I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.1

The Merry Wives of Windsor. Act iii. Sc. 2.

What a taking was he in when your husband asked

who was in the basket!

O, what a world of vile ill-favour'd faults

Sc. 3.

Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

Sc. 4.

Ibid.

Sc. 5.

Ibid.

Happy man be his dole!

( I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

As good luck would have it.2

The rankest compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril.

A man of my kidney.

Think of that, Master Brook.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole.

Act iv. Sc. 1.

Sc. 2.

In his old lunes again.

So curses all Eve's daughters, of what complexion soever.

Ibid.

This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. . . . There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.

Thyself and thy belongings

Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Act v. Sc. 1.

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

1 What the dickens!

Measure for Measure. Act i. Sc. 1.

THOMAS HEYWOOD: Edward IV. act iii. sc. 1.

2 As ill luck would have it. - CERVANTES: Don Quixote, pt. i. bk. i, ch. ii.

He was ever precise in promise-keeping.

Measure for Measure. Act i. Sc. 2.

Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home.

Sc. 3.1

I hold you as a thing ensky'd and sainted.

Sc. 4.1

A man whose blood

Is very snow-broth; one who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense.

Ibid.

He arrests him on it;

And follows close the rigour of the statute,

To make him an example.

Ibid.1

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.

The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,

May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

This will last out a night in Russia,
When nights are longest there.

Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.2

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are?

1 Act i. Sc. 5, in White, Singer, and Knight.

Ibid.

Act ii. Sc. 1.

Ibid.

Ibid

Sc. 2.

Ibid

Ibid

Compare Portia's words in Merchant of Venice, act iv. sc. 1.

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2.

O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.

Ibid.

That in the captain's but a choleric word

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Ibid.

Our compell'd sins

Stand more for number than for accompt.

The miserable have no other medicine,

Sc. 4.

And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

Ibid.

The cunning livery of hell.

Ibid.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world.

Ibid

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death. Measure for Measure. Act iii. Sc. 1. The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.1

Ibid.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

Ibia,

There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana.2

Ibid.

0, what may man within him hide, Though angel on the outward side!

Sc. 2.

Take, O, take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn:

But my kisses bring again, bring again;

Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.3

Every true man's apparel fits your thief.

We would, and we would not.

Act iv. Sc. 1.

Sc. 2.

Sc. 4

A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time
And razure of oblivion.

Act v. Sc. 1.

* This song occurs in Act v. Sc. 2 of Beaumont and Fletcher's Bloody

Brother, with the following additional stanza:

Hide, O, hide those hills of snow,

Which thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are of those that April wears!
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.

They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.
Measure for Measure. Act v. Sc. 1.
What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.

The pleasing punishment that women bear.
The Comedy of Errors.

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity.

Every why hath a wherefore.1

Ibid.

Act i. Sc. 1.

Act ii. Sc 1.

Sc. 2.

Act iii. Sc. 1.

Act v. Sc. 1.

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.

One Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,

A mere anatomy.

A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living-dead man.

Let's hand in hand, not one before another.
go
He hath indeed better bettered expectation.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Much Ado about Nothing. Act i. Sc. 1.

A very valiant trencher-man.

Ibid.

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.

Ibid.

What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living? Ibid.

There's a skirmish of wit between them.

Ibid.

The gentleman is not in your books.

Ibid.

Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again?

Ibid.

Benedick the married man.

Ibid.

He is of a very melancholy disposition.

Ibid.

He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man.

As merry as the day is long.

Act ü. Sc. 1.

Ibid.

I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.

1 For every why he had a wherefore. canto i. line 132.

Ibid.

- BUTLER: Hudibras, part i