Both Uses of
Shakespeare
in
Leaves of Grass
- To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
To get the final lilt of songs,
To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty ones,
Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Emerson;
To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt— to truly understand,
To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,
Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.†Chpt 34 *Shakespeare = author widely regarded as the greatest in the English language and whose works include Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet
- Ever so far back, preluding thee, America,
Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia,
The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian,
The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene,
The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas,
Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur,
The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,
The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds,
Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds,
The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays,
Shakespeare, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson,
As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences,
The great shadowy groups gathering around,
Darting their mi†Chpt 34
Definition:
English dramatist and poet frequently cited as the greatest writer in the English language and who wrote such works as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet (1564-1616)
Shakespeare is the most quoted person in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (5th ed. 1999). Commonly quoted passages include:
This above all: to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day;
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
This above all: to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day;
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.