Sunday 14 November 2010

A Strange Serpent

If you're one of these tedious people who like to go around saying "Shakespeare wasn't actually very good" or, the milder version, "people who laugh when they see his plays just want to show how clever they are"... Kindly read the following extract from Antony and Cleopatra, then add yourself to my ever-growing Fuck Off List:

Lepidus: What manner o' thing is your crocodile?

Antony: It is shap'd, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just as high as it is, and moves with its own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

Lepidus: What colour is it of?

Antony: Of its own colour too.

Lepidus: 'Tis a strange serpent.

Antony: 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.

Not only is it genuinely funny, but even to a few lines of throwaway silliness, he brings that familiar verbal flourish. Almost annoyingly good, really. Still, a class act.

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