Happy Birthday to the Bard

Today is William Shakespeare's celebrated birthday. Exciting: I know. Even more exciting in DC because the Folger Shakespeare Library has jugglers, jesters, theatrical performances, birthday cake, and the best part of all: they open their exclusive reading rooms to the public!!! (That is deserving of at least three exclamation points, indeed.) So I know that only someone as insane as myself would be excited about having the opportunity to enter the Folger Shakespeare Library's reading rooms. But they are awesome. I have peered in with my face smooshed up against the glass on a tour there a few years ago. That's as close as I got. One day....

As geeky as I am, I think Shakespeare is fascinating. I honestly love his plays.

Well in honor of the greatest playwright, here are some of my favorite lines:

**"If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it" Duke Orsino--Twelfth Night
**"But be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them" Malvolio--Twelfth Night
**"Lady, you are the cruelest she alive if you will lead these graces to the grave and leave the world no copy" Viola--Twelfth Night
**"Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage" Sir Toby--Twelfth Night
**"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother" King Henry V--King Henry V
**"All things are ready if our minds be so" King Henry V--King Henry V
**"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; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have suffled off this mortal coil" Hamlet-Hamlet
**"This above all: To thine own self be true" Polonius--Hamlet
**"As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods" Gloucester--Hamlet
**"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest" Beatrice--Much Ado About Nothing
**"But then there was a star danced, and under that was I born" Beatrice--Much Ado About Nothing
**"But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it not be written down, yet forget not that I am an ass" Dogberry--Much Ado About Nothing
**"Every word stabs. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there would be no living near her. She would infect to the north star." -Benedick
**"When I said I should die a bachelor, I did not think I should live 'til I was married." -Benedick
**"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep" Prospero--The Tempest
**"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Puck--A Midsummer Night's Dream
**"Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth" Lysander--A Midsummer Night's Dream
**"Nothing will come of nothing" King Lear--King Lear
**"The worst is not, so long as we can say 'This is the worst'" Edgar--King Lear

Sonnet 116
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
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Okay, okay, so I realize this is really, really long. But I even cut out a lot. So just read a play.