Here are our Top Ten Images.  They are likely to prove as controversial as the rest of the one hundred presented in the book. 

Tastes vary between individuals but they also change between eras.  Each new generation is likely to re-discover Shakespeare and the force of individual images may be linked to contexts well beyond the play.  Almost 300 years ago Alexander Pope became the first of Shakespeare’s editors to pick out the most beautiful passages of text; he would only agree with two of our chosen Top Ten (nos 1and 8).   A more modern preoccupation with social politics and psychology  has led to a greater appreciation of the humanist protest  in passages such as our nos 2,3 and 9 and the human drama in 4, 5, 6 and 7.    Behind all our selection lies a more subtle understanding (thanks, in particular, to Peter Brook) of the nature of the Shakespearean image, which explains our choice of no 10.

1

                     For within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a King

Keeps death his court and there the antic sits,    

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp.                Richard II, III.ii.160-3

This is the central image from Richard’s great meditation on ‘the death of kings’. 

2

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?                                        King Lear,  III.iv.28-32 

Driven out into the storm by his wicked daughters, Lear begins to realise how a life of power and privilege has let him ignore the sufferings of his kingdom’s poor.

3

But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms, and heads chopp’d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, “We died at such a place”. 

                                                                                                        Henry V, IV.i.134-8

The simplicity of a common soldier’s prose accentuates the power of this image – a vision of the mutilated war dead reassembling their bodies for the Day of Judgement when they will confront the architect of their destruction: the King.

4

Injurious time  now with a robber's haste

Crams his rich thiev’ry up, he knows not how.

As many farewells as be stars in heaven,

With distinct breath and consign’d kisses to them,

He fumbles up into a loose adieu;

And scants us with a single famish’d kiss,

Distasted with the salt of broken tears.                  Troilus and Cressida, IV.iv.42-8

Time is shown as a clumsy intruder, a robber with no appreciation of the anguish of the lovers that he is separating.    

5

                Not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

Which thou ow’st yesterday.                                    Othello,  III.iii.330-3

As Iago lists the opiates, he seems to be relishing them and the ‘sweet sleep’ that they would normally engender - but what he is actually relishing is the fact that, thanks to his villainy, Othello will never sleep sweetly again.

6

And many a man there is (even at this present,

Now, while I speak this) holds his wife by th’arm,

That little thinks she has been sluiced in 's absence,

And his pond fished by his next neighbour –

By Sir Smile, his neighbour.                                   The Winter’s Tale, I.ii.192-6

Only a nightmarish state of paranoia, could drive Leontes into seeing his wife as unfaithful and his best friend as the grotesquely comic figure of Sir Smile.

7

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears  shall drown the wind.                   Macbeth,    I.vii.21-5

Before murdering Duncan, Macbeth imagines the consequences of his actions against a vast Blake-like panorama of good and evil.

8

                             Man, proud man,

Dress’d in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assured

(His glassy essence), like an angry ape 

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As makes the angels weep.                                       Measure for Measure, II.ii.117-22

Isabella’s passionate condemnation of the abuse of power has a biblical force, echoing the subtext (‘Judge not that ye be  not judged’)  of the play’s title. 

9

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not  revenge?                              Merchant of Venice, III.i.64-7

Until its uncompromising conclusion, Shylock’s words provide a moving plea for tolerance based on a shared experience of human life.

10

Now get you to my Lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.                                                                      Hamlet,   V.i.192-3

This, the climax of Hamlet’s encounter with Yorick’s skull, is the inspiration behind the cover of our book.