Advanc’d above pale envy’s threat’ning reach.

As when the golden sun salutes the morn

And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,

Gallops the zodiac in his glistening coach

And overlooks the highest-peering hills,

So Tamora.

Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait,

And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown.

Then, Aaron, arm thy heart and fit thy thoughts

To mount aloft with thy imperial mistress,

And mount her pitch, whom thou in triumph long

Hast prisoner held, fettered in amorous chains,

And faster bound to Aaron’s charming eyes

Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus.

Away with slavish weeds and servile thoughts!

I will be bright and shine in pearl and gold,

To wait upon this new-made Emperess.

‘To wait’ said I? – to wanton with this queen,

This goddess, this Semiramis, this nymph,

This siren that will charm Rome’s Saturnine,

And see his shipwreck and his commonweal’s.

Henry VI Part 1

[I, v, 19–26] The English Lord Talbot marvels at what he sees as the infernal prowess of Joan of Arc:

My thoughts are whirlèd like a potter’s wheel;

I know not where I am nor what I do.

A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal,

Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists.

So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench

Are from their hives and houses driven away.

They called us, for our fierceness, English dogs;

Now, like to whelps, we crying run away…

[IV, i, 182–94] Relieved at the restraint shown by the Duke of York in the face of King Henry’s ineffectual rule, Exeter nevertheless wonders just how long the rivalries between England’s various noble houses can be kept in check:

Well didst thou, Richard, to suppress thy voice;

For had the passions of thy heart burst out,

I fear we should have seen deciphered there

More rancorous spite, more furious raging broils,

Than yet can be imagined or supposed.

But howsoe’er, no simple man that sees

This jarring discord of nobility,

This shouldering of each other in the court,

This factious bandying of their favourites,

But that it doth presage some ill event.

’Tis much when sceptres are in children’s hands;

But more when envy breeds unkind division:

There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.

Richard III

[I, i, 1–40] With Richard of Gloucester’s murderous assistance, his family has attained the power he so eagerly sought, yet Richard feels more marginalized than ever in this moment of his brother Edward’s triumph:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York,

And all the clouds that loured upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.