Speech of the week: Richard II, II,1

This speech is delivered by John of Gaunt, who is having a rough time. His son has been banished and, just before his own death, he delivers a harrowing and beautiful prediction of what is to become of England.

I first heard this speech given by Simon Russell Beale during the RSC's Shakespeare Live broadcast. It was bone-chillingly dark, though you are more likely to hear it given as distressed and mad.

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England...

Speech of the week: Hamlet, II,2

A lot of attention gets paid to the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, but I have discovered a new love. Hamlet delivers this monologue in Act II scene 2, in a conversations with his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have just arrived "unbidden" to visit him at Elsinor Castle. (Do yourself a favor and read it aloud.)

...I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me...

I haven't before now read Shakespeare as a writer. I fancied myself pretty good at words, but in 2010 wrote my first play and first novel (unpublished works, just for me, but accomplishments nonetheless). I sit here thinking of what it must be like to have a mind that can string things like the above together and find myself sorely lacking.

But it is an awfully big ruler with which to measure myself.