Shakespeare Flashcards

Summary of major works from William Shakespeare

1
Q

Romeo and Juliet: Prologue

A

“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-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.”

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2
Q

Romeo and Juliet: Synopsis

A

Montagues and Capulets have tense relations. Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other, marries in secret, Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt, Romeo is exiled. Juliet fakes her death, Romeo thinks her death is real and kills himself, Juliet kills herself.

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3
Q

Romeo and Juliet: Characters

A
Romeo
Juliet
Friar Laurence
Juliet's nurse
Benvolio
Mercutio
Tybalt
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4
Q

Romeo and Juliet: Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech (I.4)

A

“Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs, The cover of the wings of grasshopers, Her traces of the smallest spider’s web…”
“…O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.”
“This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear…”

(Mercutio has a different passion from that of Romeo and Tybalt - rejects both honor and love)
(Children’s tale devolving into dark desires)

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5
Q

Romeo and Juliet: Balcony Scene (II.1)

A

“Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy center out.”
“He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not, The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.”

(Romeo hides away, Mercutio teases him, Benvolio chides him)

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6
Q

Romeo and Juliet: Balcony Scene (II.2)

A

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”
“wherefore art thou Romeo?”
“Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry, And I’ll believe thee.”

(Juliet fears for her honor, Juliet and Romeo exchange vows, promise for marriage is made)

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7
Q

Hamlet: Synopsis

A

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, lost his father and witnessed father’s brother Claudius marrying his mother Gertrude. The father’s ghost appears and says Claudius murdered him, Hamlet stages a play and confirms the guilt, murders Polonius on accident, his lover Ophelia goes mad, Hamlet kills Laertes and Claudius in a duel, Laertes kills Hamlet in the duel, Gertrude dies from poison intended for Hamlet.

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8
Q

Hamlet: Characters (Ophelia)

A

Polonius’ daughter and Laertes’ sister and Hamlet’s object of affection.

“Get thee to a nunnery.”
“My brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet ladies.” (T. S. Eliot [The Waste Land] “Goodnight”)

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9
Q

Hamlet: Characters (Horatio)

A

Hamlet’s best friend and confidante.

“And let me speak to th’ yet-unknowing world / How these things came about. So shall you hear / Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts…”

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10
Q

Hamlet: Characters (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

A

Hamlet’s “friends” sent to England with him, bearing letter that the recipient of the letter should kill Hamlet. Not smart enough to save themselves from Hamlet’s scheme to have them killed instead.

Tom Stoppard [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead] (1966)

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11
Q

Hamlet: Characters (Fortinbras)

A

“strong-armed” Prince of Norway, acts as constant pressure on Denmark from without. Arrives to the castle sounding off cannons (announced by Osric)

“But I do prophesy the election lights / On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.” (Hamlet)
“I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, / Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.”

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12
Q

Hamlet: Quotes (Chasing the ghost. I.4)

A

“So oft it chances in particular men / That for some vicious mole of nature in them…”
“Making night hideous and we fools of nature, / So horridly to shake our disposition / With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?”
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

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13
Q

Hamlet: Quotes (Hamlet’s soliloquy before torturing Ophelia III.1)

A

“The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art, / Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it / Than is my deed to my most painted word.”
“To be, or not to be? That is the question…”
“That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.”

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14
Q

Hamlet: The Murder of Gonzago / The Mousetrap (III.2)

A

Play within a play. Guilt. Hamlet jesting at Ophelia, expressing anger at Gertrude and Claudius.

“Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters…”
“Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man / As e’er my conversation coped withal.”
“Make you a wholesome answer. My wit’s diseased.”

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15
Q

Macbeth: Synopsis

A

Macbeth hears a prophesy from three witches predicting his rise to power and tells Lady Macbeth about it. The two plot and kill King Duncan on his way back from the battlefield and kills a bunch of more people. Macbeth becomes King but is insecure and undone by Thane of Fife, Macduff. Lady Macbeth kills herself.

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16
Q

Macbeth: Quotes (Lady Macbeth urging I.5)

A

“Yet I do fear thy nature. / It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way.”

“Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here…”
“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men / May read strange matters.”

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17
Q

Macbeth: Quotes (William Faulkner source V.5)

A

“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.”

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18
Q

Othello: Synopsis

A

War hero Othello and daughter of Brabantio Desdemona are recently married, convincing Brabantio of their love in the process. Othello promotes Cassio to be his lieutenant and Iago, who wants the job, removes him by a staged fight with Roderigo. Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona and Cassio are sleeping together with a handkerchief. Othello strangles Desdemona, realizes he’s been fooled and kills himself, Iago is likely hanged.

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19
Q

Othello: Iago

A

Quintessential example of a literary antagonist, his motivations in betrayal is source of interest. In Harold Bloom’s [The Anxiety of Influence], Iago is prototype for evil/rebellion so profound to be object of endless conjecture (John Milton’s Satan).

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20
Q

Othello: Quotes (I.1)

A

“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.”

“Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.”
“You’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse. You’ll have your nephews neigh to you. You’ll have coursers for cousins and gennets for germans.”

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21
Q

Othello: Quotes (I.3)

A

“She swore in faith ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange,/ Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondrous pitiful.”
“I hate the Moor…”

“She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them, / This only is the witchcraft I have used.”
“Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.”

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22
Q

Othello: Quotes (III.3)

A

“Men should be what they seem; / Or those that be not, would they might seem none!”
“O! beware, my lord of jealousy; / It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on…”

“I had been happy if the general camp, / Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body, / So I had nothing known.”
“And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand, / Cry ‘O sweet creature!’ and then kiss me hard…”

23
Q

Othello: Quotes (V.2)

A

“Put out the light, and then put out the light…”
“I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.”

“It is the very error of the moon. / She comes more nearer earth than she was wont / And makes men mad.”
“And say besides that in Aleppo once, / Where a malignant and turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, / I took by the throat the circumcised dog, /And smote him, thus.”

24
Q

The Taming of the Shrew: Synopsis

A

Baptista, a merchant in Padua, has two daughters named Bianca (popular, most recently with Lucentio) and Kate (older, “shrew”). Bianca cannot get married until Kate is, and Petruccio marries Kate and leaves for Verona. In the end Kate is the “best” wife.

Many Italian-sounding names. Grumio, Gremio, Hortensio/Litio, Tranio, Vincentio, Biondello.

25
Q

The Taming of the Shrew: Quotes (II.1)

A

“You lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate, / And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst, / But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom, /Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate – / For dainties are all Kates – and therefore, Kate…”

“I must dance barefoot on her wedding day / And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.”
“Say she be mute and will not speak a word; Then I’ll commend her volubility.”

26
Q

The Tempest: General

A

Last play Shakespeare wrote alone, performed in 1611. Commonly referred to as “romance” along with [The Winter’s Tale] [Cymbeline] [Pericles] (medieval romance)

27
Q

The Tempest: Caliban Analysis

A

Magaret Paul Joseph [Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction (1992)]
Robert Browning “Caliban in Setebos” (1864): “natural man” (Rousseau) Caliban

28
Q

The Tempest: Synopsis

A

Alonso (king of Naples) and his subjects are returning from Tunis (where Alonso’s daughter has been married). They are shipwrecked on a mysterious island.

Prospero, former duke of Milan, tells his daughter Miranda about how his brother Antonio forced him to flee with infant Miranda and books of magic. Caliban is enslaved, Ariel is enslaved after freed from a tree where Sycorax (Caliban’s mother and former head of the island) trapped him.

Caliban and fellow cronies fail overthrowing Prospero due to Ariel. Ferdinand fall in love with Miranda and wed her after his servitude to Prospero. Ariel is set free and Caliban is forgiven. Ship is not wrecked and everyone sail to Italia.

29
Q

The Tempest: Quotes (I.1)

A

“All lost! to prayers, to prayers! All lost!”

“Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him. His complexion is perfect gallows.”
“Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground: long heath, brown furze, anything.”

30
Q

The Tempest: Quotes (II.2)

A

“I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated / To closeness and the bettering of my mind…”
“…All the charms / Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you; / For I am all the subjects that you have, / Which first was mine own king…”
“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!”

31
Q

The Tempest: Quotes (II.2) - 2.

A

“Thy false uncle – Dost thou attend me?”
“Thy groans / Of ever angry bears. It was a torment / Did make the wolves how and penetrate the breasts / To lay upon the damned…”
“Seawater shalt you drink. Thy food shall be / The fresh-brook mussles, withered roots, and husks / Wherein the acorn cradled.”

32
Q

The Tempest: Quotes (V.1)

A

“O wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! / O brave new world / That such people in’t!”

“Sir, all this service / Have I done since I left.”
“My Ariel, chick, / That is thy charge. Then to the elements / Be free, and fare thou well!”

33
Q

The Merchant of Venice: Synopsis

A

Venetian Bassanio decides to marry Portia at hearing her fortune. He needs three thousand ducats to woo and asks Antonio (“merchant”) who borrows it from Shylock. Antonio is anti-semitic and agrees to have a pound of flesh taken from him if he cannot pay back in three months.

Portia’s father also said in his will that suitor needs to choose a cask with Portia’s picture out of three casks, or else they never marry. Bassanio chooses correctly and Portia agrees to marry.

Shylock’s daughter Jessica has run off with Lorenzo, which makes him angrier when due date is come. Bassanio offers to overpay, Shylock refuses, Portia disguises herself as a lawyer and says pound of flesh can be given so long as no blood is drawn.

Shylock is found guilty of conspiring to murder a Venetian and give up his wealth half to Antonio and half to Venice. Antonia offers to give half of the half back so long as Shylock gives it to Jessica and converts to Christianity.

34
Q

The Merchant of Venice: Quotes (I.3)

A

“I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.”
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. / An evil soul producing holy witness / Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, / A goodly apple rotten at the heart. / O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”

“When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban’s sheep – “
“But lend it rather to thine enemy, / Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face / Exact the penalty.”

35
Q

The Merchant of Venice: Quotes (II.6)

A

“But love is blind, and lovers cannot see / The pretty follies that themselves commit … What, must I hold a candle to my shames?”

“How like a younger or a prodigal / The scarfèd bark puts from her native bay, / Hugged and embraèd by the strumpet wind!”
“What, must I hold a candle to my shames? / They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light.”

36
Q

The Merchant of Venice: Quotes (III.1)

A

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, sense, affections passions … If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

“Let him look to his bond.”
“I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the jewels in her ear!”

37
Q

Henry IV Part 1: Synopsis

A

Harry Percy (nicknamed Hotspur) refuses to send soldiers when Welsh rebel Glyndwr defeats King Henry’s army. Hotspur later plots to overthrow King Henry because he has underpaid Percy family’s dues for helping him rise to the throne.

Meanwhile Prince Harry associates with highwaymen so that he can impress the public when he reforms. Poins tells him of a fake robbery joke they will pull on Falstaff. Joke works.

King Henry says Harry Percy is more worthy of the throne than Prince Harry. Harry decides to reform and drafts his friends into the army. He saves his father’s life, challenges and defeats Hotspur. Falstaff keeps alive by faking death.

38
Q

Henry IV Part 1: Quotes (I.2)

A

“Yet herein will I imitate the sun, / Who doth permit the base contagious clouds / To smother up his beauty from the world, / That when he please again to be himself, / Being wanted, he may be more wondered at…”
“I’ll so offend to make offense a skill, / Redeeming time when men least think I will.”

“Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.”
“There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou cam’st not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings.”

39
Q

Henry IV Part 1: Quotes (IV.2)

A

“I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds.”

“Food for powder, food for powder.”
“To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast / Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.”

40
Q

Henry IV Part 1: Quotes (III.1)

A

“That pretty Welsh / Which thou pour’st from these swelling heavens / I am too perfect in, and but for shame / In such a parley should I answer thee.”

