Hell, blood, death, doomed love and more than a few questionable decisions…welcome to the darker side of Shakespeare.
When you think of Shakespeare quotes, your mind might immediately go to declarations of love, profound observations on life or lines you were made to analyse at school. But Shakespeare could get dark.
Across his tragedies, comedies and everything in between, you'll find witches and graveyards, murder and revenge, devils and doomed lovers. And some of his darkest lines still feel surprisingly powerful more than 400 years after they were written.
We’ve been revisiting some of our favourites while working on our new Shakespeare’s Tragedies Collection, so here are seven wonderfully dark and dramatic Shakespeare quotes for your villain era…
1. “’Tis now the very witching time of night…”
“’Tis now the very witching time of night…”
“’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.” - Hamlet
If ever there was a Shakespeare quote made for spooky season, surely this is it.
Spoken by Hamlet as night falls, Shakespeare gives us churchyards, hell, blood and the promise of terrible deeds all within a handful of lines. It's Shakespeare at his most gloriously gothic.
“Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.” - Macbeth
Short, beautiful and deeply ominous. Macbeth has begun contemplating what he might have to do to fulfil his ambitions, but he doesn't even want the stars to illuminate the thoughts he's having. It's this contrast between the beauty of the night sky and Macbeth's “black and deep desires” that made this one of the quotes we knew we wanted to include in our new collection.
3. “Come, thick night…”
“Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes.” - Macbeth
Lady Macbeth isn't exactly known for doing things by halves. Here she calls upon darkness itself to conceal the violence she is contemplating. Night, hell, knives and murder - Shakespeare was doing gothic literature rather well a couple of centuries before the genre really got going.
“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume.” - Romeo and Juliet
One of Shakespeare's most beautiful warnings - and some fairly spectacular foreshadowing. Friar Laurence warns Romeo that an intensely passionate love can destroy itself just as quickly as fire ignites gunpowder. Knowing exactly where Romeo and Juliet's story is heading makes the line even more haunting. And “These violent delights have violent ends”? Four hundred years later, it still goes incredibly hard.
5. “Hell is empty…”
“Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.” - The Tempest
Possibly one of our favourite Shakespeare quotes of all time. Ferdinand cries out during the terrifying storm and shipwreck at the beginning of The Tempest, believing that the forces responsible must surely be devils escaped from hell.
6. “I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell…”
“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well.” - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Proof that Shakespeare didn't save all his darkness for the tragedies. Helena says these words to Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and out of context you'd be forgiven for assuming they came from something considerably less comedic. Love, death, heaven and hell packed into two lines? Wonderfully dramatic.
Introducing Shakespeare’s Tragedies
There was a reason we had Shakespeare’s darker side on our minds. I’ve been thinking about creating a darker Shakespeare collection for a long time, and this autumn it finally became a reality.
Our new Shakespeare’s Tragedies Collection takes some of my favourite dark and dramatic lines from the Bard and turns them into wearable little pieces of literary darkness.
The collection includes our black and silver Macbeth “Stars, Hide Your Fires” enamel pin, the heart-and-dagger Romeo & Juliet “These Violent Delights” enamel pin and our barbed-wire The Tempest “Hell Is Empty” enamel pin and keyring. You’ll also find “Hell is empty & all the devils are here” embroidered onto a vintage burgundy cap, because apparently one Hell Is Empty product wasn’t enough.
And yes, before anyone points it out, I know The Tempest isn’t actually a tragedy. The collection grew out of my original Shakespeare’s Tragedies concept, but I quickly realised that restricting myself to the plays officially classed as tragedies would mean leaving out some of my favourite dark Shakespeare quotes. And when “Hell is empty and all the devils are here” is sitting right there, some rules are made to be broken.
So despite the name, I’m not going to restrict future additions to the tragedies either. If Shakespeare wrote something sufficiently dark, dramatic or slightly unhinged, I’m counting it.
These are just the first pieces, and I’m hoping to keep adding new plays, quotes and designs to Shakespeare’s Tragedies over time.