Joyce E. Henry - The Wisdom Of Shakespeare

The Wisdom of
William Shakespeare EDITED BY JOYCE E. HENRY, PH.D. Philosophical Library

Few records remain of their first decade together, except for the births of their three children, Susanna, Judith, and Hamnet; but by 1592 Shakespeare was recognized in London as a poet, playwright, and actor. During the next twenty-five years, until his death in 1616, he wrote thirty-seven plays, a canon which includes indisputably the greatest plays in the English language. The wisdom of Shakespeare shines in the speeches of his characters. Arranged here in rough chronological order by categories, some passages are familiar; some are not. Whether these are truly Shakespeares thoughts and attitudes, we do not know. Uttered by major and minor characters, and sometimes by those most unsympathetic, these lines reveal Shakespeares breadth of understanding of the diversity of humankind and his fascination with the motivations that drive behavior.

The enormous variety of his expressions is astonishing, and, despite the thousands and thousands of words in his works, he never repeats himself. The editions used were The Complete Works of Shakespeare edited by Hardin Craig and David Bevington (Scott, Foresman, & Co., 1973), and The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Lois Potter (The Arden Shakespeare, 1997). My appreciation goes to professors Louis A. DeCatur and Rebecca Jaroff for their helpful suggestions. Use this book to find a message for a friend or loved one, a passage for a special occasion, or simply to read and admire.
Joyce E. Henry earned her bachelors degree at the University of Michigan and her masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Also a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, she worked as an actor, theater manager, and television moderator for a number of years, before joining the English department faculty of Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. As director of the theater program, she mounted more than a dozen Shakespeare productions, as well as A Matter of Conscience, her own play based on the life of Fanny Kemble. Currently she performs Shakespeares Women for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and teaches Shakespeare at the Creutzburg Center in Radnor, Pennsylvania. (in chronological order)

Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences, That does this habitation, where thou keepst, Hourly afflict: merely, thou art deaths fool; For him thou labourst by thy flight to shun And yet runnst toward him still. DukeMforM III.i
The trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more. LaertesHamlet I.iii
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, If with too credent ear you list his songs, Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open To his unmastred importunity. LaertesHamlet I.iii
Be wary then: best safety lies in fear: Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. LaertesHamlet I.iii
These few precepts in thy memory Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportiond thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatchd, unfledgd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Beart that th opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each mans censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.