Finding the Right Shakespeare Edition
Top 10 Questions About Shakespeare
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Shakespeare's Histories: The Quiz
Deception in Hamlet
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know'; or 'We could, an if we would';
Or 'If we list to speak'; or 'There be, an if they might';
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me: this is not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you.
(1.5.187-198)
The following introduction to the many instances of deception in Hamlet will help you plan your own essay on the broader topic of how this important theme relates to the play on the whole.
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Quote of the Week: youths that thunder at a playhouse...
and fight for bitten apples; that no audience, but
the Tribulation of Tower-hill, or the Limbs of
Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure.
"Henry VIII" (5.4.65-8)
Unfortunately, Shakespeare and his acting troupe had to endure those nasty hecklers and riffraff who would come from the seedy parts of London (hence the reference to the "Tribulation of Tower-hill" and the "Limbs of Limehouse"). Over all, Shakespeare's audience was far more boisterous than are patrons of the theatre today. They were loud and hot-tempered and as interested in the happenings off stage as on. Read on...
The Marriage of True Minds: A Guide to Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken...
Here is our analysis of one of Shakespeare's most romantic sonnets. Included is a paraphrase of the poem in contemporary English, full explanatory notes, and a detailed commentary.
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Original Globe Performances
Shakespeare by the Numbers: the Quiz
How many witches appear in Macbeth? How many sonnets did Shakespeare write? Take our quiz and see how well you know the important numbers in Shakespeare's life and work. Detailed answers are provided.
More Shakespeare Quizzes:
Shakespeare on Lawyers and the Law
Why, may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this mad knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?(Hamlet, 5.1.109-114)
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Quote of the Week: Where the bee sucks...
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
"The Tempest" (5.1.97-103)
For more quotations on fairies from Shakespeare's plays, click here.

