What is woeful?

Famous quotes containing the word woeful:

    The night has been unruly. Where we lay,
    Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,
    Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,
    And prophesying with accents terrible
    Of dire combustion and confused events,
    New-hatched to the woeful time.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    When raging love with extreme pain
    Most cruelly distrains my heart,
    When that my tears, as floods of rain,
    Bear witness of my woeful smart;
    When sighs have wasted so my breath
    That I lie at the point of death,
    Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)

    This wide and universal theatre
    Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
    Wherein we play in.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)