Ahh… Shakespeare

I am not mad : this hair I tear is mine ; . . .
I am not mad : I would to heaven I were !
For then, ‘tis like I should forget myself :
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Preach some philosophy to make me mad . . .
I am not mad ; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity.
King John. Act iii, sc. 4, 1. 45. [Constance]

I am but mad, north-north-west : when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
       Hamlet.  Act ii, sc. 2 1. 396. [Hamlet] The only use of "southerly."  "Handsaw" is
       supposed by some commentators to be a corruption of hernshaw, a heron, but the
        proverb, as Hamlet speaks it, is included in John Ray’s English Proverbs, 1670.
        "Hand-saw" occurs again in I Henry IV , ii, 4, 187, in its usual meaning, and with a 
        hyphen.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.
     Hamlet. Act iii, sc. I, 1. 196.  [King]     The only use of "unwatch’d."

Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
    Henry V. Act iii, sc. I, 1. 14  [King Henry]
    The only use of "swill’d."

This fool-begg’d patience in thee will be left.
         The Comedy of Errors. Act ii, sc. I, 1. 38.
         [Adriana] The only use of "fool-begg’d."
 

A wise physician, skilled our wounds to heal,
Is more than armies to the common weal.
                                                         Pope’s Iliad

This revelation in turn emboldened Cardinal Mezzoluppo, a direct descendant of the much misinterpreted Wolf of Gubio, to confess the sting of the flesh which had long buffeted him and, taking his text from II Cor. 11:30, pro me autem nihil gloriabor nisi in infirmitatibus meis ("If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities"), magnificently to proclaim the infinite wisdom of God in establishing on earth a long misunderstood and persecuted reace which could now at last serve man in his first great need beyond earth.

Ghost:

[

Beneath] Swear by his sword.

Hamlet:

Well said, old mole, canst work i’ th’ earth so fast?

A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends.

Horatio:

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

Hamlet:

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
 

      “Yea so,” said Percivale:
“One night my pathway swerving east, I
      saw
The Pelican on the casque of our Sir Bors
All in the middle of the rising moon:
And toward him spurr’d, and hail’d him, and
     he me,
And each made joy of either; then he ask’d
“Where is he? Hast thou seen him — Lancelot?
      —Once,’
Said good Sir Bors, ‘he dash’d across me—
     mad,
And maddening what he rode; and when I
      cried,
“Ridest thou then so hotly on a quest
So holy,” Lancelot shouted, “Stay me not!
For now there is a lion in the way.”
   So vanish’d’

—Alfred Lloyd Tennyson

 

Shakespeare presents an astonishing variety of friendships in his plays.
Friendships between men:

Hamlet and Horatio Hamlet
Brutus and Cassius Julius Caesar
Petruchio and Hortensio The Taming of the Shrew
Sir Toby Belch and Andrew Aguechee Twelfth Night
Iago and Othello Othello
Iago and Roderigo Othello
Polixenes and Leones The Winter’s Tale

Friendships between women:

Celia and Rosalind As You Like It
Helena and Hermia A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2
Desdemona and Emilia Othello
Portia and Nerissa The Merchant of Venic
Mistress Page and Mistress Ford The Merry Wives of Windsor
Paulina and Hermione The Winter’s Tale

 

 

Hamlet:

Swear by my sword

Never to speak of this that you have heard.