Shakespeare on War

George W. Bush to Saddam Hussein:
Check thy contempt; obey our will, which
Travails in thy good; believe not thy disdain,
But presently do thine own fortunes that
Obedient right which both thy duty owes
And our power claims, or I will throw thee
From my care forever into the staggers and
The careless lapse of youth and ignorance,
Both my revenge and hate loosing upon thee
In the name of justice without all terms of
Pity.

Dick Cheney:
We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong
Steeds, which for this fourteen years we
Have let slip, even like an overgrown lion in
A cave that goes not out to prey.
Now, as fond fathers, having bound up the
Threatening twigs of birch only to
Stick it in their children's sight for terror,
Not to use, in time the rod becomes more
Mocked than feared, so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse,
And quite athwart goes all decorum.

Donald Rumsfeld:
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
To kill, I grant, is sin's extremest gust,
But in defense, by mercy, 'tis most just.
A speedier course than lingering
Languishment must we pursue, and I have
Found the path.

Colin Powell:
Leave those remnants of fool and feather
That they got in France, with all their
Honorable points of ignorance abusing
Better men than they can be out of a foreign
Wisdom, renouncing clean the faith they
Have in tennis and tall stockings, short
Blistered breeches.

Saddam Hussein:
This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues.
Osama bin Laden:
Ungracious wretch, fit for the mountains
And the barbarous caves, where manners
Never were preached.

Kofi Annan:
Speaks an infinite deal of nothing,
More than any man in all Venice. His
Reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in
Two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day
Ere you find them, and when you have them
They are not worth the search.

Hans Blix:
And in his brain, which is as dry as
The remainder biscuit after a voyage,
He hath strange places crammed with
Observation, the which he vents in mangled
Forms.

Tony Blair:
I will keep where there is wit stirring and
Leave the faction of fools.

Jacques Chirac:
What cracker is this same that deafs our ears
With this abundance of superfluous breath?
France:
France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour.

Gerhard Schroeder:
This is a slight unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands.

Vladimir Putin:
Is 't possible the spells of France should
Juggle men into such strange mysteries?

Bill Clinton:
This butcher's cur is venom mouthed,
And I have not the power to muzzle him.
He's a most notable coward, and infinite The owner of no one good quality worthy
Your lordship's entertainment.

Hillary Clinton:
A callet of boundless tongue, who late hath
Beat her husband and now baits me.

John Kerry:
There can be no kernel in this light nut.
The soul of this man is his clothes.

Edward Kennedy:
Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear
Of this politician.

Martin Sheen:
For what thou professest, a baboon,
Could he speak, would own a name too dear.

Sheryl Crow:
Sir, there she stands. If aught within that
Little seeming substance . . .

New York Times:
Tedious it were to tell, and harsh to hear.
Antiwar protesters:
There are a crew of wretched souls.
Go hang yourselves all! You are idle
Shallow things.
Mothers of antiwar protesters:
As they were sons of mine, I'd have them
Whipped, or I would send them to the Turk,
To make eunuchs of.

Iraqis on Saddam:
All the commons hate him perniciously and,
O' my conscience, wish him ten fathom
Deep.

Middle America to Hollywood:
You blocks, you stones, you worse than
Senseless things!
American soldiers to Saddam Hussein:
You shall have your deliverance with an
Unpitied whipping, for you have been a
Notorious bawd.

Mr. Shakespeare was a British playwright. Thanks to reader Ken Liu for sending us this compilation of quotes.

KING HENRY V, Act 4, Scene 3
Gloucester: Where is the King?
Bedford: The King himself is rode to view their battle.
Westmoreland: Of fighting men, they have full three-score thousand.
Exeter: There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.
Salisbury: God’s arm strike with us! ‘Tis a fearful odds.
Westmoreland: O that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!

King Henry V: What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold;
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour,
As one man more, methinks, would share from me,
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, throughout my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say, To-morrow is Saint Crispian:
Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words –-
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester -–
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day!

KING HENRY V, Act 3, Scene 1
King Henry: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

KING HENRY V, Act 3, Scene 3
King Henry: How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
bEnlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

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