Favorite Sondheim Intricate Rhyming Lyrics

[WISHIHADATONY]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 1:46pm

"Aren't they too much? keeping house, but clutching a copy of LIFE just to keep in touch" from LADIES WHO LUNCH from COMPANY

"its an herb that's superb for disturbances at sea" from CHYRSANTHIMUM TEA from PACIFIC OVERTURES

"should there be a marital squabble, available Bob'll be there in it too" from WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT YOU from COMPANY

[FranklinShepard-Inc.]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 1:53pm

This is late,
and i fear ...
well, you see,
there's a famin...

Could you wait
for a year,
we'll agree
to examine
it.
(Pacific Overtures - Please Hello)

As dumbells go,
he's rather slow
and as for being saintly
even faintly no,
but who needs Albert Schweitzer
when the lights are low,
and oh boy, oh boy, can that boy ... foxtrott!
(Follies - Can that Boy Foxtrott!)

[WISHIHADATONY]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 1:58pm

Franklin, I love it........thanks for bringing back memories...........By the way...............I read a long time ago that Sondheim's personal favorite of the songs he has written is "SOMEONE IN A TREE" from PACIFIC OVERTURES.

I love listening to that song, it is thrilling.

[FranklinShepard-Inc.]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:03pm

Yeah, I read that too in the Meryl Screst biography and it is a beautiful song indeed Though it took me some time to grow fond of Pacific Overtures.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:03pm

"This is how Samson was shorn.
Each in her style a
Deliah reborn."

Interior rhymes don't get much better than that.

[WISHIHADATONY]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:04pm

WOSQ, I have loved that line since seeing the original production of FOLLIES.........and then falling in love with the OCR. An amazing line it is indeed. :)

[pab]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:22pm

It's fop.
Finest in the shop.
Or we have some shepherd's pie peppered
With actual shepherd
On top.
And I've just begun.
Here's the politician — so oily
It's served with a doily —
Have one.
Put it on a bun.
Well, you never know if it's going to run.

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:24pm

now it's he and not you, who is stuck with a shoe, in the goo, and you've learned something too.
-Into the woods

It's a tangled situation as your father would agree, and it might'n be so tangled if you hadn't had him strangled but i fear that i stray my lord.
-Pacific Overtures

[BobbyBaby244]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:29pm

some of my favorites...

"you left a legacy of butchery and treason we took eagerly, and thought you'd get applause"
-The Ballad of Booth - ASSASSINS

"when a person's personality is personable, he shouldn't oughta sit like a lump...it's harder than a matador coercin' a bull, to try to get you offa your rump"
-You Could Drive a Person Crazy - COMPANY

not a rhyme, but one of my favorites
"you may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have"
-First Midnight - INTO THE WOODS

[BobbyBaby244]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:30pm

some of my favorites...

"you left a legacy of butchery and treason we took eagerly, and thought you'd get applause"
-The Ballad of Booth - ASSASSINS

"when a person's personality is personable, he shouldn't oughta sit like a lump...it's harder than a matador coercin' a bull, to try to get you offa your rump"
-You Could Drive a Person Crazy - COMPANY

not a rhyme, but one of my favorites
"you may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have"
-First Midnight - INTO THE WOODS

Updated On: 2/17/05 at 02:30 PM

[CTY]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 2:41pm

There are worse things
Then staring at the water
As you're posing for a picture
Being painted by your lover
In the middle of the summer
On an island in the river on a Sunday.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 3:22pm

Mrs. Lovett, You're a bloody wonder, eminently practical and yet
appropriate as always.



She has skin white as snow--
Did you learn her name?
No, there's a dwarf standing guard.
Agony! Such that princes must weep!
Always in thrall most
To anything almost,
Or something asleep.
If it were not for the thicket--
A thicket's no trick. Is it thick?
It's the thickest.
The quickest is pick it apart with a stick--
Yes, but even one prick--
It's my thing about blood.
Well, it's sick!
It's no sicker than your thing with dwarves.
Dwarves.
Dwarves...
Dwarves are very upsetting.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 4:23pm

For now I'm seeing love
Like none I've ever known
A love as pure as breath
As permanent as death
Implacable as stone
A love that, like a knife,
Has cut into a life
I wanted left alone

[Tesse]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 4:31pm

"If the tea the Shogun drank will
Serve to keep the Shogun tranquil..."
--Chrysanthemum Tea, Pacific Overtures

"Look, ma'am, an invitation!
Here, ma'am, delivered by hand!
And, ma'am, I notice the station-
ary's engraved and very grand!"
--A Weekend in the Country, A Little Night Music

I'll ditto the "personable" and "coercin' a bull" line. Pure brilliance, that.

