Quoted By:
I suppose on a practical level for ttrpg characters and quest NPCs, especially if they are set in vaguely pseudohistorical periods, is that you can adapt or borrow steal from historical speeches and sourced quotations, events of the era. This emulates the rhythms and anxieties / desires of those personnages in a manner that is hard to reproduce when imbued with our modern sensibilities and perspectives. A lot of writers do this Shakespeare has literal sections lifted from Ovid word for word, many of his early character archetypes that he invented taken from Plautus. I like to do this in some of my games often there are some strange sentences or hidden quotations that are buried as hints or references hehe.
ok now here is some Shakespeare rape
[LAVINIA turns over with her stumps the books which LUCIUS has let fall]
TITUS ANDRONICUS:
How now, Lavinia! Marcus, what means this?
Some book there is that she desires to see.
Which is it, girl, of these? Open them, boy.
But thou art deeper read, and better skill'd
Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow, till the heavens
Reveal the damn'd contriver of this deed.
Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus?
MARCUS ANDRONICUS:
I think she means that there was more than one
Confederate in the fact: ay, more there was;
Or else to heaven she heaves them for revenge.
TITUS ANDRONICUS:
Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?
Young LUCIUS:
Grandsire, 'tis Ovid's Metamorphoses;
My mother gave it me.
MARCUS ANDRONICUS:
For love of her that's gone,
Perhaps she cull'd it from among the rest.
TITUS ANDRONICUS:
Soft! see how busily she turns the leaves!
[Helping her]
What would she find? Lavinia, shall I read?
This is the tragic tale of Philomel,
And treats of Tereus' treason and his rape:
And rape, I fear, was root of thine annoy.
MARCUS ANDRONICUS:
See, brother, see; note how she quotes the leaves.
TITUS ANDRONICUS:
Lavinia, wert thou thus surprised, sweet girl,
Ravish'd and wrong'd, as Philomela was,
Forced in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods? See, see!
Ay, such a place there is, where we did hunt--
O, had we never, never hunted there!--
Pattern'd by that the poet here describes,
By nature made for murders and for rapes.
MARCUS ANDRONICUS:
O, why should nature build so foul a den,
Unless the gods delight in tragedies?
TITUS ANDRONICUS:
Give signs, sweet girl, for here are none
but friends,
What Roman lord it was durst do the deed:
Or slunk not Saturnine, as Tarquin erst,
That left the camp to sin in Lucrece' bed?
