Mojo, The Bard, & Me

Yet is the kindness but particular;

‘Twere better she were kist in general.

-Ulysses

Troilus and Cressida       Act IV, scene iv Line 20, 21          

This one’s really good, and I’m going to take this one in the context of the story, since I can’t make too much sense of it otherwise. And you can see that I used two lines because it’s easier to explain what it’s all about with these two together. First of all, I don’t know much of anything about this play. What I do know is that it’s based on Homer’s Iliad which is the story of the Greek siege of the city of Troy. Though I’m not sure who Troilus and Cressida are. I was reading the Iliad earlier this summer and I didn’t run into these two. Regardless, here’s your Shakespeare fact of the day: There are very few stories of Will’s that are original. Just about all of his plays, whether history, comedy, or tragedy, are based on existing stories (as this one is). Of course the beauty and the genius of Will is his use of the English language and what he did to those stories. But just the same, I think it’s worth knowing that just about all of his source material was not his own. Moving on…

Anyway, I read the beginning of this scene and it seems that a bunch of the bosses of the Greek group are hanging around (Achilles, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Ajax) and Diomedes shows up with this babe Cressida (see, here I’m using ‘babe’ to mean a pretty young woman, not a baby). Now keep in mind that these guys have been laying siege to the town of Troy for several years, so presumably they’ve been away from their families and for the most part been just hanging out with a bunch of smelly guys for quite a long time. Now here they’re suddenly in the presence of this young woman who is clearly not a smelly guy. Well as soon as she shows up Agamemnon takes the opportunity to give her a welcoming kiss. Keep in mind that Agamemnon is the ranking guy in this group, the King. But Ulysses, always the crafty guy, sees an opportunity to get in a kiss of his own. So he comes up with today’s Random Shakespeare Line of the Day ‘Twere better she were kist in general’ and follows it up with a kiss of his own. Well this just opens up the floodgate and so now she gets passed around so that everyone can give her a kiss. In fact, Patroclus gets in two kisses, one of them supposedly for Menelaus who’s actually standing right next to him and then wants one of his own.  

As I said, I don’t know much about this play, so I can’t say how this kissing scene fits in (or doesn’t fit in) to the big picture. I do, however, think this scene is a funny idea to imagine, and would be even funnier seeing this play performed in Shakespeare’s time when all the roles on stage, including female roles, were played by men, so that one guy is getting passed around and kissed by all the other guys. But that’s just me.

Okay, I’ve already rolled the die for tomorrow’s page and it’s Richard II. Pretty exciting because I actually know that play! See you then.