Shakespeare's poetry for Kelly's contest
Kelly Fineman kellyrfineman has been treating us to Shakespearean fun in her Brush Up Your Shakespeare in June posts. Her most recent contest requires you to post your favourite Shakespearean poem, which can include blank verse from his plays.
So here it is again, my favourite* bit of Shakespeare, which comes from Henry IV, Part 1. It is a blank verse soliloquy by Prince Hal after he has been carousing with his drinking buddies such as Falstaff, causing his father to think he'd never amount to much. Dude, I'm just faking it now so you'll appreciate me more later.
PRINCE HENRY
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
Act I, Scene 2
*****
* I love this soliloquy, which is iambic pentameter, lines of five feet of da-DUM meter, ending with a rhyming couplet.
Besides the gorgeous language, there are two personal reasons why I appreciate this so much.
1. My mother had her first and only solo art gallery show at age 85. I helped her name her paintings. The main painting, and the name of the show, was Imitate The Sun. At an age when most people are retired, she finally revealed her true artistic potential.
2. For years, when I was dating Mr. Boreal Owl, he would quote the first two lines of this soliloquy to me. I didn't recognize it as being part of the speech I liked so much about the sun coming out from the clouds. When I helped my mother with her art show and looked up the quote I realized that Mr. Boreal Owl and I both liked the same soliloquy! What are the chances of that?