Shakespeare wrote some of the most powerful, moving and funny language. We want you to engage with some of his words and film yourself speaking Shakespeare.

Learn a line or two, or even a whole speech and record your performance. You might want to add physical theatre and movement to a speech.

There are some suggestions below or you may find your own favourite lines.

Click on the link below for inspiration:
https://www.rsc.org.uk/share-your-shakespeare/all-the-worlds-a-stage

Here are some lines and speeches you might want to learn:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged cupid painted blind.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
Macbeth

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This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’
Richard II

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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Sonnet 116

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But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east and Juliet is the sun.
Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far mor fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O that she knew she were.
Romeo and Juliet

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We know what we are,
But know not what we may be.
Hamlet

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For it falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why then we rack the value then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours.
Much Ado About Nothing

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What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman either, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
Hamlet

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The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves.
Julius Caesar

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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18

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Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Macbeth

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Some Famous single lines:

• Brave new world – The Tempest
• You Banbury cheese – Merry Wives of Windsor (insults)
• All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players – As You Like It
• We are such stuff as dreams are made on – The Tempest
• Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, And some have greatness thrust upon ‘em. – Twelfth Night
• If music be the food of love play on – Twelfth Night
• To thine own self be true – Hamlet
• Nothing will come of nothing – King Lear
• The course of true love never did run smooth – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Lord, what fools these mortals be! – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so – Hamlet
• We know what we are, but not what we may be – Hamlet
• This is very midsummer madness – Twelfth Night
• We have seen better days – Timon of Ath
• To be or not to be – Hamlet