Let's say you were directing Hamlet and Tom Mulcair was auditioning...

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Catchfire Catchfire's picture
Let's say you were directing Hamlet and Tom Mulcair was auditioning...

...which Shakespearean passage would he use to audition?

(If you can't beat 'em...)

I'll go first:

Henry V wrote:
Henry V. This note doth tell me of ten thousand French 
That in the field lie slain: of princes, in this number, 
And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead 
One hundred twenty six: added to these, 
Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen, 
Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which, 
Five hundred were but yesterday dubb'd knights: 
So that, in these ten thousand they have lost,
There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries; 
The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires, 
And gentlemen of blood and quality. 
The names of those their nobles that lie dead: 
Charles Delabreth, high constable of France;
Jaques of Chatillon, admiral of France; 
The master of the cross-bows, Lord Rambures; 
Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dolphin, 
John Duke of Alencon, Anthony Duke of Brabant, 
The brother of the Duke of Burgundy,
And Edward Duke of Bar: of lusty earls, 
Grandpre and Roussi, Fauconberg and Foix, 
Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrale. 
Here was a royal fellowship of death.

Where is the number of our English dead?
Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, 
Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire: 
None else of name; and of all other men 
But five and twenty.

O God, thy arm was here;
And not to us, but to thy arm alone, 
Ascribe we all. When, without stratagem, 
But in plain shock and even play of battle, 
Was ever known so great and little loss 
On one part and on the other? Take it, God,
For it is none but thine.

Duke of Exeter. 'Tis wonderful...

Issues Pages: 
Caissa

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

Unionist

Claudius wrote:
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.

 

Catchfire Catchfire's picture

Too obvious, Caissa. Next!

Caissa

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man....
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.... Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Fidel

I'd need to drink per chance to dream whilst taking it all in.

Caissa

That's the other thread, Fidel.Wink

Boom Boom Boom Boom's picture

Someone mentioned discount tents?

Ripple

Caissa, I was going to put up something from Act V, scene iii, but thought it wasn't in the spirit.

Caissa

Go for it Ripple. We're all in the spirits...

Unionist

Boom Boom wrote:

Someone mentioned discount tents?

LaughingLaughingLaughing

*groan*

I guess with the weather being as it is up your way Boom Boom, every year there's a winter of discount tents!

Maysie Maysie's picture

I can have fun with this new meme we have going on, but I still don't like him. 

Thou artless earth-vexing malt-worm!

[You] speak an infinite deal of nothing.

[Thine] breath stinks with eating toasted cheese.

 

 

6079_Smith_W

Speaking of Act 5, Scene 3: 

From King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3

Never! Never! Never! Never! Never!

 

Catchfire Catchfire's picture

Ha! I was thinking the same one, Winston. I might have added the earlier "Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl!" too.

@Maysie: are you hurling those at M. Mulcair or is he hurling them at us?

Maysie Maysie's picture

Catchfire wrote:

@Maysie: are you hurling those at M. Mulcair or is he hurling them at us?

I'll never tell. 

Wink

 

NDPP

"Then came each actor on his ass...

 

But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall

To make oppression bitter; or, ere this

I would have fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal: - bloody, bawdy villain! "

Act II Sc 2. Hamlet

Jacob Two-Two

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

NDPP

Good one!

Caissa

Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:
 

 
By Sinel's death I know I am thane of Glamis;
 

 
But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives,

 
A prosperous gentleman; and to be king
 
 

 
Stands not within the prospect of belief,
 

 
No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence
 

 
You owe this strange intelligence? or why
 

 
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way

 
With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you.

oldgoat

What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here?

Catchfire Catchfire's picture

 

Quote:
Brian Topp. The storm begins:—poor wretch,
That for Jack's mother's fault art thus expos'd
To loss and what may follow!—Weep I cannot,
But my heart bleeds: and most accurs'd am I
To be by oath enjoin'd to this.—Farewell!
The day frowns more and more:—thou'rt like to have
A lullaby too rough:—I never saw
The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!—
Well may I get aboard!—This is the chace:
I am gone for ever.

[Exit, pursued by a bear.]

 

6079_Smith_W

I think "Exit, pursued by a bear" is the capper on that. Good one.  

I should mention that I didn't include "and my poor fool is hanged" in my offering, given all the extraneous stuff in between. But I was thinking about it.

 

 

Boom Boom Boom Boom's picture

[Exit, pursued by a bear.] - that's genius, man! Laughing

Slumberjack

"Tis a fault to Heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature, to reason most absurd."

Jacob Two-Two

Ha! Brilliant, Catchfire. And from "A Winter's Tale" no less. Who reads that?

But if we're going to bring ol' Brian into it:

 

Mulcair: This is the very false gallop of verses: why do you infect yourself with them?  

Topp:    Peace, you dull fool! I found them on a tree.

Mulcair: Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.

Topp:    I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit i' the country; for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar.

Mulcair: You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.

;)

Caissa

Might as well have a little Marlowe.

FAUSTUS. Ah, Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
O, I'll leap up to my God!--Who pulls me down?--
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!--
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!--
Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
No, no!
Then will I headlong run into the earth:
Earth, gape! O, no, it will not harbour me!
You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist.
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud[s],
That, when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven!
[The clock strikes the half-hour.]
Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon
O God,
If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransom'd me,
Impose some end to my incessant pain;
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd!
O, no end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy,
For, when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.
Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven.
[The clock strikes twelve.]
O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!
[Thunder and lightning.]
O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!

Enter DEVILS.

My God, my god, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books!--Ah, Mephistophilis!

Catchfire Catchfire's picture

Ha! These are some great suggestions. Who knew that Mulcair was so naturally Jacobean?

Jacob Two-Two wrote:
Who reads that?

Sadly, this question is the story of my meaningless, irrelevant career.

NDPP

'Let's say you were directing Hamlet and Tom Mulcair was auditioning':

 

"Sorry, you lack conviction and you're not at all what we're looking for. Next please..."

Caissa

I thought he was auditioning for Yorick. My mistake.

Jacob Two-Two

We'll save the Marlowe for when the caucus revolts against him. 

Caissa

Can we cast Cullen as Mephisthopilis?