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I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto?

      — The Merchant of Venice, Act I Scene 3

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1-20 of 81 total

KEYWORD: colour

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Work The work is either a play, poem, or sonnet. The sonnets are treated as single work with 154 parts.

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The numbering is not keyed to any copyrighted numbering system found in a volume of collected works (Arden, Oxford, etc.) The numbering starts at the beginning of the work, and does not restart for each scene.

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1

All's Well That Ends Well
[II, 3]

King of France

1018

'Tis only title thou disdain'st in her, the which
I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods,
Of colour, weight, and heat, pour'd all together,
Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off
In differences so mighty. If she be
All that is virtuous, save what thou dislikest,
A poor physician's daughter, thou dislikest
Of virtue for the name: but do not so:
From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,
The place is dignified by the doer's deed:
Where great additions swell's, and virtue none,
It is a dropsied honour. Good alone
Is good without a name. Vileness is so:
The property by what it is should go,
Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;
In these to nature she's immediate heir,
And these breed honour: that is honour's scorn,
Which challenges itself as honour's born
And is not like the sire: honours thrive,
When rather from our acts we them derive
Than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave
Debosh'd on every tomb, on every grave
A lying trophy, and as oft is dumb
Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb
Of honour'd bones indeed. What should be said?
If thou canst like this creature as a maid,
I can create the rest: virtue and she
Is her own dower; honour and wealth from me.

2

All's Well That Ends Well
[II, 5]

Bertram

1322

I shall obey his will.
You must not marvel, Helen, at my course,
Which holds not colour with the time, nor does
The ministration and required office
On my particular. Prepared I was not
For such a business; therefore am I found
So much unsettled: this drives me to entreat you
That presently you take our way for home;
And rather muse than ask why I entreat you,
For my respects are better than they seem
And my appointments have in them a need
Greater than shows itself at the first view
To you that know them not. This to my mother:
[Giving a letter]
'Twill be two days ere I shall see you, so
I leave you to your wisdom.

3

All's Well That Ends Well
[IV, 5]

Lafeu

2465

No, no, no, your son was misled with a snipt-taffeta
fellow there, whose villanous saffron would have
made all the unbaked and doughy youth of a nation in
his colour: your daughter-in-law had been alive at
this hour, and your son here at home, more advanced
by the king than by that red-tailed humble-bee I speak of.

4

All's Well That Ends Well
[V, 3]

Bertram

2725

Admiringly, my liege, at first
I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart
Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue
Where the impression of mine eye infixing,
Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,
Which warp'd the line of every other favour;
Scorn'd a fair colour, or express'd it stolen;
Extended or contracted all proportions
To a most hideous object: thence it came
That she whom all men praised and whom myself,
Since I have lost, have loved, was in mine eye
The dust that did offend it.

5

Antony and Cleopatra
[I, 3]

Cleopatra

336

Nay, pray you, seek no colour for your going,
But bid farewell, and go: when you sued staying,
Then was the time for words: no going then;
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor,
But was a race of heaven: they are so still,
Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,
Art turn'd the greatest liar.

6

Antony and Cleopatra
[II, 5]

Cleopatra

1193

I am paid for't now.
Lead me from hence:
I faint: O Iras, Charmian! 'tis no matter.
Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him
Report the feature of Octavia, her years,
Her inclination, let him not leave out
The colour of her hair: bring me word quickly.
[Exit ALEXAS]
Let him for ever go:—let him not—Charmian,
Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,
The other way's a Mars. Bid you Alexas
[To MARDIAN]
Bring me word how tall she is. Pity me, Charmian,
But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.

7

Antony and Cleopatra
[II, 7]

Lepidus

1425

What colour is it of?

8

Antony and Cleopatra
[II, 7]

Antony

1426

Of it own colour too.

9

Antony and Cleopatra
[III, 3]

Cleopatra

1728

For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so.
Her hair, what colour?

10

Antony and Cleopatra
[IV, 14]

Antony

3048

Since Cleopatra died,
I have lived in such dishonour, that the gods
Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword
Quarter'd the world, and o'er green Neptune's back
With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack
The courage of a woman; less noble mind
Than she which by her death our Caesar tells
'I am conqueror of myself.' Thou art sworn, Eros,
That, when the exigent should come, which now
Is come indeed, when I should see behind me
The inevitable prosecution of
Disgrace and horror, that, on my command,
Thou then wouldst kill me: do't; the time is come:
Thou strikest not me, 'tis Caesar thou defeat'st.
Put colour in thy cheek.

11

As You Like It
[I, 2]

Celia

228

Sport! of what colour?

12

As You Like It
[I, 2]

Le Beau

229

What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?

13

As You Like It
[III, 2]

Celia

1289

And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck.
Change you colour?

14

As You Like It
[III, 2]

Rosalind

1482

Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his
love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me; at which
time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate,
changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish,
shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every
passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and
women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like
him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now
weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his
mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to
forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook
merely monastic. And thus I cur'd him; and this way will I take
upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart,
that there shall not be one spot of love in 't.

15

As You Like It
[III, 4]

Rosalind

1600

His very hair is of the dissembling colour.

16

As You Like It
[III, 4]

Rosalind

1603

I' faith, his hair is of a good colour.

17

As You Like It
[III, 4]

Celia

1604

An excellent colour: your chestnut was ever the only colour.

18

Coriolanus
[III, 1]

Menenius Agrippa

2048

Pray you, be gone:
I'll try whether my old wit be in request
With those that have but little: this must be patch'd
With cloth of any colour.

19

Cymbeline
[III, 1]

Cymbeline

1458

You must know,
Till the injurious Romans did extort
This tribute from us, we were free:
Caesar's ambition,
Which swell'd so much that it did almost stretch
The sides o' the world, against all colour here
Did put the yoke upon 's; which to shake off
Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon
Ourselves to be.

20

Cymbeline
[IV, 2]

Arviragus

2535

Poor sick Fidele!
I'll weringly to him: to gain his colour
I'ld let a parish of such Clotens' blood,
And praise myself for charity.

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