‘If We Shadows Have Offended’ is the opening line of Puck’s closing speech from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In summary, the speech sees Puck (also known as Robin Goodfellow) seeking forgiveness from the audience if the fairies (including Puck himself) have ‘offended’ any of the audience with their antics.
‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’ These lines appear in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in one of Prospero’s most famous speeches (‘Our revels now are ended’). The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s most enchanting and enchanted plays: […]
Hamlet’s ‘What a piece of work is a man’ speech is among the most famous prose speeches from Shakespeare’s play. It has become well-known, and is sometimes used in television and radio adverts; it was also memorably recited by Richard E. Grant’s character Withnail at the end of the British […]
‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ is a famous line from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, but since Hamlet is positively brimming with famous lines, it doesn’t get as much attention as other famous quotations from the play. Many of us know, and some may use, phrases such as ‘to […]
Shakespeare’s Richard III was not the first Elizabethan play written about the latest Plantagenet king of England. An anonymous play, The True Tragedy of Richard III, was printed in 1594, though it’s thought to have been written and performed several years earlier. There was even a Latin play by Thomas […]