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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

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Title: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Author: William Shakespeare

 
Release date: January 1, 1994 [eBook #100]
 Most recently updated: August 24, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/100

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ***

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

by William Shakespeare

 Contents

 THE SONNETS
 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
 THE TRAGEDY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
 AS YOU LIKE IT
 THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
 THE TRAGEDY OF CORIOLANUS
 CYMBELINE
 THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK
 THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH
 THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH
 THE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE FIFTH
 THE FIRST PART OF HENRY THE SIXTH
 THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH
 THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH
 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH
 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN
 THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR
 THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
 THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
 MEASURE FOR MEASURE
 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
 THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO, THE MOOR OF VENICE
 PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
 KING RICHARD THE SECOND
 KING RICHARD THE THIRD
 THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET
 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
 THE TEMPEST
 THE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS
 THE TRAGEDY OF TITUS ANDRONICUS
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
 TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL
 THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
 THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN
 THE WINTER'S TALE
 A LOVER'S COMPLAINT
 THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM
 THE PHOENIX AND THE TURTLE
 THE RAPE OF LUCRECE
 VENUS AND ADONIS

THE SONNETS

 1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
 Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
 To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
 This were to be new made when thou art old,
 And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

 3

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
 But if thou live remembered not to be,
 Die single and thine image dies with thee.

 4

Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive,
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
 Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
 Which used lives th' executor to be.

 5

Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same,
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
 But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
 Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

 6

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed:
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier be it ten for one,
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
 Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair,
 To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

 7

Lo in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty,
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch with weary car,
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are
From his low tract and look another way:
 So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon:
 Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

 8

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:
Mark how one string sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
 Whose speechless song

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