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There's the humour of it.

      — The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II Scene 1

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KEYWORD: drinking

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# Result number

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

Character Indicates who said the line. If it's a play or sonnet, the character name is "Poet."

Line Shows where the line falls within the work.

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.

Text The line's full text, with keywords highlighted within it, unless highlighting has been disabled by the user.

1

Antony and Cleopatra
[I, 2]

Charmian

103

I had rather heat my liver with drinking.

2

Antony and Cleopatra
[II, 2]

Domitius Enobarus

902

Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance, and
made the night light with drinking.

3

Antony and Cleopatra
[II, 6]

Menas

1339

For my part, I am sorry it is turned to a drinking.
Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.

4

Hamlet
[II, 1]

Polonius

974

Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
Drabbing. You may go so far.

5

Henry IV, Part I
[I, 2]

Henry V

113

Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack
and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon
benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to
demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know.
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day.

6

Henry IV, Part I
[II, 4]

Henry V

988

With three or four loggerheads amongst three or four
score hogsheads. I have sounded the very
base-string of humility. Sirrah, I am sworn brother
to a leash of drawers; and can call them all by
their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis.
They take it already upon their salvation, that
though I be but the prince of Wales, yet I am king
of courtesy; and tell me flatly I am no proud Jack,
like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a
good boy, by the Lord, so they call me, and when I
am king of England, I shall command all the good
lads in Eastcheap. They call drinking deep, dyeing
scarlet; and when you breathe in your watering, they
cry 'hem!' and bid you play it off. To conclude, I
am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour,
that I can drink with any tinker in his own language
during my life. I tell thee, Ned, thou hast lost
much honour, that thou wert not with me in this sweet
action. But, sweet Ned,—to sweeten which name of
Ned, I give thee this pennyworth of sugar, clapped
even now into my hand by an under-skinker, one that
never spake other English in his life than 'Eight
shillings and sixpence' and 'You are welcome,' with
this shrill addition, 'Anon, anon, sir! Score a pint
of bastard in the Half-Moon,' or so. But, Ned, to
drive away the time till Falstaff come, I prithee,
do thou stand in some by-room, while I question my
puny drawer to what end he gave me the sugar; and do
thou never leave calling 'Francis,' that his tale
to me may be nothing but 'Anon.' Step aside, and
I'll show thee a precedent.

7

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 1]

Falstaff

885

Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking; and for thy
walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the
the German hunting, in water-work, is worth a thousand of
bed-hangers and these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten
if thou canst. Come, and 'twere not for thy humours, there's
a better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw the
action. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me; dost
know me? Come, come, I know thou wast set on to this.

8

Henry IV, Part II
[IV, 3]

Falstaff

2683

I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your
dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth
love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh—but that's no
he drinks no wine. There's never none of these demure boys
to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood,
making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male
green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches.
are generally fools and cowards-which some of us should be
but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold
operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there
the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it;
apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and
delectable shapes; which delivered o'er to the voice, the
which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second
your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood; which
cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the
badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms
and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes.
illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all
rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital
commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their
captain, the heart, who, great and puff'd up with this
doth any deed of courage—and this valour comes of sherris.
that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that
it a-work; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil
till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof
it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did
naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile,
bare land, manured, husbanded, and till'd, with excellent
endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris,
that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand
the first humane principle I would teach them should be to
forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.
[Enter BARDOLPH]
How now, Bardolph!

9

Henry VI, Part II
[II, 3]

Richard Plantagenet (Duke of Gloucester)

1101

I never saw a fellow worse bested,
Or more afraid to fight, than is the appellant,
The servant of this armourer, my lords.
[Enter at one door, HORNER, the Armourer, and his]
Neighbours, drinking to him so much that he is drunk;
and he enters with a drum before him and his staff
with a sand-bag fastened to it; and at the other
door PETER, his man, with a drum and sand-bag, and
'Prentices drinking to him]

10

Henry VI, Part II
[II, 3]

Earl of Salisbury

1127

Come, leave your drinking, and fall to blows.
Sirrah, what's thy name?

11

Measure for Measure
[III, 2]

Lucio

1611

Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred;
it is well allied: but it is impossible to extirp
it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put
down. They say this Angelo was not made by man and
woman after this downright way of creation: is it
true, think you?

12

Measure for Measure
[IV, 3]

Barnardine

2157

You rogue, I have been drinking all night; I am not
fitted for 't.

13

Measure for Measure
[IV, 3]

Barnardine

2168

Friar, not I. I have been drinking hard all night,
and I will have more time to prepare me, or they
shall beat out my brains with billets: I will not
consent to die this day, that's certain.

14

Much Ado about Nothing
[I, 1]

Benedick

223

With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord,
not with love: prove that ever I lose more blood
with love than I will get again with drinking, pick
out mine eyes with a ballad-maker's pen and hang me
up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of
blind Cupid.

15

Othello
[II, 3]

Cassio

1164

Not to-night, good Iago: I have very poor and
unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish
courtesy would invent some other custom of
entertainment.

16

Othello
[II, 3]

Cassio

1213

Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?

17

Richard II
[II, 2]

Green

1145

Alas, poor duke! the task he undertakes
Is numbering sands and drinking oceans dry:
Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly.
Farewell at once, for once, for all, and ever.

18

Richard II
[IV, 1]

King Richard II

2169

Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin:
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water:
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

19

Taming of the Shrew
[III, 2]

Gremio

1529

Trembled and shook, for why he stamp'd and swore
As if the vicar meant to cozen him.
But after many ceremonies done
He calls for wine: 'A health!' quoth he, as if
He had been abroad, carousing to his mates
After a storm; quaff'd off the muscadel,
And threw the sops all in the sexton's face,
Having no other reason
But that his beard grew thin and hungerly
And seem'd to ask him sops as he was drinking.
This done, he took the bride about the neck,
And kiss'd her lips with such a clamorous smack
That at the parting all the church did echo.
And I, seeing this, came thence for very shame;
And after me, I know, the rout is coming.
Such a mad marriage never was before.
Hark, hark! I hear the minstrels play. [Music plays]
Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, BIANCA, BAPTISTA, HORTENSIO, GRUMIO, and train

20

Tempest
[III, 2]

Trinculo

1472

I did not give the lie. Out o' your
wits and bearing too? A pox o' your bottle!
this can sack and drinking do. A murrain on
your monster, and the devil take your fingers!

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