 THE QUALITY OF MERCY From the Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare. Recorded for LibriVox.org by Kirsten Ferrari. The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. To his mightiest in the mightiest it becomes the thrown at 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 enthroned in the hearts of kings. It is an attribute to God himself. And earthly power doth then show likeest gods 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 against the merchant there. End of THE QUALITY OF MERCY. No shame but mine, from taming of the shrew, act three, scene two. This is a LibriVox recording. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. No shame but mine, I must, forsooth, be forced to give my hand opposed against my heart onto a mad brain, Rudspe, full of spleen, who wooed in haste and means to wed at leisure. I told you, I, he was a frantic fool, hiding his bitter jets in blunt behavior. And to be noted for a merry man, he'll woo a thousand, point the day of marriage, make feasts, invite friends, and proclaim the bands. Yet never means to wed where he hath wooed. Now must the world point at poor Katharina and say, Lo, there is mad Pertucio's wife. If it would please him, come and marry her. And of, no shame but mine, from taming of the shrew, act three, scene two. This recording is in the public domain. They met me in the day of success, from Macbeth, act one, scene five. By William Shakespeare, recorded for LibriVox.org, recording by Lizzie Driver. They met me in the day of success. And I have learned, by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air into which they vanished. Whilst I stood, wrapped in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all hailed me, Thane of Cordor. By which title before these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with Hale King that shalt be. This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou might as not lose the Jews of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell. Watch thou art, and Cordor, and shalt be what thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature. It is too full of a milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it. Watch thou wouldst highly, that thou wouldst thou holily. Thou wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou dost have, great glams, that which cries. Thus thou must do, if thou have it, and that which rather thou dost fear to do, than wish it should be undone. High thee hither, that I may pour mine spirits in thine ear, and chest-eyes with the valor of my tongue, all that impedes thee from the golden round, which fate, a metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crowned with all, and of they met me on the day of success. This recording is in the public domain. More Than Prince of Cats, from Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 4, by William Shakespeare. More Than Prince of Cats, I can tell you, oh, he is a courageous captor of compliments. He fights his using-trick song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. Rest me his minimum rest, one, two, and a third in your bosom, the very butcher of a silk button, a duelist, a duelist, a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause, ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay. End of More Than Prince of Cats, this recording is in the public domain. Is This a Dagger, from Macbeth, Act II, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare. Is This a Dagger, which I see before me, the handle toward my hand, come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling, as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form, as palpable as this which now I draw. Thou marshallest me the way that I was going, and such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools of the other senses, or else worth all the rest. I see thee still, and on thy blade and dudge and gouts of blood, which was not so before. There's no such thing. It is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes. Now, or the one half-world, nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtain's sleep. Witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecket's offerings, and withered murder, alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf, whose howls his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, with tarquins ravishing strides towards his design moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror from the time which now suits with it. While thy threat he lives, words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go, and it is done, the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven, or to hell. Is this a dagger? This recording is in the public domain. If We Shadows Have Offended, from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene 2, by William Shakespeare, recorded for LibriVox.org. If We Shadows Have Offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream. Gentles, do not reprehend, if you pardon we will mend. And, as I am an honest puck, if we have unearned luck now to escape the serpent's tongue, we will make amends ere long, else the puck a liar-call. So good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, and robin shall restore amends. And of, if We Shadows Have Offended, read by Kara Shallenberg, on March 25, 2007. This recording is in the public domain. Prologue, from Henry V, Act I, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare, recorded for LibriVox.org by Squid Vajlakova. Oh, for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention. A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Then should the war like Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars, and at his heels, leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire crouch for employment. But pardon, Gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth such great an object. Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden o'er the very casks that did affright the air at Agincourt? Oh, pardon, since a crooked figure may attest in little place a million, and let us cipher to this great a compt on your imaginary force's work. Those within the girdle of these walls are now confined to mighty monarchies whose high upreared and abutting fronts the perilous narrow ocean parts asunder. Peace out our imperfections with your thoughts, into a thousand parts divide one man, and make imaginary puissons. Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth. What is your thoughts that now must deck our kings? Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times, turning the accomplishment of many years into an hourglass, for which to supply, admit me, chorus, to this history, who, prologue like, your humble patience pray, gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. End of prologue, this recording is in the public domain. Recording by Squid Vajlakova, found at s-q-u-i-d-v-a-r-i-l-e-k-o-v-a.voice-123.com. I Defy All Council, from King John, Act 3, Scene 4, by William Shakespeare. Recorded for LibriVox.org, by Larissa Jaworski, Brisbane, Australia. No, I defy all council, all redress, but that which ends all council, true redress, death. Death, O amiable, lovely death, thou o-diferous stench, sound rottenness. Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, thou hate and terror to prosperity, and I will kiss thy detestable bones and put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows, and ring these fingers with thy household worms, and stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, and be a carrion monster like thyself. Come grin on me, and I will think thou smilest, and bust thee as my wife, Miserie's love. O come to me! No, no, I will not having breath to cry, O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth. Then with a passion I would shake the world, and rouse from sleep that fell anatomy, which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice, which scorns a modern invocation. Thou art not holy to belie me, so I am not mad, this hair I tear is mine. My name is Constance, I was Geoffrey's wife, young Arthur is my son, and he is lost. I am not mad, I would to heaven thy were, for then tis like I should forget myself. O if I could what grief should I forget, preach some philosophy to make me mad, and thou shalt be canonised cardinal. For being not mad, but sensible of grief, my reasonable part produces reason. How I may be delivered of these woes, and teaches me to kill or hang myself. If I were mad, I should forget my son, or madly think a babe of clouds were he. I am not mad too well, too well I feel the different plague of each calamity. End of I defy all counsel, this recording is in the public domain. Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? From Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II, by William Shakespeare. Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Ann Walden. O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Night I father, and refuse thy name. Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a capulet. Tis but thy name that is my enemy, thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name. What's in a name, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? Though Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doth thy name, and for that name which is no part of thee take all myself. End of Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? This recording is in the public domain. I left no ring with her, from twelfth night, or what you will. Act II, Scene II, by William Shakespeare. And for LibriVox.org by Karen Savage. I left no ring with her. What means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside, I've not charmed her. She made good view of me. Indeed so much, that me thought her eyes had lost her tongue, for she did speak in starts distractedly. She loves me sure. The cunning of her passion invites me in this cherished messenger. One of my lords' ring, why he sent her none. I am the man. If it be so, as it is, poor lady, she would better love a dream. This guise I see thou art a wickedness wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper force in women's wax and hearts to set their forms. Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, for such as we are made of such we be. How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly, and I, poor monster, fonders much on him, and she, mistaken, seems to dot on me. What will become of this? As I am man, my state is desperate for my master's love. As I am woman, alas, the day, what thriftless sigh shall poor Olivia breathe. Oh, time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a not for me, tantei. And of I left no ring with her. This recording is in the public domain. The Tempest by William Shakespeare Act IV, Scene I, Prospero Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These are 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 golden 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 asleep. End of Prospero's speech. This recording is in the public domain. Amelie's Monologue from Othello, Act IV, Scene III. Read for LibriVox.org by Elizabeth Clett But I do think it is their husband's faults if wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties, and pour our treasures into foreign laps. Or else break out in peevish jealousies, throwing restraint upon us. Or say they strike us, or scant our former having in despite. Why we have gulls, and though we have some grace, yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know their wives have scents like them. They see and smell, and have their palates both for sweet and sour as husbands have. What is it that they do when they change us for others? Is it sport? I think it is. And doth affection breed it? I think it doth. Is it frailty that thus urrs? It is so, too. And have not we affections, desires for sport, and frailty as men have? Then let them use us well. Let them know the ills we do, their ills instruct us so. End of monologue. This recording is in the public domain. Hamlet's Speech to the Players, from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2, by William Shakespeare. Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as leaf the town crier spoke my lines, nor do not saw the air too much with your hands thus, but use all gently, for in the very torrent tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness, or it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-painted fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for overdoing termigant. It outherds hered. Pray you avoid it. Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you overstep not the modesty of nature, for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as for the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of which one must in your allowance overweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gate of Christians, pagan nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, the imitated humanity so abominably. Oh, reform it all together, and let those that play your clown speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set some quantity of barren spectators to laugh to, though in the meantime some necessary questions of play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows the most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. End of Hamlet's Speech to the Players, from Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare. This recording is in the public domain. Of Comfort No Man Speak. King Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2 by William Shakespeare. Recorded for LibriVox.org by Mark Nelson. Of Comfort No Man Speak. Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs. Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. Let's choose executors and talk of wills. And yet not so, for what can we bequeath save our deposed bodies to the ground? Our lands, our lives, and all our buling-brooks, and nothing can we call our own but death, and that small model of barren earth which serves as paste on cover to our bones? For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. Now some have been deposed, some slain in war, some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, all murdered. For within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps death his court, and there the antics sits scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, allowing him a breath, a little scene, to monarchize, be feared and kill with looks, infusing him with self and vain conceit as if this flesh which walls about our life were brass impregnable. And humoured thus comes at the last and with a little pin bores through his castle wall and farewell king. Throw your heads and mock not flesh and blood with solemn reverence. Throw away respect, tradition, form, and ceremonious duty. For you have but mis-took me all this while. I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus, how can you say to me I am a king? Of comfort no man speak. This recording is in the public domain. Angelo's speech tears one thing to be tempted from measure for measure. Act two, scene one by William Shakespeare. Recorded for LibriVox.org. This recording by Martin Clifton. Tears one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall. I do not deny the jury passing on the prisoner's life. May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try. What's open made to justice, that justice seizes. What know the laws that thieves do pass on thieves? It is very pregnant, the jewel that we find we stoop and take, because we see it. But what we do not see we tread upon and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offence, for I have had such faults. But rather tell me, when I that censure him do so offend, let mine own judgment pattern out my death, and nothing come impartial. Sir, he must die. End of tis one thing to be tempted.