Shakespeare and the Art of Verbal Seduction

Citation preview

OF VERBAL

m

Ut lips do what hands do!

4*

ItH

Are you meditating on virginity?

[Your] face [ i s ] the book of praises, where is read nothing but curious pleasure.

M y ears have yet not drunk a hundred words Of thy tongue's uttering, yet I know the sound.

y O YOU LONG TO BE SEDUCTIVE? Have a desire to be seduced? Then "let lips do what hands do" and put into practice the most enticing baubles of seduction ever written. Shakespeare and the Art of Verbal Seduction contains the Bards best seducing lines to cajole, charm, and even proposition the object of your desire. Shakespeare is the master of persuasion. He induces the hardest of hearts to give up mind, body, and soul with a brilliant flash of words. Here they're collected for you, his little miracles of language, arranged in ten strategies for every stage of a love affair, Irom first encounter to the full throes of passion. Never again let your desire flounder in bad come-ons. Learn the art of seduction from the greatest seducer of all time, and get what you want. Cour design h\ Maggie Hinders Co\ cr illustration by Miguel CutilLis

HL'MOR

ISBN

D-un-acnL7-i

SHAKESPEARE AND THE j \ x t OF VERBAL

S

eduction

SHAKESPEARE AND THE j \ ï t OF VERBAL

S

eduction WAYNE F. HILL CYNTHIA J. ÔTTCHEN

T H R E E N E V

Y O R K

R I V E R S

P R E S S

Copyright © 2003 by Wayne F. Hill and Cynthia J. Ôttchen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. www.randomhouse.com THREE RIVERS PRESS and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Printed in the United States of America Design by Maggie Hinders Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Shakespeare and the art of verbal seduction / [compiled by] Wayne F. Hill and Cynthia J. Ottchen.—1st ed. 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Quotations. maxims, etc.

I. Hill, Wayne F.

II. Ôttchen, Cynthia J.

P R 2 7 7 1 .H55

2002026799

ISBN 0-609-80967-9 9

8

First Edition

III. Title. 2003

822.3*3—dc2i

10

2. Seduction—Quotations,

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

He, he, andyou, andyou, my liege, and I, Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die. LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS How

viii

TO HANDLE THIS BOOK

Ice-hreaking Angling

1

27

Enticements and Inducements Self-Inflation

75

Ego-Stroking

93

Fast-talking

127

Goading and Prodding Propositioning

193

Whining and Wheedling Heart-throhhing

153

273

233

59

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MANY PEOPLE helped make this book possible. For making it happen, we would like to thank Lauren Shakely at Random House and Jonathan Lloyd and Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown. And thanks to Random House's Lance Troxel for his sure but light touch. Thank you, Miguel Cutillas, for designing the cover illustration. Thanks also to Anne Berkeley, Andre Mangeot, and Andrea Porter for bemused assistance in sorting extracts. Thank you, Emily Dening, for preparing the manuscripts. Finally we thank all the readers and abusers of Shakespeare's Insults, Educating Your Wit, who wrote and insisted on an encore. We just happened to have a little something for your twisted imaginations. Write to us about this.

How

E

rVERYBODY

TO HANDLE THIS BOOK

WANTS TO BE SEDUCED. And at the

same time, everyone's trying to do it. Seduction is a universal dream that hardly anyone makes an intimate reality. Where is

the deft touch, that perfect word people long for? Seduction is the most played—and worst played—game in human history. So few people win that the laurels languish. Winners have to be wonderful with words. The person you desire will be ready for you if you say what they're ready to hear—what they're deep down dying to be told. The bad lines and the groans are a crying shame. For everyone's mu' tual pleasure, and a global increase in satisfaction, we bring in Shakespeare, the greatest player of all time. He enters as never before, revealing in bare, exciting variety how he makes his language come together. We are directors, and this is a play. Together we'll make his voice yours.

We have already collected his insults, pure dramatic conflict distilled into stunning little economies of words. Now we gather up the language of forging connections and bringing people together. And again he creates whole worlds in brief verbal twists. What we're after is how the master uses language. Not to explain it, but to show it. If he knows the human heart so well, what does he do to join two people, to arrive at a yes? We want those little energetics of language. We choose to lift them out of context. It doesn't matter now who said what to whom. It's Shakespeare's gift with words we want unwrapped. We leave it to you to supply the people to say them and play them on, yourself being one. The lines between these covers weren't all created for helping people into love, but all these persuasive sentences might work for love. The myriad shapes of this seductive language serve the mercurial needs of a love affair. We've let them find their way into ten chapters, from first encounter through all the barriers to passion and finishing with lines that render boredom most unlikely. Wliat could be more useful? Who could be more helpful? Our chapter introductions are more like intermission entertainments than sober commentaries. Appropriate to seduction, we're playing, not saying. Most of the time the extracts come straight from the page. But to make lines useful for direct address, we say things like "[I'll] out-tongue [your] complaints," rather than the congested correctness of "My services which I have done the signiory,/ Shall out-tongue his complaints." When we've tweaked, we make it obvious with ellipses . . . and [square brackets]. We make sure subject and verb still agree. When it's

I

SHAKESPEARE AND THE ART OF VERBAL SEDUCTION

essential, we clear away just enough clinging bits of context so, instead of quoting scraps of other Shakespearean characters, you and he and we make a character out of you. Go on. Slip into the pages; form the sounds in your mouth; play upon the words. Get the feel for rhythm and tone. Watch the language transform before your eyes from words into images, ideas, and emotions. A sexy new sensibility will energize your entrances and exits. You may develop style. You might even succeed at seduction. You'll certainly re-create yourself as a more interesting character. Arouse interest in yourself. Imply wider riches. No need to quote slavishly verbatim: Shakespeare calls for drama, not automata. Get ready to expend new reserves of verbal energy and get somewhere with the creature you desire.

How to Handle This Book

SHAKESPEARE AND THE