# 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

Hamlet
[II, 1]

Polonius

1002

And then, sir, does 'a this- 'a does- What was I about to say?
By the mass, I was about to say something! Where did I leave?

2

Hamlet
[III, 2]

Polonius

2254

By th' mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.

3

Hamlet
[III, 4]

Hamlet

2431

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths. O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words! Heaven's face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

4

Hamlet
[IV, 4]

Hamlet

2819

I'll be with you straight. Go a little before.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet.]
How all occasions do inform against me
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus'd. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th' event,-
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward,- I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me.
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! Exit.

5

Hamlet
[V, 1]

Second Clown

3394

Mass, I cannot tell.

6

Henry IV, Part I
[II, 1]

First Carrier

658

Like a tench! by the mass, there is ne'er a king
christen could be better bit than I have been since
the first cock.

7

Henry IV, Part I
[II, 4]

Falstaff

1348

By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like we
shall have good trading that way. But tell me, Hal,
art not thou horrible afeard? thou being
heir-apparent, could the world pick thee out three
such enemies again as that fiend Douglas, that
spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou
not horribly afraid? doth not thy blood thrill at
it?

8

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 2]

Edward Poins

1021

By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it with
own ears. The worst that they can say of me is that I am a
brother and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those
things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes
Bardolph.

9

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 4]

Second Drawer

1229

Mass, thou say'st true. The Prince once set a
of apple-johns before him, and told him there were five more
Johns; and, putting off his hat, said 'I will now take my
of these six dry, round, old, withered knights.' It ang'red
to the heart; but he hath forgot that.

10

Henry IV, Part II
[II, 4]

Third Drawer

1251

By the mass, here will be old uds; it will be an
excellent stratagem.

11

Henry IV, Part II
[III, 2]

Robert Shallow

1837

By the mass, I was call'd anything; and I would have
anything indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little
John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and
Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotsole man—you had not four
swinge-bucklers in all the Inns of Court again. And I may say
you we knew where the bona-robas were, and had the best of
all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John,
and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.

12

Henry IV, Part II
[III, 2]

Robert Shallow

2057

By the mass, I could anger her to th' heart. She was
a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?

13

Henry IV, Part II
[V, 3]

Robert Shallow

3407

A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet, Sir
John. By the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper. A
varlet. Now sit down, now sit down; come, cousin.

14

Henry IV, Part II
[V, 3]

Robert Shallow

3464

By the mass, you'll crack a quart together—ha! will
not, Master Bardolph?

15

Henry V
[IV, 3]

Henry V

2328

I pray thee, bear my former answer back:
Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones.
Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus?
The man that once did sell the lion's skin
While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him.
A many of our bodies shall no doubt
Find native graves; upon the which, I trust,
Shall witness live in brass of this day's work:
And those that leave their valiant bones in France,
Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,
They shall be famed; for there the sun shall greet them,
And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;
Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,
The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.
Mark then abounding valour in our English,
That being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,
Break out into a second course of mischief,
Killing in relapse of mortality.
Let me speak proudly: tell the constable
We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There's not a piece of feather in our host—
Good argument, I hope, we will not fly—
And time hath worn us into slovenry:
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;
And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night
They'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck
The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads
And turn them out of service. If they do this,—
As, if God please, they shall,—my ransom then
Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour;
Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald:
They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints;
Which if they have as I will leave 'em them,
Shall yield them little, tell the constable.

16

Henry VI, Part II
[I, 3]

Duke/Earl of Somerset

524

Thy sumptuous buildings and thy wife's attire
Have cost a mass of public treasury.

17

Henry VI, Part II
[II, 1]

Duke of Gloucester

846

Mass, thou lovedst plums well, that wouldst
venture so.

18

Henry VI, Part II
[IV, 7]

John Holland

2628

[Aside] Mass, 'twill be sore law, then; for he was
thrust in the mouth with a spear, and 'tis not whole
yet.

19

Henry VI, Part II
[V, 3]

Earl of Salisbury

3335

Now, by my sword, well hast thou fought to-day;
By the mass, so did we all. I thank you, Richard:
God knows how long it is I have to live;
And it hath pleased him that three times to-day
You have defended me from imminent death.
Well, lords, we have not got that which we have:
'Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,
Being opposites of such repairing nature.

20

Merry Wives of Windsor
[IV, 2]

Mistress Ford

2158

Nay, by the mass, that he did not; he beat him most
unpitifully, methought.