#  Savages in Shakespeare 

 



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William Shakespeare, *Cymbeline* (1609-10):

 \[*Imo*.\] Our courtiers say all's savage but at court:  
Experience, O, thou disprovest report! (4.2.33-34)

William Shakespeare, *Henry V* (1599):

 \[*Bur*.\] \[Peace’s\] vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,  
Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach'd,  
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,  
Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas  
The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory  
Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts  
That should deracinate such savagery;  
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth  
The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover,  
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,  
Conceives by idleness and nothing teems  
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,  
Losing both beauty and utility.  
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges,  
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,  
Even so our houses and ourselves and children  
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,  
The sciences that should become our country;  
But grow like savages – as soldiers will  
That nothing do but meditate on blood –  
To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire  
And every thing that seems unnatural. (5.2.41-62)

William Shakespeare, *Othello* (1604):

 \[*Oth*.\] I spake of most disastrous chances…  
And of the Cannibals that each other eat.  
The Anthropophagi. (1.3.134-44)

William Shakespeare, *The Tempest* (1611):

 \[*Mir*.\] I pitied thee,  
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour  
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,  
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like  
A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes  
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,  
Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures  
Could not abide to be with. (1.2.353-62)

William Shakespeare, *3 Henry VI* (1591-92):

 *York*. That face of his the hungry cannibals  
Would not have touch'd. (1.4.152-53)

 \[*Q. Mar*.\] Butchers and villains! Bloody canibals!  
How sweet a plant have you untimely cropp’d (5.5.61-62)

William Shakespeare, *Richard III* (1592-93):

 *Clar*. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. (1.4.262)

William Shakespeare, *Love's Labours Lost* (1594-95; rev. 1597):

 \[*Ber*.\] Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face,  
That we (like savages) may worship it. (5.2.201-02)

William Shakespeare, *The Merry Wives of Windsor* (1597; rev. 1600-01):

 *Host*. There’s his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed, and truckle-bed; ‘tis painted about with the story of the prodigal, fresh and new: Go, knock and call; he’ll speak like an Anthropophaginian unto thee. (4.5.6-10)