There's that old adage about how there's only seven plots in the world and Shakespeare's done them all before.
quote by Terri Windling
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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All the characters and plots were predetermined. Games make bad plots.
quote by Margaret Weis
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sleep, Sleep, My Little One
Sleep, sleep, my little one
‘Tis better in this world of us
To sleep the sleep of the innocents
Than sleep the sleep of the just:
At least you’ll have a greater chance
To avoid long knives and plots
And bloody rendezvous.
For in this world, this world of us
The just is alien and his sleep
Most dangerous negligence:
Long knives will wait at corners round
And plots and darts abound
For all the just around.
For in this world, this world of us,
The sleep of innocents is better than
The sleep of all the just, my little one.
Sleep, sleep, my little one
And let outside the dark wind neigh
And rain and chill make fear
And the sea’s waves make storm and rage
And evil win
And the good disappear
And do not open your eyes sweet one
Before night and storm have passed away.
poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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Discovering Shakespeare
‘From you have I been absent in the spring.’
The words of Shakespeare have a truly lovely ring,
But, when I was younger, by his words, I was bored,
And his words, written on a page, by me, were ignored.
Now I’m older, I can see that his famous words,
Are actually among the loveliest I’ve ever heard.
Until recently, I couldn’t recite a Shakespeare speech,
But, slowly, line by line, myself, I did teach.
Of his work, I love the rhythm and rhyme,
As it makes it much easier to learn each line.
Being able to recite a short speech, I felt proud,
As I had never performed any of his work aloud.
I was really amazed at what I’d been able to achieve,
And now, from my mind, his words will never leave.
When I feel low, in my mind, his words I recall -
They lift my mood, just as I am about to fall.
I didn’t understand any of his stories before,
But with each day that passes, I’m learning more.
I now understand about the characters and the plots.
Over the last few months, I really have learnt a lot.
Helena from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ’
Is very like me in character, or so it seems:
She’s sensitive and cautious and likes to think things through,
And that description can pretty much be applied to me to!
Prior to my Shakespeare Bronze exam, I was full of fear,
But it proved to be one of the highlights of my entire year.
It’s been one of the best experiences of my life to date,
And to take my Shakespeare Silver exam, I just can’t wait.
If only Shakespeare was alive today, he would see
Just how much sheer joy he has managed to bring me.
poem by Angela Wybrow
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Shakespeare is like the world, or life itself. Every historical period finds in him what it is looking for and what it wants to see.
Jan Kott in Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (1964)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.
quote by Thomas Bowdler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Emily Dickinson Is Not Borges
EMILY DICKINSON IS NOT BORGES
Emily Dickinson is not Borges
And Borges is not Kafka
And Kafka is not Dickens
And no one is Shakespeare-
Each one is only one self
Except for those who are many selves
And those who are many selves
Do not know
Who they themselves are-
Lear is not Falstaff
And Falstaff is not Hamlet
And Hamlet is not Shakespeare
And Shakespeare is not Donne-
No one is anyone but themselves
And even those who are really ‘someone'
Are not all the others who also are-
And we who are nothing at all?
What are we?
We are not nothing at all.
We are not great
And no one will remember our names
But we are still here now
Reading Borges and Dickenson and Kafka and Shakespeare
And wondering how and why
There are those in a world of their own
With names of their own
They themselves will never completely know.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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A Deliberate Movement
you plan it
and think about it for nights and nights
precisely
the reason why you cannot sleep
you draw on paper your schemes
for escapes
you put the arrows there
and mark the ultimate
freedom where light
is
with an x,
a big
X,
there are caves there
and secret
doors and canopies
and false windows
and even quicksands
where a mistake
can mean
death,
and there are gardens too
which look like
a prelude to castles
where seemingly
a princess lives
your ideas are plots
always plots
your theme is freedom
and always
it has always been freedom
you are never free
so you always
dream what you do not have
you wish of today
as the beginning towards
z, the point z, the
ultimatum of
this deliberate move
to escape,
i am tired of your
schemes and plots
and dialogues about
freedom
all i did to make you
think a little
before i sleep
is to put
the letter 'Y',
perhaps, it will calm you
down.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Quatrain #179 - The New Dawn is now with us........
