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- Speech: “Now is the winter of our discontent”
- BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
- (from Richard III, spoken by Gloucester)
- Now is the winter of our discontent
- Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
- And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
- In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
- Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
- Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
- Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
- Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
- Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
- And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
- To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
- He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
- To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
- But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
- Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
- I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
- To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
- I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
- Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
- Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
- Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
- And that so lamely and unfashionable
- That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
- Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
- Have no delight to pass away the time,
- Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
- And descant on mine own deformity:
- And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
- To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
- I am determined to prove a villain
- And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
- Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
- By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
- To set my brother Clarence and the king
- In deadly hate the one against the other:
- And if King Edward be as true and just
- As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
- This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
- About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
- Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
- Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
- Clarence comes.
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