William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth23 April 1564
. . . it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself it is needful that you frame the season of your own harvest.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
And do so, love, yet when they have devised What strainèd touches rhetoric can lend, Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized In true plain words by thy true-telling friend; And their gross painting might be better used Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.
If you did wed my sister for her wealth, Then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness; Or, if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth; Muffle your false love with some show of blindness; Let not my sister read it in your eye; Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator; Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty; Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted; Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint; Be secret-false.
But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy, Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great: Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose; but Fortune, O!
Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.
I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much How to forget that learning; but, sir, now It did me yeoman's service.
Good morrow, fair ones; pray you, if you know, Where in the purlieus of this forest stands A sheep-cote fenc'd about with olive trees?
Who is Silvia What is she, That all our swains commend her Holy, fair, and wise is she.
She says I am not fair, that I lack manners; She calls me proud, and that she could not love me, Were man as rare as Phoenix.
Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.
What the vengeance, could he not speak 'em fair?
Come, go with us, speak fair; you may salve so, Not what is dangerous present, but the los Of what is past.
Because I cannot flatter and look fair, Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, Duck with French nods and apish courtesy, I must be held a rancorous enemy.