The Best of Poetry — Shakespeare Muse of Fire: In 150 Passages from the Plays and Poems

By Elsinore Books

Continuing the Best of Poetry series, this anthology brings together 150 of the finest passages from Shakespeare’s plays and poetic works. We hope our selection will allow readers to rediscover the brilliance of Shakespeare’s poetic inventiveness, and the depth and subtlety of his insight as he creates and explores the minds of the most fully-realised and autonomous characters in all of fiction.

The beauty in these fragments is best unlocked by reading them aloud, savouring the rhythms, the rich ambiguity of metaphor, and vivid evocation of scene. Learn them by heart if you can, and when inspired, revisit the complete plays and admire the passages anew in their native soil.

As with other volumes in the Best of Poetry series, the works included here are organised thematically, and arranged in such a way that they may interpret and illumine one another. There are eleven themes: The Forms of Things Unknown; Reason and Rapture; The Purple Testament; Love; Immortal Time and Mortal Man; Ambition and Jealousy; Wrath and Vengeance; Mark the Music; The Tragic Soul; Grief and Death; and Sonnets.

The passages are introduced by a small collection of quotations from some of the most perceptive interpreters of Shakespeare’s work. There then follows the main contents page, and an accompanying alphabetical index of plays to help you locate specific passages.

At Elsinore Books we pride ourselves on creating beautiful e-books, and devote great attention to formatting, and ease of navigation. This book contains a cleanly-styled contents page that permits easy movement between the poems. We regularly update the formatting of our books, to ensure they will always remain perfectly accessible on all e-reader models.

This book is part of the Best of Poetry series, which also includes:
The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words that Burn
The Best of Poetry: A Young Person’s Book of Evergreen Verse

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsinore Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2015

Book preview

Introduction

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. Samuel Johnson

This anthology brings together 150 of the finest passages from Shakespeare’s plays and poetic works. We hope our selection will allow readers to rediscover the brilliance of Shakespeare’s poetic inventiveness, and the depth and subtlety of his insight as he creates and explores the minds of the most fully-realised and autonomous characters in all of fiction.

The beauty in these fragments is best unlocked by reading them aloud, savouring the rhythms, the rich ambiguity of metaphor, and vivid evocation of scene. Learn them by heart if you can, and when inspired, revisit the complete plays and admire the passages anew in their native soil.

As with other volumes in the Best of Poetry series, the works included here are organised thematically, and arranged in such a way that they may interpret and illumine one another. There are eleven themes: The Forms of Things Unknown; Reason and Rapture; The Purple Testament; Love; Immortal Time and Mortal Man; Ambition and Jealousy; Wrath and Vengeance; Mark the Music; The Tragic Soul; Grief and Death; and Sonnets.

The passages are introduced by a small collection of quotations from some of the most perceptive interpreters of Shakespeare’s work. There then follows the main contents page, and an accompanying alphabetical index of plays to help you locate specific passages.

Rudolph Amsel and Teresa Keyne

Copyright © Elsinore Books 2014

The Elsinore Books Collection

The Best of Poetry: Thoughts that Breathe and Words that Burn

The Best of Poetry: Shakespeare, Muse of Fire

The Best of Poetry: A Young Person’s Book of Evergreen Verse

The Art of the Short Story: One Hundred Classic Masterpieces

The Art of the Essay: Fifty Classic Masterpieces

The Way Through the Woods: One Hundred Classic Fairy Tales

A more detailed listing of our titles can be viewed here.

In Praise of Shakespeare

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. John Dryden

I have good reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths. John Keats

He perceived more than any other writer, thought more profoundly and originally than any other, and had an almost effortless mastery of language, far surpassing everyone. Harold Bloom

Shakespeare said everything. Brain to belly; every mood and minute of a man’s season. His language is starlight and fireflies and the sun and the moon. He wrote it with tears and blood and beer, and his words march like heartbeats. Orson Welles

He was not of an age, but for all time. Ben Jonson

The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame

Still sat unconquered in a ring,

Remembering him like anything.

