Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds.
That England that was wont to conquer others
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!
From The Merchant of Venice
first performed around
1596–7
In court, Portia, disguised as the young lawyer Balthazar, pleads with Shylock, the Jew, to show mercy in his suit against Antonio, the merchant of Venice, who owes him a considerable sum of money.
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which, if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there.
From Henry V
first performed around
1598–9
Only having space for one speech from Henry V, I have chosen this rather than the equally famous ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends’ because, to me, though less rousing, it is more moving. St Crispin’s Day falls on 25 October and is the feast day of the Christian saints Crispin and Crispinian (also known as Crispinus and Crispianus), twins who were martyred around the year 286. The Battle of Agincourt took place on St Crispin’s Day in 1415, when the English achieved a famous victory although their forces were greatly outnumbered by the French. Another notable battle to take place on St Crispin’s Day was the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War in 1854 (see Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, on page 194).
This day is called the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand a-tiptoe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget; yea, all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words –
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester –
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by
From this day to the ending of the world
But we in it shall be rememberèd,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
From As You Like It
first performed around
1599–1600
The ‘Melancholy Jaques’, a courtier to the exiled Duke Senior, speaks this famous speech in Act 2 Scene 7 of As You Like It.
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
From Hamlet
First performed around
1600–1601
This is probably the most famous speech in the English language: give it a go! When I first played Hamlet, many years ago, it was not a success. The audience threw eggs at me. I went on as Hamlet – and came off as omelette. Just a little joke: I have never played Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. I have played Hamlet, however – Hamlet Senior, King of Denmark, the Ghost who appears to his son on the ramparts at the beginning of the play. It was in a production at the Park Theatre in London in 2017 in which my son, Benet Brandreth, played Hamlet, and my daughter-in-law, Kosha Engler, played Ophelia, Gertrude and Laertes. I played Claudius and Polonius, as well as the Ghost. The idea was to have three members of one family explore Hamlet as a family drama – and, for family bonding and for shared fun, I can report that there is nothing quite like learning and performing Shakespeare with your son and daughter-in-law. The great Sir Derek Jacobi came to see the production and told us afterwards that when he played Hamlet he did not regard ‘To be, or not to be’ as a soliloquy, but as a speech directed towards Ophelia. ‘She does not arrive on “Soft you now: The fair Ophelia”,’ he said. ‘She’s been there all along.’
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
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep:
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished, to die, to sleep –
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay, there’s the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dèspised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. Soft you now:
The fair Ophelia! – Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
From Othello
First performed around
1604–5
Othello, a much-respected general, the Moor of Venice, explains to the Senate how he wooed and won Desdemona, the daughter of Brabantio who has accused him of using witchcraft to beguile her.
Her father loved me, oft invited me,
Still questioned me the story of my life
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days
To th’ very moment that he bade me tell it,
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my traveller’s history,
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak. Such was my process,
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Grew beneath their shoulders. These things to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline,
But still the house affairs would draw her thence,
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch
She’d come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse; which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively. I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of kisses.
She swore, in faith, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange,
’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful.
She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished
That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spoke.
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.
From King Lear
first performed around
1605–6
The ageing King Lear, having lost his kingdom and been betrayed by two of his daughters, is on the heath during a storm, cursing the elements and his daughters, and lamenting his own frailty.
Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow,
You cataracts and hurricanos, spout
Till you have drenched the steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity of the world!
Crack nature’s mould, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man!
Rumble thy bellyful; spit fire! spout rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, called you children.
You owe me no subscription. Why 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-engendered battles ’gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ’tis foul!
From The Tempest
first performed around
1611–12
Prospero interrupts the celebrations of his daughter Miranda’s wedding to speak these now-celebrated lines, often interpreted as Shakespeare’s own farewell to the stage, given that they come towards the end of his last great play.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The actor’s primary responsibility is to make the text understandable at first hearing. That’s quite a big thing, and quite difficult, especially if it’s a fairly complicated text. Know the rules about verse-speaking. After that, I don’t care whether you break those rules – just make me understand what you’re saying, the first time you say it.
Simon Russell Beale
CHAPTER NINE
The Seven AgesA life in poems
Using Jaques’s famous speech from As You Like It as a springboard, we are now going to go on the journey of a lifetime, taking each of his ‘seven ages’ in turn and finding appropriate poems for them.
1. ‘First the infant’
Morning Song
by Sylvia Plath
(1932–63)
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
These days, children sleep under duvets. When my parents and grandparents were children, they slept between sheets, with the top sheet covered by a blanket (or two
) and the blanket covered by a counterpane – a coverlet thrown over the bed. When my parents were little children, during and after the First World War, this was among their favourite poems:
The Land of Counterpane
by Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850–94)
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.
For baby-boomers of my generation, born after the Second World War, our nursery poetry was written by A. A. Milne, playwright, humorist, polemicist, and father of Christopher Robin, who wasn’t just a child in a story-book, but a real, living, breathing human being.
When I first met him, in the early 1980s, Christopher Robin had just turned sixty. He seemed older. He was tall, slight, a little bent, with owlish glasses and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. (He looked a little like my father.) I had been warned that I would find him painfully shy, diffident about his parents and certainly reluctant to talk about Winnie-the-Pooh. In fact, he was charming, courteous, gentle but forthcoming. He said at once, ‘Of course, we must talk about Pooh. It’s been something of a love–hate relationship down the years, but it’s all right now. Believe it or not, I can look at those four books without flinching. I’m quite fond of them really.’
‘Those four books’ dominated his life. The first, When We Were Very Young, was published in November 1924, dedicated to ‘Christopher Robin Milne’, just turned four; the last, The House at Pooh Corner, in October 1928. Within eight weeks, the first collection of nursery verses had sold more than 50,000 copies; by the time the last book appeared, each title in the series was selling several hundred thousand worldwide.