The Opening Soliloquy from
Richard III
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 playing 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 disembling nature, deform'd, 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 see 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 prophesies, libels, and dreams, to set
my brother Clarence and the king in deadly hatred 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
prophesy, which says that G of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes.