The New Dawn is now with us heralding a new humanity
but where are we all going because of our stupid vanity?
The Avatar came into the world again to work at the start of a New Age,
awakening people to live by true values and love was the same old adage.
poem by George Krokos
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Great Laureate
When your Sonnet captures love's fantasy
A 'second Shakespeare' you may be
Writing of beautiful romance in bloom
Farewell to yesterday's doom and gloom.
All the wide world would welcome thee
Because of your knowledge and mastery
Young lovers may sing your madrigals
And a 'second Shakespeare' you will be.
poem by Joyce Hemsley
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We inherit plots. There are only two or three in the world, five or six at most. We ride them like treadmills.
quote by Janette Turner Hospital
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A House Broker with Knack
Sitting on the step
of a corner tea-stall in the morning,
he dunked a butter biscuit
in his cup of tea and ate it.
Every new passerby
caught his rapt attention.
If anybody queried about a plot or flat,
he would order one more cup of tea
and insist the guest to take some biscuits too
and push down his hand into his pocket,
as if taking out money and also buy some cigarettes
at the expense of the visitor.
He would then take him to some worthless plots
and after stemming all his financial status,
would show plots at moderate rates,
quoting costly prices as it was in the heart of the city.
The buyer fell himself into pleasure
And the broker swelled in his treasure.
The buyer pays back his loan till he dies
and the broker says goodbye to his hut
For he had to move to his royal inn.
But time has changed
and status of the people improved now.
People are picked up in A.C. cars from their homes
to see the plots and flats and have a nice lunch
before booking commences with all fanfare.
---------
poem by Rajendran Muthiah
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The Shakespeare that Shakespeare became is the name that's attached to these astonishing objects that he left behind.
quote by Stephen Greenblatt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Shakespeare Wrote A Poetry
SHAKESPEARE WROTE A POETRY
Once upon a time
Long before I read
Shakespeare wrote a poetry
No one shall see
The like of again.
We small soundmaking fools
Utter our deepest utterances
As if they were the stars-
But the stars the true stars
What Shakespeare wrote and knew
We cannot touch
Or come near
Not even in our greatest words unseen.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I'd like to do a piece of Shakespeare. Any upcoming Shakespeare film. Just a bit to say I did a classic.
quote by Jim Varney
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Love Expresses Itself Nevertheless
I fear no grieving widow, even if the world wails
I have no yearning to issue another one of me
even if earth weeps and with sombre details
declares that the last of my days will be,
and even if my life is spend,
life still has its sorrows and its joys
the entire world does not end,
it is still filled with its pleasures and its ploys
and in truth no child though from my body
is truly me and even in temperament we are apt to be different
and love appears by itself, is different for everybody
and still I am living and far from spent:
there is no shame nor is it heartless to be childless,
without fear love expresses itself nevertheless.
(In answer to William Shakespeare/Reference: Sonnet 9 “Is it fear to wet a widow’s eye” by William Shakespeare.)
poem by Gert Strydom
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It is a fact that a man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. Whether he realizes it or not, he illustrates the pertinence of the adage: So long as we are, death is not; and when death is present, we are not. In other words, between death and us there is no rapport; it is something with which we have nothing to do — and only incidentally the world and nature. And that is why all living creatures can contemplate it with composure, with indifference, unconcern, with egoistic irresponsibility.
quote by Thomas Mann
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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And I just think that to introduce an unknown Shakespeare is thrilling, too - not to do Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, to do the richer Shakespeare. People will come to this and not know the story.
quote by Julie Taymor
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I hate Shakespeare. I think Shakespeare's rubbish.
quote by Allan Carr
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.
quote by Ethan Hawke
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.
quote by Antony Sher
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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