, my Julia—there let me
Behold that circummortal purity,
Between whose glories there my lips I’ll lay,
Ravish’d in that fair via lactea.
Upon Julia’s Clothes
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!
The Night Piece, To Julia
HER eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee ;
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
No Will-o’-th’-Wisp mislight thee,
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee ;
But on, on thy way,
Not making a stay,
Since ghost there’s none to affright thee.
Let not the dark thee cumber :
What though the moon does slumber ?
The stars of the night
Will lend thee their light
Like tapers clear without number.
Then, Julia, let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me ;
And when I shall meet
Thy silv’ry feet
My soul I’ll pour into thee.
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell, 1681. Theme: Come and have sex with my immediately because before you know it, we’ll all be rotting in our graves. Tetrametric couplets.
Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast; But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart; For, Lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray, 1751. A meditation on death, especially death without worldly fame/recognition or full expression of one’s gifts.
“The paths of glory lead but to the grave”
“Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest,/Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood”
“Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (‘twas all he wish’d) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.”
She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways
William Wordsworth, 1800. Similar in theme to Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Lucy is Wordsworth’s girl of reference
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
In Memoriam, A.H.H.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1849. Rhyme scheme abba iambic tetrameter (In Memoriam stanzas).
“I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
“Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed”
“So runs my dream, but what am I?
An infant crying in the night
An infant crying for the light
And with no language but a cry.”
Ulysses (poem)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The Knight’s Tale (Canterbury Tales)
The Knight: valorous, chivalrous, polite–knightly
Arcite (and Mars) fight Palamon (and Venus) for Emily. Each god gives assurance of “victory” Arcite wins but dies. Palamon gets the girl.
