HomeQuotes
Famous lines, read closely
Everyone can quote them. These essays slow down and read them: who is speaking and why, how the verse is built, what people get wrong, and how to use the passage in an exam answer.
All close readings
To be, or not to be
Hamlet
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
The Sonnets
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Macbeth
What’s in a name?
Romeo and Juliet
All the world’s a stage
As You Like It
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy
Othello
We are such stuff as dreams are made on
The Tempest
Out, damned spot
Macbeth
The quality of mercy is not strained
The Merchant of Venice
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears
Julius Caesar
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
Romeo and Juliet
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Sonnets
Now is the winter of our discontent
Richard III
The course of true love never did run smooth
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
King Lear
If music be the food of love, play on
Twelfth Night
Where the plates come from
Each essay is illustrated with the engraved plate that the Daily Bard app pairs with the same passage. In the app, one of these pages arrives each morning: the plate, the exact words, and a plain-English reading on the back of the leaf.