Updated On: 2/17/05 at 04:31 PM

[GovernorSlaton]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 4:31pm

It's that woman, it's that Armfeldt!
-Oh the actress?
No, the ghoul! She may hope to make her charm felt,
But she's mad if she thinks I would be such a fool.

Dress in white-
She'll grow older by the hour
And be hopelessly shattered by Saturday night.

With riotous laughter
We quietly suffer
A season in town
Which is reason enough for...

~All from Weekend in the Country, ALNM

[gettinhep]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 6:18pm

Go, can't you go?
Look you know
I adore you all
But why watch me die
like Eliza on the ice?
Look perhaps
I'll collapse
In the apse right
Before you all,
So take back the cake,
Burn the shoes and boil the rice.
Look, I didn't want to to
Have to tell you.
But I may be coming down with hepatitis
And I think I'm gonna faint.
So, if you wanna see me faint,
I'll do it happily,
But wouldn't it be funnier
To go and watch a funeral?
So thank you for the
Twenty-seven dinner plates and
Thirty-seven butter knives and
Fort-seven paper weights and
Fifty-seven candle holders...

- From 'Getting Married Today' from COMPANY

Obviously, I did not notice the word 'rhyming'. Oh well.

Updated On: 2/17/05 at 06:18 PM

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 6:47pm

Well, there are worse things
Than staring at the water on a Sunday.
There are worse things
Than staring at the water
As you're posing for a picture
After sleeping on the ferry
After getting up at seven
To came over to an island
In the middle of a river
Half an hour from the city
On a Sunday.
On a Sunday in the park with-
George!

[theatreguy]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 8:16pm

In the depths of her interior
Were fears she was inferior
And something even eerier
But no one dared to query 'er
Superior exterior
- "Ah, But Underneath" from FOLLIES

[bjivie2]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 8:18pm

There are bugs on her dugs.
There are flies in her eyes.
There's a lump on her rump big enough to be a hump.
(But) Son, there's no time to sit and dither,
while her withers whither with her...

Brilliant.

[Taryn]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 8:25pm

Aww, bjivie, that was going to be mine. I'm fortunate enough to be playing Jack's Mother at the moment and I totally adore having that line (among other great ones).

[MusicMan]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 9:09pm

"Painters have tried with all of their skill
To catch the grace
Of the feminine
Form and face.
Poets have tried, but try as
they will,
They waste their time
Painting them in in-
Ternal rhyme."

BEAUTIFUL GIRLS (original version)

[wickedfan]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 9:11pm

"You see I'm very betwixed and I'm very between.
The things that I want, I don't seem to get
The things that I get, you know what I mean?"-BUddy's Blues from FOLLIES
"Years from now, we'll remember, and come back to this theatre
And hang a plaque.
This is where we began.
Being what we can." Our Time from MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
and
"Love is in the air-different kinds
(Something)
People everywhere-out of their minds
Head warning" from THE BIRDCAGE. was the second line something like "each morning..." or something like that. I dunno, still a great lyric

[lvpblues]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 9:27pm

LOVETT:
It's fop.
Finest in the shop.
And we have some sheperd's pie peppered
with actual sheperd on top.
And I've just begun.
Here's the politician - so oily
It's served with a doily -
Have one.

TODD:
Put it on a bun.
Well, you never know if it's going to run.

"A Little Priest" - Sweeney Todd Updated On: 2/17/05 at 09:27 PM

[Kimmygonbefamous]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 9:34pm

Rooting through my rutabega
Raiding my arugala and
Ripping up the rampion
(My champion! My favorite!)

and

It's your father's fault
That the curse got placed
And the place got cursed
In the first place.

Both from ITW, obviously.

[scotty]

Posted: 2/17/05 at 9:35pm

There are many more. Here are just a select few...



"I've gotten through,
'Hey lady, aren't you whozis,
Wow what a looker you were!'
Or better yet
'Sorry, I thought you were whozis,
Whatever happened to her!'
- Follies

"We're bringing back style to the White House
I'm painting it beige for a start
We're making it into a cultural lighthouse
For glamour and beauty and art
Evenings of the Budapest playing Vivaldi
And Munch doing bits of Ravel
We'll get Leontyne Price to sing her
Medley from 'Meistersinger'
And Margot Fontaine to dance 'Giselle'

"Together?"

"Won't it be perfectly swell?"
-Merrily

"Oh if life were only moments
Even now and then a bad one
But if life were only moments
Then you'd never know you had one"
-Into The Woods