Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,

That I may see my shadow as I pass.

[V, iii, 178–207] King, at last – but at what damning cost to his soul? Richard wakes in terror after his victims have appeared to him in a fearful dream:

Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!

Have mercy, Jesu! – Soft! I did but dream.

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.

Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.

What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.

Richard loves Richard: that is, I am I.

Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am.

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why –

Lest I revenge. Myself upon myself?

Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good

That I myself have done unto myself?

O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself

For hateful deeds committed by myself!

I am a villain. Yet I lie, I am not.

Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree.

Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree,

All several sins, all used in each degree,

Throng to the bar, crying all ‘Guilty! Guilty!’

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;

And if I die, no soul will pity me.

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself

Find in myself no pity to myself?

Methought the souls of all that I had murdered

Came to my tent, and every one did threat

Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.

Love’s Labour’s Lost

[III, i, 170–202] A wit and self-conscious cynic, Berowne has always scoffed at the idea of love, yet now he finds he too has been struck by an arrow from the bow of Dan (Lord) Cupid:

And I, forsooth, in love!

I, that have been love’s whip,

A very beadle to a humorous sigh;

A critic, nay, a night-watch constable,

A domineering pedant o’er the boy,

Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,

This Signor Junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid,

Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,

Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,

Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting paritors – O my little heart!

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop!

What? I love? I sue? I seek a wife?

A woman, that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,

And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watched that it may still go right!

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all;

And, among three, to love the worst of all –

A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,

With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;