In honor of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, it’s time to raise a glass to The Bard.

The wine-cup is the little silver well,
Where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell.

“Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used.”  Iago, Othello the Moor of Venice (II. iii)

“O thou invisible spirit of wine! If thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!”   –Iago, Othello the Moor of Venice (II. iii)

“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, For I am falser than vows made in wine.” –Rosalind, As You Like It (III. v)

OLIVIA What’s a drunken man like, fool?
CLOWN Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him.  –Olivia and The Clown, Twelfth Night (I.v)

I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in’t; said to be something imperfect in favoring the first complaint; hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning.   –Menenius, Coriolanus (II.i)

“Give me a bowl of wine.
In this I bury all unkindness. Cassius.” –Brutus, Julius Caesar (IV.iii)

“Give me a bowl of wine.
I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.”  –Richard, The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (V.iii)

“Good wine needs no bush.” Rosalind, As You Like It (Epilogue)

“Come, thou monarch of the vine,

  Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!

 In thy vats our cares be drowned,

With thy grapes our hairs be crowned.”

–Boy singing, The Tragey of Antony and Cleopatra (II.vii)

“Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.” –Iago, Othello the Moor of Venice (II. iii)

“Had I but died an hour before this chance
I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There’s nothing serious in mortality,
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”
–Macbeth, The Tragedy of Macbeth (II.ii)

For an excellent post regarding Shakespeares potation habits, check out Shakespeare’s Drinking: What Did Shakespeare Drink?.