“I say the earth did shake when I was born.”
“Not yours, in good sooth! Heart, you swear like a comfit-maker’s wife!”

41
Q

Henry IV Part 2: Synopsis

A

Prince Hal has been distancing his criminal friends. Rebel forces gather at Forest of Gaultree. Earl of Northumberland refuses to support them even though his son Hotspur has died. Prince John the second son says he will agree to rebels’ demands but executes them as soon as they send back their soldiers. Prince Hal tries on father’s crown, is scolded, eloquently promises to be good, is forgiven, father dies. Hal tells Lord Chief Justice that he will view him as father figure and rejects Falstaff.

42
Q

Henry IV Part 2: Quotes (IV.3)

A

“I cut them off and had a purpose now / To lead out many to the Holy Land, / Lest rest and lying still might make them look / Too near unto my state.”
“The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape, / In forms imaginary, th’unguided days / And rotten times that you shall look upon / When I am sleeping with my ancestors.

“Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow, / Being so troublesome a bedfellow?”
“I put it on my head / To try with it, as with an enemy.”

43
Q

Henry IV Part 2: Quotes (V.5)

A

“Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace.”

“I know thee not, old man.”
“Fear no colors. Go with me to dinner.”

44
Q

Henry IV Part 2: Quotes (II.2)

A

“I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.”

“Does it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?”
“The midwives say the children are not in the fault, whereupon the world increases and kindreds are mightily strengthened.”

45
Q

Henry V: Synopsis

A

Civil wars have been breaking out and King Henry claims certain lands of France based on technicality. The French prince (Dauphin) is angered, Henry V invades, Bardolph-Pistol-Nim need to leave for war. They comment on death of Falstaff.

Henry V executes three traitors whom include former friend Scrope. English continue to win after conquering town of Harfleur. Nim and Bardolph are hanged for looting. At Battle of Agincourt, Henry V disguises himself as a soldier. Battle is won, Henry V marries Catherine, two kingdoms are united.

46
Q

Henry V: Quotes (I.2)

A

“for many a thousand widows / Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands.”

“For once the eagle England being in prey, / To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot / Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs…”
“His jest will savor but of shallow wit / When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.”

47
Q

Henry V: Quotes (III.1)

A

“Then imitate the action of the tiger.”

“Then lend the eye a terrible aspect, / Let pry through the portage of the head / Like the brass cannon.”
“I see you strain like greyhounds in the slips, / Straining upon the start.”

48
Q

Henry V: Quotes (IV.1)

A

“The slave, a member of the country’s peace, / Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots / What watch the King maintains to keep the peace.”
“War is His beadle, war is His vengeance, so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king’s laws in now the king’s quarrel.”

“Though it appear a little out of fashion, / There is much care and valor in this Welshman.”
“I think the king is but a man as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me.”

49
Q

Richard III: Synopsis

A

Richard is Duke of Gloucester and intends to take the throne from his brother King Edward IV. First he arranges murder of his brother George, Duke of Clarence. Edward falls ill but crown will go to one of his sons.

Richard is regent because the children are young and lock them up in Tower of London as protection. At Edward’s death Richard becomes king and murders two young princes. Edward’s widow Elizabeth flees with children from her first marriage and her daughter Elizabeth receives love from Richard.

Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond kills Richard and is crowned Henry VII.

50
Q

Richard III: Quotes (I.1)

A

“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 an 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-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.”

(Play is much more about Richard himself than narrative action. If there is Shakespeare character plotting evildoing, it’s either Richard III or Iago.)

51
Q

Richard III: Quotes (I.1) - 2

A

“He hearkens after prophecies and dreams, And from the crossbow plucks the letter G, / And says a wizard told him that by “G” / His issue disinherited shall be.”
“Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so / That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven…”
“What though I killed her husband and her father? / The readiest way to make such amends / Is to become her husband and her father.

52
Q

Sonnets 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

A

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.

53
Q

Sonnets 116 “Let me not to the marriage of true minds”

A

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, though 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.

54
Q

Sonnets 130 “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”

A

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 damasked, red and white,
But no such roses I see 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.