who said a horse a horse a kingdom for a horse
Richard III (play) In the 1949 Looney Tunes cartoon A Ham in a Role, the dog actor says the Catesby and Richard III's lines, "Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost! A horse, A horse, My kingdom for a horse!" before being kicked out of the window by a Goofy Gophers-hauled horse.
Flogging a dead horse According to the Oxford English Dictionary,[1] the first recorded use of the expression in its modern sense was by the English politician and orator John Bright, referring to the Reform Act of 1867, which called for more democratic representation in Parliament. Trying to rouse Parliament from its apathy on the issue, he said in a speech, would be like trying to flog a dead horse to make it pull a load. The Oxford English Dictionary cites The Globe, 1872, as the earliest verifiable use of flogging a dead horse, where someone is said to have "rehearsed that [. . .] lively operation known as flogging a dead horse".[2]