ACT I SCENE I. Venice. A street. Enter RODERIGO and IAGO RODERIGO Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindly That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse...
O truant Muse what shall be thy amends For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd? Both truth and beauty on my love depends; So dost thou too, and therein dignified. Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,...
To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I ey'd, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold, Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,...
O! never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify, As easy might I from my self depart As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love: if I have rang'd,...
The little Love-god lying once asleep, Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand, Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand...
O! from what power hast thou this powerful might, With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight, And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?...
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confin'd doom....
When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rime, In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,...
O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds....
Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy,...
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win!...
Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil,...
Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not, When I against myself with thee partake? Do I not think on thee, when I forgot Am of my self, all tyrant, for thy sake? Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,...
O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head, Which have no correspondence with true sight; Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled, That censures falsely what they see aright?...
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, My sinful earth these rebel powers array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?...
Those lips that Love's own hand did make, Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate', To me that languish'd for her sake: But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come,...
Like as, to make our appetite more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge; As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;...
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit 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,...
If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd, As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd....