By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘To sleep, perchance to dream’ is a famous line in probably the most famous section of Hamlet. Shakespeare’s play is chock-full of famous lines – as the old quip has it, it’s a great play but has too many quotations in it – but this particular moment in this long tragedy offers an especially high density of well-known quotations per page.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more’ is the second most famous speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, after Henry’s celebrated Crispin’s Day speech. This speech comes in Act 3 Scene 1 of the play, during the siege of Harfleur in Normandy, carried out by the real historical King Henry V in 1415 as part of the Hundred Years War.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Out, damned spot’ is one of the most recognisable phrases uttered by Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare’s great tragedy. The scene mirrors Macbeth’s earlier references to his own guilt, and acts as a clear indication of how the once-defiant and determined Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most fully realised female villains, has become undone by her own conscience. And she reveals all of this while she’s asleep.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘If music be the food of love, play on’: these nine words are among the most famous opening lines in all of Shakespeare, but how many people who recognise them could name the character who speaks them, or even the play which they begin?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul’: so begins Act 5 Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Othello, with Othello’s speech leading up to his killing of Desdemona. This is the final scene of the play; by the end of it, Othello and Desdemona will both be dead, the tragedy brought to its grisly conclusion.