Kunama's Quotes Page

"Grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows."

I'm reading Shakespeare.

Voluntarily.

Yes, you may now look shocked.


The poem I'm reading is titled The Rape of Lucrece.

Lucrece is very eloquent, but appealing to logic in the face of lust is so very pointless.


Feel free to go away once you get bored. It's a long, pointless post.


I disagree with Shakespeare on this line:
"But she hath lost a dearer thing than life"
Was chastity really so highly upheld those days!? I'm glad I'm alive now and not back then!

Afterwards, Lucrece is a ranting, crying wreck. Understandable, given the circumstances.
But she's an eloquent, ranting, crying wreck - the quoted lines below are spoken by her.

"Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests?
Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud?
Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?
Or kings be breakers of their own behests?
But no perfection is so absolute,
That some impurity doth not pollute."

Sounds like the way this world is.

"What virtue breeds iniquity devours:"

Thus is the darker side of human nature.

"Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,
Guilty of perjury and subornation,
Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,
Guilty of incest, that abomination;
An accessary by thine inclination
To all sins past, and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom."

Don't blame Fate/Opportunity.

"Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night,
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare;
Thou nursest all and murder'st all that are:
O, hear me then, injurious, shifting Time!
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime."

Time has nothing to do with it. But it does do all these other things -

"To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water drops."

"In vain I rail at Opportunity,
At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful Night;
In vain I cavil with mine infamy,
In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite:
This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.
The remedy indeed to do me good
Is to let forth my foul-defiled blood."

Ah. So she knows it's pointless. Ok then.

"And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness."

What? Don't look at me like that. You all know I could be like that if I wanted to.

"Let him have time to tear his curled hair,
Let him have time against himself to rave,
Let him have time of Time's help to despair,
Let him have time to live a loathed slave,
Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave,
And time to see one that by alms doth live
Disdain to him disdained scraps to give."

Ooooh. Maybe she's not just a wreck after all.

"In vain,' quoth she, 'I live, and seek in vain
Some happy mean to end a hapless life.
I fear'd by Tarquin's falchion to be slain,
Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife:
But when I fear'd I was a loyal wife:
So am I now: O no, that cannot be;
Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me."

Or.. maybe she is. It's a bad situation, but there's more to life than chastity or blaming oneself for something that wasn't one's fault. *rolls eyes*

"My tongue shall utter all; mine eyes, like sluices,
As from a mountain-spring that feeds a dale,
Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale."

Smart. Most victims don't tell anyone, and so they are never given justice until many years later.

"Sad souls are slain in merry company;
Grief best is pleased with grief's society:
True sorrow then is feelingly sufficed
When with like semblance it is sympathized."

Not always true, but is usually quite accurate.

"is woe the cure for woe?"

Of course, there's always the other side of the argument.

"My blood shall wash the slander of mine ill;
My life's foul deed, my life's fair end shall free it."

Kill oneself because something that one couldn't help happened? Silly wreck.


Meh. Shakespear goes on for far too long. That poem took 3 hours to read. Now I remember why I didn't like Shakespeare all that much. >_<
Here it is, though I don't know why on earth you'd want to read such tedious ranting.