“Parting is such sweet sorrow”

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Ten Shakespearian quotes with which to make an enigmatic (but stylish) exit from a room:

1.
“I go, I go – look how I go,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.”
(Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 3.2.110 -1)
2.
“Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.
From this time forth I never will speak word.”
(Iago in Othello, 5.2.309-10)
3.
“I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room.
Mother, good night.”
(Hamlet, 3.4.186-7)
4.
“For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere.”
(Coriolanus, 3.3.116-7)
5.
“I must eat my dinner.”
(Caliban in The Tempest, 1.2.333)
6.
“I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.”
(Malvolio in Twelfth Night, 5.1.365)
7.
“I am gone forever!” [Exit, pursued by a bear]
(Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale, 3.3.57)
8.
“I will hide me in the arbour.”
(Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, 2.3.31)
9.
“I’ll take the gold thou giv’st me,
Not all thy counsel.”
(Alcibiades in Timon of Athens, 4.3.129-30)
10.
“So, to your pleasures;
I am for other than for dancing measures.”
(Jaques in As You Like It, 5.4. 181-2)

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Author:Nick Walton

Nick Walton is a Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
  • Ty Unglebower

    It did, thank you.

  • Anonymous

    I like this one Ty – hope your opening night went well.

  • Ty Unglebower

    When I want to be particularly dramatic, or when an exit is particularly final in some way, I go with…

    “I have touched the highest point of all my greatness;
    And from that full meridian of my glory
    I haste now to my setting: I shall fall
    Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
    And no man see me more.(Wolsey in Henry VIII, 3.2.270)

    I actually thought about that one tonight, as the play I was co-directing had its opening night. Not much left for a director to do at that point.

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