G. K. Chesterton — The Shakespeare Memorial

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good—in spite of all the people who say he is very good. Robert Graves

And there are Ben [Jonson] and William Shakespeare in wit-combat, sure enough: Ben bearing down like a mighty Spanish warship, fraught with all learning and artillery; Shakespeare whisking away from him,—whisking right through him, athwart the big bulk and timbers of him; like a miraculous Celestial Light-ship, woven all of sheet-lightning and sunbeams! Thomas Carlyle

Our myriad-minded Shakespeare. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb

The crowns o’ the world: O, eyes sublime

With tears and laughter for all time!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Shakespeare's characters seem real to us because they seem very real to themselves, because they take their memories and private universes for granted. James Wood

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life. Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnel houses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare. Victor Hugo

But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be;

Within that circle none durst walk but he.

John Dryden

Shakespeare—the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God. Laurence Olivier

Nor sequent centuries could hit

Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We shall never overestimate Shakespeare, because we cannot. Some men and things lie beyond the danger of hyperbole. No exaggeration is possible concerning them, seeing they transcend all dreams. Space cannot be conceived by the most luxuriant imagination, holding, as it does, all worlds, and capable of holding another universe besides, and with room to spare. Clearly, we cannot overestimate space. Thought and vocabulary become bankrupt when they attempt this bewildering deed. Genius is as immeasurable as space. Shakespeare cannot be measured. We cannot go about him, since life fails, leaving the journey not quite well begun. Yet may we attempt what cannot be performed, because each attempt makes us worthy, and we are measured, not by what we achieve, but by what we attempt. William A. Quayle

Shakespeare...is of no age—nor of any religion, or party or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in

one composition... Samuel Johnson

At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. John Keats

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing. William Hazlitt

The striking peculiarity of Shakespeare’s mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds—so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of thought. William Hazlitt

Contents

Introduction

The Elsinore Books Collection

In Praise of Shakespeare

Contents

Alphabetical Index of Plays

Part 1: The Forms of Things Unknown

Be Not Afeard; the Isle Is Full of Noises

Over Hill, Over Dale

My Gentle Puck, Come Hither

I Know a Bank Wheron the Wild Thyme Blows

Lovers and Madmen Have Such Seething Brains

I Dreamt a Dream Tonight

Ye Elves of Hills

Now the Hungry Lion Roars

The Gaudy, Blabbing, and Remorseful Day

For Night’s Swift Dragons Cut the Clouds Full Fast

Come, Seeling Night

It Was About to Speak When the Cock Crew

Where Wilt Thou Lead Me?

A Lioness Hath Whelpèd in the Streets

When Shall We Three Meet Again?

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mewed

Our Revels Now Are Ended

Part 2: Reason and Rapture

All the World’s a Stage

The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strained

Our Remedies Oft in Ourselves Do Lie

O God! Methinks It Were a Happy Life

How Many Thousand of My Poorest Subjects

How Blest Am I in My Just Censure

Now, My Co-Mates and Brothers in Exile

So Work the Honey-Bees

Let Us Our Lives, Our Souls, Our Debts

The Heavens Themselves

This Royal Throne of Kings

Are Not You Moved, When All the Sway of Earth

The Barge She Sat in, Like a Burnished Throne

Part 3: The Purple Testament

Yet Know, My Master, God Omnipotent

A Horse! A Horse! My Kingdom for a Horse!

O, War, Thou Son of Hell

O for a Muse of Fire

Thus with Imagined Wing Our Swift Scene Flies

Once More unto the Breach

How Yet Resolves the Governor of the Town?

Now Entertain Conjecture of a Time

If We Are Marked to Die

Part 4: Love

Love Is a Smoke Raised with the Fume of Sighs

And Why Not Death, Rather Than Living Torment?

O, She Doth Teach the Torches to Burn Bright!

Here the Anthem Doth Commence

But Love, First Learned in a Lady’s Eyes

If I Profane with My Unworthiest Hand

If I Did Love You in My Master’s Flame

But, Soft! What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?

The Moon Shines Bright

My Father Had