AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT ARC contest #2: What's in a name?

[seanan_mcguire]

Suggested by the lovely valdary:

All Toby books (and in-universe short stories) have titles taken from the works of Shakespeare. There's a lot of Shakespeare out there! So...

To enter for an ARC of An Artificial Night, suggest a quote or quotes that would make a good title for a Toby story. Extra credit if they're quotes not everyone would know (for example, going with An Artificial Night from Romeo and Juliet, rather than something more familiar). Please include the surrounding text in your entry, as well as identifying the scene/sonnet/poem the quote comes from. Entries must be between three and five words.

Example:

Late Eclipses.

"These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend
No good to us: though the wisdom of nature can
Reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
Scourged by the sequent effects: love cools,
Friendship falls off, brothers divide: in
Cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in
Palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son
And father..." —King Lear.

I'll select the winner through random drawing on Tuesday, June 29th. By entering, you grant permission for me to use your title if I think it's awesome, since Shakespeare is public domain and also, well, I might have issues round about book eleven, when everything has been suggested already.

Game on!

Comments

[beable]

thy mother's glass

From Sonnet III:


...
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, remember'd not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.


These poor rude lines

From Sonnet XXXII:

If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,
And though they be outstripped by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
...



Lilies that fester

From Sonnet XCIV:

...
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.


And since it's not all about sonnets:

Into a cloven pine

The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2


And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Nice ones!

[jojane.livejournal.com]

King Lear.
Act V Scene III
Suggestions in bold.


CORDELIA
(to LEAR)
   We are not the first
Who with best meaning have incurred the worst.
For thee, oppressèd King, I am cast down.
Myself could else outfrown false fortune’s frown.
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

LEAR
No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon ’s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out
In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Lovely.

[erinwrites.livejournal.com]

A Lean and Hungry Look

Caesar:
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 190–195

Passing Strange

Othello:
My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
She swore, in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
'Twas pitiful. 'twas wondrous pitiful,
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man,

Othello Act 1, scene 3

An Antic Disposition

Hamlet:
But come—
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd some'er I bear myself—
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on—
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumb'red thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, and if we would,"
Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, and if they might,"
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me—this do swear,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you.

Hamlet Act 1, scene 5

(Of) Sorriest Fancies

Lady Macbeth:
How now, my lord, why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done, is done.

Macbeth Act 3, scene 2

[alethea-eastrid.livejournal.com]

I am hoping enormously that my once-upon-a-time Shakespeare-saturated brain will kick up something useful by the deadline. At the moment, I'm getting a very Roadrunner-esque plume of dust and running feet and no forward momentum....

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Awwwwww.

Zoom!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Lovely.

[kitrona.livejournal.com]

Fourteen Pence on the Score

What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher
Sly, old Sly's son of Burtonheath, by birth a
pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a
bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker?
Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if
she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence
on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the
lyingest knave in Christendom. What! I am not
bestraught: here's--

- Taming of the Shrew

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Heeee.

[dimloep-suum.livejournal.com]

I love love love Much Ado About Nothing. From Act 2 Scene 3:

BENEDICK:
[...]Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of
the brain awe a man from the career of his humour?

I can't decide if I prefer "These Paper Bullets" or "Paper Bullets of the Brain"; I doubt the latter's all that marketable.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Probably sadly true.

Cool Contest!!! Thank you!

[grr-rob.livejournal.com]

A Deadly Banishment

"Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment."

Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III, Scene 1, Valentine's speech:

And why not death rather than living torment?
To die is to be banish'd from myself;
And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her
Is self from self: a deadly banishment!
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?
Unless it be to think that she is by
And feed upon the shadow of perfection
Except I be by Silvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale;
Unless I look on Silvia in the day,
There is no day for me to look upon;
She is my essence, and I leave to be,
If I be not by her fair influence
Foster'd, illumined, cherish'd, kept alive.
I fly not death, to fly his deadly doom:
Tarry I here, I but attend on death:
But, fly I hence, I fly away from life.

[mari32290.livejournal.com]

A Bondman’s Key

Shylock:
Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys'?

- Merchant of Venice, Act I, scene III

[jeffreycwells.livejournal.com]

Hm. How abouts "A Rooted Sorrow"?

Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory of a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?

Macbeth, V, iii

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Oh, good one!

[jeffreycwells.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I like the madness ones, especially since certain members of the faerie nobility are acting a bit... titched?

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Ya think?

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

Awesome contest idea! Going with one of my favorite plays, here's Julius Caesar:

Act I, Scene II, Cassius:

And when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake;
His coward lips did from their colour fly,
And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world
Did lose his lustre: I did hear him groan:
Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans
Mark him and write his speeches in their books,
Alas, it cried 'Give me some drink, Titinius,'
As a sick girl.

Suggestion: From Their Colour Fly

-

Act III, Scene II, Antony:

The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.

Suggestion: An Honourable Man

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Lovely.

[dulcetfida.livejournal.com]

The first one that came immediately to mind was:

Trinculo:
Legg'd like a man! and his fins like arms! Warm, o' my
troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no
fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffer'd by a thunder-bolt.
[Thunder.] Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep
under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery
acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the
dregs of the storm be past.

The Tempest Act 2, scene 2, 33–41

So "Strange Bedfellows" is my entry. :D

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Oh, very nice.