KING LEAR: V, iii

KING LEAR: And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
   Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
   And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
   Never, never, never, never, never!
   Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
   Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
   Look there, look there!

[Dies]

EDGAR: He faints! My lord, my lord!

KENT: Break, heart; I prithee, break!

EDGAR: Look up, my lord.

KENT: Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him much
   That would upon the rack of this tough world
   Stretch him out longer.

EDGAR: He is gone, indeed.

KENT: The wonder is, he hath endured so long:
   He but usurp'd his life.

ALBANY: Bear them from hence. Our present business
   Is general woe.

[To KENT and EDGAR]

   Friends of my soul, you twain
   Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain.

KENT: I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
   My master calls me, I must not say no.

ALBANY: The weight of this sad time we must obey;
   Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
   The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
   Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

[Exeunt, with a dead march]

CYMBELINE: V, v

CORNELIUS: O gods!
I left out one thing which the queen confess'd.
Which must approve thee honest: 'If Pisanio
Have,' said she, 'given his mistress that confection
Which I gave him for cordial, she is served
As I would serve a rat.'

MACBETH: I, iii

FIRST WITCH : A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
   And munch'd, and munch'd, and munch'd:--
   'Give me,' quoth I:
   'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries.
   Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
   But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
   And, like a rat without a tail,
   I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.

SECOND WITCH : I'll give thee a wind.

FIRST WITCH: Thou'rt kind.

THIRD WHITCH : And I another.

FIRST WHITCH : I myself have all the other,
   And the very ports they blow,
   All the quarters that they know
   I' the shipman's card.
   I will drain him dry as hay:
   Sleep shall neither night nor day
   Hang upon his pent-house lid;
   He shall live a man forbid:
   Weary se'nnights nine times nine
   Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
   Though his bark cannot be lost,
   Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
   Look what I have.

SECOND WHITCH : Show me, show me.

FIRST WHITCH : Here I have a pilot's thumb,
   Wreck'd as homeward he did come.

KING HENRY V: I, ii

WESTMORELAND: But there's a saying very old and true,
   'If that you will France win,
   Then with Scotland first begin:'
   For once the eagle England being in prey,
   To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
   Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs,
   Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,
   To tear and havoc more than she can eat.

HAMLET: I, i

FRANCISCO: You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO: 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
   And I am sick at heart.

BERNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO: Not a mouse stirring.

ROMEO AND JULIETTE: III, iii

ROMEO: 'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here,
   Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog
   And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
   Live here in heaven and may look on her;
   But Romeo may not: more validity,
   More honourable state, more courtship lives
   In carrion-flies than Romeo: they my seize
   On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand
   And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
   Who even in pure and vestal modesty,
   Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;
   But Romeo may not; he is banished:
   Flies may do this, but I from this must fly:
   They are free men, but I am banished.
   And say'st thou yet that exile is not death?
   Hadst thou no poison mix'd, no sharp-ground knife,
   No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,
   But 'banished' to kill me?--'banished'?
   O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
   Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart,
   Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
   A sin-absolver, and my friend profess'd,
   To mangle me with that word 'banished'?

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: V, i

LION: You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear
   The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
   May now perchance both quake and tremble here,
   When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
   Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
   A lion-fell, nor else no lion's dam;
   For, if I should as lion come in strife
   Into this place, 'twere pity on my life.

KING HENRY IV, part II: III, ii

FALSTAFF: What trade art thou, Feeble?

FEEBLE: A woman's tailor, sir.

SHALLOW: Shall I prick him, sir?

FALSTAFF: You may: but if he had been a man's tailor, he'ld
   ha' pricked you. Wilt thou make as many holes in
   an enemy's battle as thou hast done in a woman's petticoat?

FEEBLE: I will do my good will, sir; you can have no more.

FALSTAFF: Well said, good woman's tailor! well said,
   courageous Feeble! thou wilt be as valiant as the
   wrathful dove or most magnanimous mouse. Prick the
   woman's tailor: well, Master Shallow; deep, Master Shallow.

FEEBLE: I would Wart might have gone, sir.

FALSTAFF: I would thou wert a man's tailor, that thou mightst
   mend him and make him fit to go. I cannot put him
   to a private soldier that is the leader of so many
   thousands: let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.

FEEBLE: It shall suffice, sir.

FALSTAFF: I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble. Who is next?

HAMLET: IV, i

KING CLAUDIUS: What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
   Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit,
   Behind the arras hearing something stir,
   Whips out his rapier, cries, 'A rat, a rat!'
   And, in this brainish apprehension, kills
   The unseen good old man.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE: I, ii

LUCIO: Why, how now, Claudio! whence comes this restraint?

CLAUDIO: From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty:
   As surfeit is the father of much fast,
   So every scope by the immoderate use
   Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,
   Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,
   A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.

CORIOLANUS: I, i

MENENIUS: The senators of Rome are this good belly,
   And you the mutinous members; for examine
   Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
   Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find
   No public benefit which you receive
   But it proceeds or comes from them to you
   And no way from yourselves. What do you think,
   You, the great toe of this assembly?

FIRST CITIZEN : I the great toe! why the great toe?

MENENIUS: For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest,
   Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost:
   Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,
   Lead'st first to win some vantage.
   But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs:
   Rome and her rats are at the point of battle;
   The one side must have bale.

..........................................................................................

COMINIUS: Noble Marcius!

FIRST SENATOR: [To the Citizens] Hence to your homes; be gone!

MARCIUS: Nay, let them follow:
   The Volsces have much corn; take these rats thither
   To gnaw their garners. Worshipful mutiners,
   Your valour puts well forth: pray, follow.

KING LEAR: III, iv

EDGAR: Poor Tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad,
   the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in
   the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages,
   eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat and
   the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the
   standing pool; who is whipped from tithing to
   tithing, and stock- punished, and imprisoned; who
   hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his
   body, horse to ride, and weapon to wear;
   But mice and rats, and such small deer,
   Have been Tom's food for seven long year.
   Beware my follower. Peace, Smulkin; peace, thou fiend!

THE TEMPEST: I, ii

MIRANDA: Wherefore did they not
   That hour destroy us?

PROSPERO: Well demanded, wench:
   My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,
   So dear the love my people bore me, nor set
   A mark so bloody on the business, but
   With colours fairer painted their foul ends.
   In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
   Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
   A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
   Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
   Instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us,
   To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh
   To the winds whose pity, sighing back again,
   Did us but loving wrong.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE: I, iv

ISABELLA: O, let him marry her.

LUCIO: This is the point.
   The duke is very strangely gone from hence;
   Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,
   In hand and hope of action: but we do learn
   By those that know the very nerves of state,
   His givings-out were of an infinite distance
   From his true-meant design. Upon his place,
   And with full line of his authority,
   Governs Lord Angelo; a man whose blood
   Is very snow-broth; one who never feels
   The wanton stings and motions of the sense,
   But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
   With profits of the mind, study and fast.
   He – to give fear to use and liberty,
   Which have for long run by the hideous law,
   As mice by lions – hath pick'd out an act,
   Under whose heavy sense your brother's life
   Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it;
   And follows close the rigour of the statute,
   To make him an example. All hope is gone,
   Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer
   To soften Angelo: and that's my pith of business
   'Twixt you and your poor brother.