A couple of years ago, I heard a speech taken from a shakespeare play
which I thought was Richard III, however I cannot find the lines
anywhere...

Does anybody know which play the following lines are taken from and
where I can find them?

"Speak not unto me of foul or fair, for by o'lady i am wracked with
pain"

This is from memory, apologies in advance for any grammar or spelling
errors.

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Request for Question Clarification by journalist-ga on 31 Jan 2003 09:33 PST

I finally located a searchable Shakespeare that worked and I entered
the keywords you recalled.  Unfortunately, I did not receive a return
that resembled your query.

Visit http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/test.html to
perform your own searches if you wish to continue to try.  It is also
possible that the search database doesn't contain all the works of
Shakespeare but it seems to.

On the same site, the page
http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/ lists his works (and
other links to Shakespeare on the Internet at the bottom, including
his monologues at http://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/).  I searched
a few in the listed works looking for the keywords together (just in
case the USYD search engine was faulty) and still had no luck.  An
interesting note is that when I searched the word "wracked" I received
no matches.  Is it possible that the work was not by Shakespeare or do
you recall that it definitely was?  And do you specifically recall
"wracked"?

Any additional information you recall could be of assistance.

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Request for Question Clarification by byrd-ga on 31 Jan 2003 09:59 PST

Well Thing, you've set quite a puzzle.  I concur with journalist-ga. 
A search of the complete texts of all the plays, sonnets and poems of
Shakespeare came up completely empty of this phrase or anything
resembling it.  For the benefit of other Researchers, I used the terms
"foul," "fair near foul," "wracked with pain," "speak not" and several
combinations of the same with no result.  In addition to the sites
already mentioned, the sites I used were

Shakespeare Query:
http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/nsearch.cgi

Great Books - Texts and Fully Searchable Concordances:
http://www.concordance.com/

Complete Works of William Shakespeare
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/

Please do give us any additional information you might be able to
remember about the phrase and where/in what context you heard it.
Hopefully some Researcher will be able to help you.

Regards,
--Byrd

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Clarification of Question by thing-ga on 03 Feb 2003 02:01 PST

Oh, ok I think i can add some more lines, apologies for omitting them
earlier, I did think the first line would be enough...

Speak not unto me of foul or fair for by o'lade i am wracked with
pain,
My bowels do twist and writhe as if some rat nesteth there,
and thunder rages in my tortured brain.

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Clarification of Question by thing-ga on 03 Feb 2003 06:06 PST

With regards to the spelling/grammar, I am uncertain, but I will add
some variations..

Speak [speaketh?] not unto me of foul or fair for by o'lady [our
lady?] I am wracked [wrecked or racked?] with pain.

I am unsure of the origins, only that I have heard and possibly read
it(book of quotations perhaps?) whilst studying shakespeare at school.

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Request for Question Clarification by journalist-ga on 03 Feb 2003 15:41 PST

I was going to hazard a guess and say that perhaps this is from a
Greek play such as Oedipus Rex or Antigone by Sophocles.  It may have
been you were studying the Greek tragedies in conjunction with
Shakespeare or a comparison was made between one of Shakespeare's
characters and a Greek tragedies character.  Since many of the Greek
plays seem to be in "Shakespearian English" this would account for the
"nesteth" and other words.  However, I didn't find your keywords in
Oedipus although the tone sounds like it could be a Greek tragedy. 
I'll continue to search.

Dear Thing,

A puzzle indeed!  Let me suggest to other searchers that you not
search for "wracked with pain" or "racked with pain", because the
results are very depressing and don't appear to produce the answer to
the original question.

The juxtaposition of foul and fair is very Shakespearean.  If you
search the searchable Shakespeare that journalist-ga found, using the
search term foul & fair, you get 32 hits.  That directory again is
located at  http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/nsearch.cgi.

BTW, my two favorites are both from Macbeth -

        "Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
        Hover through the fog and filthy air"
             Act 1, Scene 1

and

        "So foul and fair a day I have not seen"
             Act 1, Scene 3
 
Only because you think the original quote came from Richard III, I ask
if you could possibly be thinking of Queen Elizabeth's speech in Act
4, Scene 1:
        
        "O Dorset, speak not to me, get thee hence!
	Death and destruction dog thee at the heels;
	Thy mother's name is ominous to children.
	If thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas,
	And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell
	Go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house,
	Lest thou increase the number of the dead;
	And make me die the thrall of Margaret's curse,
	Nor mother, wife, nor England's counted queen."

Can you remember anything at all about the circumstances in which you
first heard this quote?  Where were you?  Who else was there?  (If you
heard it in a theater, in company with friends, one of them may
remember the circumstances.)
Any additional snippets would help.

In any event, thank you for the excuse to go bathing in Shakespeare! 
Always a treat.