Fragment Friday - Shakespeare in Winter

Trotting uphill toward Turkey Day.

Sonnet XCVII

How like a winter hath my absence been  

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!  

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!  

What old December’s bareness every where!  

And yet this time removed was summer’s time;        

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,  

Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,  

Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:  

Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me  

But hope of orphans and unfathered fruit;  

For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,  

And, thou away, the very birds are mute:  

Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,  

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

Titus Andronicus

 

Act III. Scene I.

 

Titus:  Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay!

For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent

In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept;        

For all my blood in Rome’s great quarrel shed;

For all the frosty nights that I have watch’d;

And for these bitter tears, which now you see

Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks;

Be pitiful to my condemned sons,        

Whose souls are not corrupted as ’tis thought.

For two and twenty sons I never wept,

Because they died in honour’s lofty bed.

For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write...

Romeo and Juliet

 

Act III. Scene II.

Come, night! come, Romeo! come, thou day in night!

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night,        

Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.

Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow’d night,

Give me my Romeo: and, when he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine        

That all the world will be in love with night,

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Then heigh-ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth

 

Act II. Scene III.

Edward:  O Warwick! I do bend my knee with thine;

And in this vow do chain my soul to thine.

And, ere my knee rise from the earth’s cold face,        

I throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to thee,

Thou setter up and plucker down of kings,

Beseeching thee, if with thy will it stands

That to my foes this body must be prey,

Yet that thy brazen gates of heaven may ope,        

And give sweet passage to my sinful soul!

Now, lords, take leave until we meet again,

Where’er it be, in heaven or in earth.

Richard:  Brother, give me thy hand; and, gentle Warwick,

Let me embrace thee in my weary arms:        

I, that did never weep, now melt with woe

That winter should cut off our spring-time so....

As You Like It

 

Act II. Scene VII.

SONG.

Amiens:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude,

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

 

Shoot the show-offy males struttin' their stuff all over the place....