Kent-Drury
English 311
Exam Quotations
1.
...noble signior,/If
virtue no delighted beauty lack,/Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.
2.
...your fair
daughter,/At this odd-even and dull watch o' the night,/Transported, with no
worse nor better guard/But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier,/To the
gross clasps of a lascivious Moor...
3.
…Tell him firstly of the
sort of clothes I wear, fit for a serving woman, of the dirt that weighs me
down and the kind of dwelling I live in, I who was raised in a king's palace!
Tell him how, to keep clothes on my back, and avoid going without, I work hours
at the loom, making clothes for myself, and how I fetch and carry water from
the spring with my own hands. I have no part in religious festivals, no share
in the dancing, and as a virgin still I shun the company of married women…Then
there is my mother: surrounded by the spoils of Troy, she sits on the throne,
while Asian maidservants have their place at her side….
4.
Ah, reputation,
reputation, how many thousands of men owe it to you that their lives are
inflated to great heights though they are worthless? Can one so petty as you
have once commanded the squadrons of the Greeks and taken Troy from Priam?
5.
Ay, there's the point,
as (to be bold with you)/Not to affect many proposed matches /Of her own clime,
complexion, and degree,/Whereto we see in all things nature tends--/Foh! One
may smell in such a will most rank, /Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural.
6.
But when Troy fell in
ruin and Hector met his end, when our ancestral hearth was leveled and my noble
father fell at the altar built by the gods, slaughtered by Achilles' murderous
son, then my father's guest-friend murdered me in my misery to gain my gold. He
wanted to possess it for himself in is own home, and so he killed me and threw
my body into the rolling sea. There I lie, one moment on the shore, another in
the sea's swell, carried along by the constant ebb and flow of the waves, with
no one to weep for me or give me burial.
7.
Cut
is the branch that might have grown full straight,/And burned is Apollo's
laurel bough,/That sometime grew within this learned man.
8.
Damned as thou art, thou
hast enchanted her! /For I'll refer me to all things of sense,/If she in chains
of magic were not bound,/Whether a maid so tender, fair and happy,/So opposite
to marriage that she shunned/The wealthy curled darlings of our nation,/Would
ever have, t'incur a general mock,/Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom /Of
such a thing as thou...
9.
I have never brought
shame to her bed; virgin she was and remains to this day. I think it a disgrace
to take the daughter of a royal house and force her, when my status is not
worthy of her….If any man calls me a fool for taking a young maid into my home
and not laying a finger on her, I'd have him know he is measuring self-control
by his own flawed standards, and is himself the fool he calls me.
10.
I see in you the fiend
who murdered Achilles. Back you came from Troy, the only warrior without a
scratch to show, and as for the splendid weapons you took there in their fine
coverings, you brought them back quite unblemished. I told him, your son-in-law
to be, not to form any tie of kinship with you or to take into his home a filly
sprung from so wicked a dam; the mothers' faults come out in their daughters.
11.
If you offer your help
to this man, you will show yourself a man of
no principle; you will be extending friendship to one who has no respect
for the gods, no feelings of loyalty to those who have a right to it, to a man
without piety, who tramples on the obligations of guest-friendship. We shall
say that you yourself take pleasure in the company of wicket men because you
are like them yourself, But you are my master and I must keep a civil tongue.
12.
Inhabitants of Sparta,
most hated men on earth, devious plotters, masters of lies, hatchers of wicked
schemes, whose thoughts are twisted and rotten, never direct, your successes
throughout Greece are built on crimes! Every vice belongs to you; you commit
murder without end and know no shame in seeking your own profit; constantly you
are discovered saying one thing but thinking of another. I curse you!
13.
My
heart's so hardened I cannot repent./Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or
heaven,/But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears, /… thou art damned. Then
swords and knives,/Poison, guns, halters, and envenomed steel/Are laid before
me to dispatch my self,/And long ere this I should have slain my self,/Had not
sweet pleasure conquered deep despair.
14.
My mother had a maid
called Barbary./She was in love; and he she loved proved mad/And did forsake
her. She had a song of "Willow";/An old thing 'twas, but it expressed
her fortune. /And she died singing it. That song tonight /Will not go from my
mind; I have much to do/But to go hang my head all at one side/And sing it like
poor Barbary.
15.
No, never, never (I will
not say it once only) should sensible married men allow women access to their
wives in their homes. They instruct them merely in how to be wicked. One abets
her in destroying the marriage, hoping to profit in some way from it; another,
already false to her own husband, encourages her to join her in infidelity,
while many act out of sheer promiscuity. This is why men find corruption in
their homes. Keep close watch then on the doors of your house, using bolts and
bars. No good comes of women paying visits to a house, indeed a lot of harm.
16.
Now you, slave-woman,
won by the spear, you want to oust me from this palace and make it your own
home: thanks to your drugs my husband detests me, thanks to you my womb is
barren and withers away. You Asiatic women are terribly clever in such matters.
17.
Reputation, reputation,
reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of
myself, and what remains is bestial.
18.
Such was my process,/And
of the Cannibals that each other eat, /The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
/Grew beneath their shoulders.
19.
The entrails lacked a
liver-lobe, and the portal vein and gall-bladder nearby indicated that no good
at all was in store for the one examining them. His looks darkened and when my master
asked him, 'Why are you upset?', he replied, 'Stranger, I fear some trickery
from abroad.'
20.
Then must you speak/Of
one that loved not wisely, but too well;/Of one not easily jealous, but, being
wrought/Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,/Like the base Judean,
threw a pearl away/Richer than all his tribe...
21.
Three great ones of the
city,/In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,/Off-capped to him; and by the
faith of man,/I know my price; I am worth no worse a place./But he, as loving
his own pride and purposes,/Evades them with a bombast circumstance, /Horribly
stuffed with epithets of war;/Nonsuits my mediators. For, "Certes,"
says he, "I have already chose my officer." And what was
he?/Forsooth,
22.
Was
this the face that launched a thousand ships?/And burnt the topless towers of
Ilium?/Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss./Her lips suck forth my soul;
see where it flies./Come, Helen, come give me my soul again./Here will I dwell,
for heaven be in these lips,/And all is dross that is not Helena.
23.
You foreigners are all
the same, of course: fathers sleep with daughters, sons with mothers, sisters
with brothers, closest relatives commit murder against each other, and all is
sanctioned by custom.