How to reduce the whole span of an average human life into just a few lines of verse? Shakespeare managed it, in this famous speech from As You Like It, which begins with the famous declaration that ‘All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely […]
The ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ speech from Shakespeare’s Hamlet has become one of the most famous and instantly recognisably theatre tropes – or, at least, those three words, ‘Alas, poor Yorick’, have. Perhaps the rest of Hamlet’s speech is less famous, and certainly many people misquote the next four words that […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle’: so begins probably the most famous speech from Richard II, William Shakespeare’s 1590s history play about the fall of the Plantagenet king. These words are spoken by the dying John of Gaunt, and the phrases he uses – […]