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Shakespeare on Sleep

Birthday and Death Day - it would be wrong not to..

What early tongue so sweet saluteth me? 
Young son, it argues a distemper’d head 
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed: 
Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, 
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie; 
But where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign:
Romeo and Juliet (2.3.36-42)

You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
Macbeth (3.4.167)

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest (4.1.168-170) 

O sleep! O gentle sleep! 
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down 
And steep my senses in forgetfulness? 
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state, 
And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody? 
2 Henry IV (3.1.7-16)

 

He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.
Cymbeline (5.4.176)

 

The man no doubt slept under pure wool blankets - If good enough for him then good enough for you.

 

Happy Shakespeare Day :-)