Quelques unes de mes répliques préférées chez Shakespeare

L'habitude de lire William Shakespeare en anglais ou de voir les adaptations cinématographiques en V.O. a du bon. Même la meilleure traduction au monde de saurait remplacer la langue originale. Un petit florilège de mes répliques préférées :

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
(Twelfth Nigh - la nuit des rois)


To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
(Hamlet)


    Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
    As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
    Are melted into air, into thin air:
    And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
    The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
    The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
    Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
    And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
    Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on; and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep.
    (The Tempest- la tempête)


    Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this son of York;
    And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
    (Richard The Third - Richard II)


Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Macbeth)

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge! If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
(The Merchant of Venice - Le marchand de Venise)


O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
(Henry V)


If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear...
(A Midsummer Night's Dream - le songe d'une nuit d'été)