The Reactionary Utopian

Fine-Filed Phrases

February 22, 2007

In 1598, Francis Meres praised “mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare.” He added, “The Muses would speak with Shakespeare’s fine-filed phrase,

Today's column is "Fine-Filed Phrases" -- Read Joe's columns the day he writes them.

if they would speak English.”

To celebrate my birthday this week, I’ve gathered a bouquet of Shakespeare’s short phrases, hoping especially that young readers will fall in love with his astonishing inspiration, as I once did. (Notice how much he can say in ten words or fewer.)

“Wherefore art thou Romeo?”; “My kingdom for a horse!”; “To be or not to be: that is the question”; “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”; “What fools these mortals be!”; “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”; “to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature”; “star-crossed lovers”; “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends”; “murder most foul”; “the most unkindest cut of all”; “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

“There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned”; “flaming youth”; “remembrance of things past”; “We have scotched the snake, not killed it”; “a countenance more in sorrow than in anger”; “one fell swoop”; “The play’s the thing”; “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”; “The rest is silence”; “I have supped full with horrors”; “I’ll tent him to the quick.”

“I do believe her though I know she lies”; “These are but wild and whirling words”; “tongue-tied”; “nine-day wonder”; “to thine own self be true”; “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin”; “screw your courage to the sticking-place”; “honest Iago”; “more matter with less art”; “Out, damned spot!”; “a barefaced lie”; “the best of the cut-throats”; “Once more unto the breach”; “it was Greek to me”; “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”; “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”

“I shall not look upon his like again”; “a lean and hungry look”; “the time is out of joint”; “cabined, cribbed, confined”; “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain”; “a fool’s paradise”; “I must be cruel, only to be kind”; “my salad days, When I was green in judgment”; “I dare do all that may become a man.”

“Frailty, thy name is woman”; “the paragon of animals”; “wild-goose chase”; “the apparel oft proclaims the man”; “a pound of flesh”; “caviar to the general”; “I have Immortal longings in me”; “in my mind’s eye”; “to the manner born”; “trumpet-tongued”; “one that loved not wisely, but too well”; “This was the noblest Roman of them all.”

[Breaker quote for Fine-Filed Phrases: Shakespeare in tiny doses]

[Breaker quote for Fine-Filed Phrases: Shakespeare in tiny doses]

“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all”; “the demi-Atlas of the earth”; “It out-Herods Herod”; “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang”; “For Brutus is an honorable man”; “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”; “What’s in a name?” “Alas, poor Yorick”; “Et tu, Brute?” “The quality of mercy is not strained”; “the very witching time of night”; “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?” “more sinned against than sinning”; “tell truth and shame the devil”; “Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought”; “speak daggers to her”; “the marriage of true minds”; “Sweets to the sweet”; “the milk of human kindness”; “A plague o’ both your houses”; “brevity is the soul of wit”; “Now is the winter of our discontent”; “I am but mad north-northwest.”

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose”; “A little more than kin, and less than kind”; “On horror’s head horrors accumulate”; “make assurance double-sure”; “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”; “that way madness lies”; “Words, words, words”; “a dish fit for the gods”; “A king of shreds and patches”; “every inch a king”; “in my heart of heart”; “Hath not a Jew eyes?” “Make Ossa like a wart”; “We happy few, we band of brothers”; “a foregone conclusion”; “a very palpable hit”; “This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle”; “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”; “Lay on, Macduff”; “wear my heart upon my sleeve”; “Beware the Ides of March”; “a custom more honored in the breach than the observance”; “Parting is such sweet sorrow”; “the green-eyed monster”; “Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it”; “O, for a muse of fire”; “All the world’s a stage”; “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t”; “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now”; “hoist by his own petard”; “Sweet are the uses of adversity”; “household words.”

It seems miraculous that one man could coin so many brilliant turns of phrase. No other author has ever been so fertile, versatile, and joyfully, inexhaustibly eloquent.

Joseph Sobran

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