From Henry IV, Part Two:

Come hither, Harry: sit thou by my bed;
And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,
By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways
I met this crown; and I myself know well
How troublesome it sat upon my head:
To thee it shall descend with better quiet,
Better opinion, better confirmation;
For all the soil of the achievement goes
With me into the earth.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Two weeks back, Ms. Christiane Amanpour hobnobbed live with five former secretaries of state.

They told her why their instinct is for the new president to talk to both allies and enemies.

They told her in synch why we must both close Guantanamo and end torture.

They told her why it is time to move on climate change.

They told her why they think Iraq’s a hot potato.

Dumb liberal bile!

You can read a transcript of the interview here.

From Henry VI, Part Three:

Nay, stay, Sir John, awhile; and we’ll debate
By what safe means the crown may be recover’d.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

McCain wanted to bail. He’s shy!

Obama wanted fresh eyes. Joy!

Lehrer wanted a brawl. Envy!

I did this one already, but I wanted to respond to a search that brought a reader here yesterday:

“how did queen elizabeth feel about shakespeare play king henry the 8th”

It’s a good question, since Henry was Queen Elizabeth’s father, and it would be interesting to get her reaction to the play that bears his name. But Elizabeth died in 1603, and it is believed that the play was first performed in 1613, so we can only speculate as to how she might have felt about it.

The play retains the pro-Tudor slant on history that characterized Shakespeare’s earlier history plays, and whitewashes some of the uglier aspects of Henry’s story. As for Elizabeth, her birth is depicted at the very end of the play, and the happy father swells with pride at the event.

From Henry VIII:

O lord archbishop!
Thou hast made me now a man: never, before
This happy child, did I get any thing.
This oracle of comfort has so pleas’d me,
That when I am in heaven, I shall desire
To see what this child does, and praise my Maker.

But if you shift around the letters, you probably get much closer to what he actually would have said:

O lord archbishop!

Fact: I wanted to have a son.

So I, cross Henry the Eighth, must kill this wife, Madam Anne Boleyn, with promptest speed.

So I shall, in a flash, remove and discard her doomed head apace!

I am Henry the Eighth, I am!

From Much Ado About Nothing:

…an two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Biden (DE) was rumored a shoe-in for the mention.

From Much Ado About Nothing:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Edwards believes in two Americas. He held a hot lover in each one.

No, it’s not so funny. You find one more ninny no longer monogamous.

No, honest voters have no tendency to let bygones be bygones, turning enthroned heroes into nothing.

Ironically, the title character in what many consider to be Shakespeare’s central dramatic work is most famous for his long speeches. One speech in particular stands out as almost interchangeable with Shakespeare and perhaps even the theatre as a whole. The soliloquy manages to sum up, in just thirteen letters, the fundamental question of existence itself. Once we agree to tackle that question, then the rest of the speeches, well, they may as well just be anagrams of the big one…

From Hamlet:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life…

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not set
His precept ‘gainst self-slaughter! Rebuke! Rebuke!
How weary, foul, puffed, and abominable
Seem to me the questions of this place.
Fie on ‘t! O fie! ’tis a once heeded garden,
That’s left to pot; the rank and weed in nature
Possess it merely. But he should come to this!
Not four months dead: nay, half as much, but two:
As superior a man; so as, to this step,
Hyperion to a satyr; so caring to my mother
Permit he not beteem the beams of stars
Access her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 133).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

I have of late, – but wherefore do not seek, – lost all my cheer, ashamed that the oddest mood upsets me so seethingly that our lush frame, at the earth, soon seems to me a detested sterile promontory; this aesthetic roof toasted by stoked mythical golden fire truthfully appears to me therefore as such a both foul and pestilent congregation of bath vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! in theme, how impressive and truthful! in action as an angel! and apprehension as a god! the beauty of the world! the crest of beasts! But, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

You can compare it to the original speech here (around line 250).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I:
Is’t not monstrous that this player here,
Could force his soul so to the best esteem
That from her working feebled all his looks,
Have tears in eyes, add a tempest of bombasts,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to top esteem? and all for nothing!
Frets Hecuba to him for he to tear
That he so pretty sobs? What would he do
Had he not the uttermost cue for passion
As by me? He could drown the stage in tears,
Atone the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the temperate, and to quite impress
The seemly faculties of eyes and ears.

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 382).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What’s a man,
If his chief hope and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a helpless beast, thou.
Sure he that made us with much large esteem,
He looked from before to after, gave unto us not
That potential and smoothest reason
To fust in us effetely. Whe’r it be
Bestial petty sloth, or some softer scruple
To foresee too precisely on a theme,
A knot, which, quarter’d, hath but one part hero,
And also three parts coward, I see not
Why yet I be to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
Sith I have cause and lots of strength and means
To do ‘t.

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 37).

Shift around the letters again, and it becomes:

Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of endless mirth, of most splendid fancy; he hath paraded me on his shoulders a thousand separate times; and now too detested in the greatest depths of my imagination it is! Here hung those lips that I have oft kissed. When be you at fatuous gibes? at gambols? at accents? at those deftest flashes of espoused merriment, that were wont to burst the tables on a roar? But not one to be sped now, to renounce reverence? quite chapfallen? Foot you to my lady’s chamber, tell her, let her protest, of this favour she must come; see her laugh at that.

You can compare it to the original speech here (starting at line 80).

I caused quite a bit of controversy in the academic world with my last anagram that demonstrated that Sir Francis Bacon may be the true author of Shakespeare’s works. Now, I make amends.

At the end of the play, Shakespeare sets the record straight about these hidden messages. I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused by shaking up your worldview.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Tell this: I, dubbed William Shakespeare, penned the stuff.

The odd hidden author shifts you have been shown was a vivid dream.

Have you ever wondered about those “other” plays mentioned in the last act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the options that Theseus doesn’t choose? The titles seem kind of random and nonsensical. Could they actually be anagrams of hidden messages? You be the judge.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Want the authentic truth?

Bacon’s the genuine author beneath the plays.- B.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Get it right.

I, Sir Francis Bacon, create entertaining theatre plays.

Hah! Hoh!

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of Learning, late deceas’d in beggary.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Go get the true author. I feel I’m he.

Sir Francis Bacon engendered the lengthy dramas.

Let the games begin!

UPDATE: And what of the title of the play that Theseus did choose?

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Vet the author of the plays.

I am. Sir Francis Bacon.

You disbelieved my genius. Grr.

UPDATE II: A clarification anagram.

After my last anagram about Shakespeare’s farewell to the theatre, Alan Farrar from Shakespeare Experience posted a comment that The Tempest wasn’t Shakespeare’s last play. Fair enough.

From The Tempest:

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Duteous Alan Farrar would see me deluded, for this masterpiece wasn’t his finale.

From The Tempest:

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Pure fans feel let down.

Will’s famous theatre adieu reduces histories and drama.

UPDATE: A clarification anagram.