Good Ol' Willie

I'm kinda tired of hearing people say Shakespeare is boring, so I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite quotes. These are both from 'Much Ado about Nothing'. Benedic is a character I really identify with. Someone who, against all reason, ends up getting married after all (to the woman he's trashing in one of these quotes, no less).

The first is when his friends are teasing him about getting married:
"That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks: but that I will have a trumpet blasted in my face,or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which I may go the finer,I will live a bachelor."

Here, he's complaining about how Beatrice treated him at the party last night:
"Oh, she misused me past the endurance of a block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life and scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the prince's jester, that I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were none living near her; she would infect to the north star. I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that Adam bad left him before he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her: you shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would conjure her; for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they would go thither; so, indeed, all disquiet, horror and perturbation follows her." Ouch! Poor Beatrice. She did deserve it though...she got in a few shots of her own.