Shakespeare: The Animated Tales

[first lines]

Narrator:
The course of true love never did run smooth. And never did it stumble worse than on one summer's day when all Athens was bright with expectancy for the wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta.

[last lines]

Narrator:
And so at last, after the madness of the midsummer night, the course of true love came home in smiles and laughter, to peace, contentment, and a well-earned rest.

Oberon:
Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania

[first lines]

Narrator:
Something was rotten in the state of Denmark. The King was dead, poisoned by a serpent in his orchards, so it was said. And the poison lingered on.

[last lines]

Hamlet:
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu. This fell sergeant, death is strict in his arrest. If thou did'st ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story. The rest is silence.

Mark Anthony:
Now let it work. Malice, thou art afoot.

Caesar:
Et tu brute? Then fall Caesar. [he dies]

Cinna:
Libery! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!

[first lines]

Narrator:
King Edward was sick, and so was his kingdom. Family hated family, brother hated brother. And none hated more venomously than Richard, Duke of Gloucester - the world and his brother, the King.

Richard:
Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York. But I that am deform'd, unfinish'd, have no delight to pass away the time, and therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, am determined to prove a villain...

[last lines]

Richmond:
England hath long been mad and scarr'd herself: the brother blindly shed the brother's blood; the father rashly slaughter'd his own son; the son, compell'd, been butcher to the sire. All this divided York and Lancaster - O now let Richmond and Elizabeth, the true succeeders of each royal house, by God's fair ordinance conjoin together! Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again. That she may long live here, God say amen!

Richard III:
Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York. But I that am deformed have no delight to pass away the time. And therefore since I cannot prove a lover, I am determined to prove a villain.

Richard III:
Would'st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?

Sir James Tyrell:
So please you, sir, but I'd rather kill two enemies.

Richard III:
Then you have two deep enemies. Tyrell, I mean those bastards in the tower.

Buckingham:
My lord, what should we do if we perceive Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?

Richard:
Chop off his head man!

Iago, Othello's Ancient:
I have told thee oft, I hate the Moor! If thoust can cuckold him, thou dost provide thee a pleasure, and me a sport.

Brabantio:
Look to her Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee.

[first lines]

Narrator:
In Venice, Othello the great general has married Desdemona. It was a private ceremony, only a few friends including his officer, Iago.

Iago, Othello's Ancient:
I do hate him as I hate hell's pains. Oh you are well tuned now, but I'll set down the pegs that make this music, as honest as I am.

[first lines]

Narrator:
Long ago, in Verona, there lived two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, who hated each other worse than death.

[last lines]

Prince:
Capulet. Montague. See what a scourge is laid upon your hate that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

Capulet:
Brother Montague, give me thy hand.

Montague:
But I can give thee more, for I will raise her statue in pure gold, that while Verona by that name is known there shall be no figure at such rate be set, as that of true and faithful Juliet.

Capulet:
As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie, poor sacrifices of our enmity.

Prince:
Never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

[a bird sings]

Juliet:
Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale and not the lark.

Romeo:
It was the lark, the herald of the morn. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

Juliet:
Yond light is not daylight. I know it, I.

Romeo:
Come, death, and welcome. Juliet wills it so. It is not day.

Juliet:
[relenting] It is. It is. Hie hence, be gone, away. It is the lark that sings so out of tune.

Mercutio:
Tybalt, you ratcatcher! Will you walk?

Tybalt:
I am for you!

[they fight]

[first lines]

Narrator:
On a misty, forgotten isle somewhere between Tunis and Naples, two strange castaways, a father and a daughter, are watching the long-awaited ship. For Prospero, a duke robbed of his title, there is grim pleasure. At last his enemies are within his grasp.

[last lines]

Narrator:
His task fulfilled, Prospero, once again the rightful Duke of Milan, set sail to complete his fateful journey. He threw away the magic books that held his power, and left behind that enchanted isle and its curious inhabitants forever.