MARK ANTONY

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,
Which, like dumb mouths, do open their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.

CHRISTOPHER BOONE
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
by Simon Stephens
I think I would make a very good astronaut. To be a good astronaut you
have to be intelligent and Im intelligent. You also have to understand
how machines work and Im good at understanding how machines work.
You also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a
tiny spacecraft thousands and thousands of miles away from the surface
of the earth and not panic or get claustrophobia or homesick or insane.
And I really like little spaces so long as there is no one else in them with
me. Sometimes when I want to be on my own I get into the airing
cupboard and slide in beside the boiler and pull the door closed behind
me and sit there and think for hours and it makes me feel very calm. So
I would have to be an astronaut on my own or have my own part of the
spacecraft that no one else could come into. And also there are no
yellow things or brown things in a spacecraft so that would be OK, too.
And I would have to talk to other people from Mission Control, but we

would do that through a radio link-up and a TV monitor so it wouldnt be

like real people who are strangers but it would be like playing a computer
game.
Also I wouldnt be homesick at all because Id be surrounded by lots of
things I like, which are machines and computers and outer space. And I
would be able to look out of a little window in the spacecraft and know
that there was no one else near me for thousands and thousands of
miles which is what I sometimes pretend at night in the summer when I
go and lie on the lawn and look up at the sky and I put my hands round
the sides of my face so that I cant see the fence and the chimney and
the washing line and I can pretend Im in space.
And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the
molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For
example, all the iron in your blood, which stops you being anaemic, was
made in a star.
When you look at the sky at night you know you are looking at stars,
which are hundreds and thousands of light years away from you. And
some of the stars dont exist any more because their light has taken so
long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and
collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if
you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is
called negligible which means they are so small you dont have to take

them into account when you are calculating something.

I cant see any stars here. Its because of all the light pollution in London.
All the light from the streetlights and car headlights and floodlights and
lights in the buildings reflect off tiny particles in the atmosphere and they
get in the way of light from the stars.
And I would like it if I could take Toby with me into space, and that might
be allowed because they sometimes do take animals into space for
experiments, so if I could think of a good experiment you could do with a
rat that didnt hurt the rat, I could make them let me take Toby. But if they
didnt let me I would still go because it would be a Dream Come True.

TOM WINGFIELD
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Youre at the end of your patience? What do you think Im at? Arent I
supposed to have any patience to reach the end of, Mother? I know, I
know. It seems unimportant to you, what I'm doing - what I want to do having a little difference between them! You think Im crazy about the
warehouse? You think Im in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You
think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that celotex interior?
With flourescent tubes? Look! Id rather somebody picked up a crowbar

and battered out my brains than go back mornings. But I go. Every time
you come in yelling that God damn 'Rise and Shine!'- 'Rise and Shine!' I
say to myself, 'How lucky dead people are! But I get up. I go! For sixty
five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever!
And you say self- selfs all I ever think of. Why listen, if self is what I
thought of Mother, Id be where he is, GONE! As far as the system of
transportation reaches.

Im going to the movies! Oh no, Im going to opium dens! Yes, opium

dens, Mother. Ive joined the Hogan Gang, Im a hired assassin, I carry a
tommy gun in a violin case. I run a string of cat houses in the Valley.
They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield. Im leading a double life: a simple,
honest warehouse worker by day, by night, a dynamic czar of the
underworld, Mother. On occasion they call me - El Diablo! Oh, I could tell
you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this
place. They're going to blow us all sky-high some night! I'll be glad, very
happy, and so will you! You'll go up, up on a broomstick, way over Blue
Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers! You ugly babbling old witch!

MARK ANTONY
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
All is lost; this foul Egyptian hath betrayed me:
My fleet hath yielded to the foe; and yonder

They cast their caps up and carouse together

Like friends long lost. Triple-turn'd whore! 'tis thou
Hast sold me to this novice; and my heart
Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly;
For when I am revenged upon my charm,
I have done all. Bid them all fly; begone.

O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more:

Fortune and Antony part here; even here
Do we shake hands. All come to this? The hearts
That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave
Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is barkd,
That overtopp'd them all. Betray'd I am:
O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,.
Whose eye beck'd forth my wars, and call'd them home;
Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,.
Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose,
Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.

Since Cleopatra died,

I have lived in such dishonour, that the gods
Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword

Quarter'd the world, and o'er green Neptune's back

With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack
The courage of a woman; less noble mind
Than she which by her death our Caesar tells
'I am conqueror of myself.' Thou art sworn, Eros,
That, when the exigent should come, which now
Is come indeed, when I should see behind me
The inevitable prosecution of disgrace and horror,
That, on my command, Thou then wouldst kill me:
do't; the time is come: Thou strikest not me,
'tis Caesar thou defeatst. Come, then;
for with a wound I must be cured.