This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies over men's noses as they lie asleep; her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs, the cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; her traces, of the smallest spider web; her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams; her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film; her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat, not half so big as a round little worm pricked from the lazy finger of a maid; her chariot is an empty hazelnut, made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; o'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight; o'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; o'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, and then dreams he of smelling out a suit; and sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, then dreams he of another benefice. Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again. This is that very Mab that plats the manes of horses in the night and bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, which once untangled much misfortune bodes. This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, that presses them and learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage. This is she! Romeo and Juliet, Act i, Scene 4
World |
Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves.
Oh, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!
Of France and England, did this king succeed; whose state so many had the managing. That they lost France and made his England bleed.
PANDARUS: You are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward you lie. CRESSIDA: Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all these wards I lie at, at a thousand watches. PANDARUS: Say one of your watches. CRESSIDA: Nay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of the chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it's past watching.
O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!
Man |
PORTIA: Why, know'st thou any harm's intended towards him? SOOTHSAYER: None that I know will be, much that I fear may chance.
OLIVIA: Whence came you, sir? VIOLA: I can say little more than I have studied, and that question's out of my part.
Man |
One, whose subdu'd eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum.
O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year. The Merry Wives of Windsor (Anne Page at III, iv)
Conscience | Cunning | Defeat | Devil | Father | Force | Gall | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Murder | Oppression | Passion | Play | Power | Property | Revenge | Soul | Spirit | Tears | Weakness | Will | Words | Murder | Guilty |
O, what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal!