‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne’: so begins perhaps the most famous speech from William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The words are uttered by Domitius Enobarbus, a follower of Mark Antony, in Act 2 Scene 2, as he describes the appearance of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, when […]
‘Frailty, thy name is woman’ is one of dozens of famous expressions that have entered common speech, but which originated in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The old quip about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the everyday […]
Ophelia’s ‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!’ speech occurs in Act 3 Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, just after one of Hamlet’s most famous speeches from the play. What inspires Ophelia’s words, and what are we to make of them? They constitute, along with her famous tragic ‘mad’ […]
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ is a well-known proverbial expression which means ‘do not borrow anything from anyone, and don’t lend anyone anything either’. But should such a sentiment be taken seriously? Or should we take the expression, and the sentiment it expresses, with a pinch of the […]
‘Was the hope drunk wherein you dress’d yourself?’ So Lady Macbeth taunts her husband for his loss of resolve, in Act 1 Scene 7 of Shakespeare’s play. The scene, and Lady Macbeth’s exchange with her husband, bring the first act of Macbeth to a close, paving the way for the […]