Courage
enough: I do not fear the flaw:
It
hath done to me the worst.
-Pericles
Pericles Act III, scene i Line
39
Okay, first things first. This is our second trip to
Pericles. You can check out the 8/30/16 post for a little (very
little) background on the play. Second things second. This is a pretty screwy
play. I’m not sure if it’s considered a comedy or a tragedy. It’s listed in my
A.L. Rowse compilation as a tragedy, and yet it seems to have a pretty happy
ending.
In regards to today’s line, this is Pericles on a ship in a
storm making reference first to himself, having courage enough, then to
the storm or perhaps fate in general, the flaw, and finally to the fact
that his wife has just died in childbirth on the ship, It hath done to me the worst. So,
yeah, I admit that this sounds a bit tragic at this point, but the tale really
does have a happy ending and there’s quite a bit of screwy stuff going on from
beginning to end.
And now, a quick note on something I noticed; assisting
the storm. A few lines up from today’s Totally Random line, when
Pericles shows signs of getting upset that his wife has died in childbirth the
nurse says to Pericles ‘do not assist the storm’ (don’t make matters worse). I
recognized that ‘assist the storm’ from The Tempest in the first scene when the
king’s men are yelling at the sailors in the storm and one of the sailors yells
back ‘you do assist the storm.’ From what I’ve read, these two plays were both
written about the time that voyages to the New World were very big in the news.
And so Will has two plays that have scenes upon the high seas (though, yes,
Pericles's seas are the Mediterranean Sea). And in both he uses the same phrase
about ‘assisting the storm’. I’m pretty sure that Will never got off dry land,
so I wonder if this was a popular phrase from back then in the accounts of sea
travel. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting.
So anyway, Courage enough: I do not fear the flaw: It
hath done to me the worst. It’s a surprisingly optimistic line if you
think about it. He’s taken just about everything that fate can throw at him,
and he’s still standing. It seems like he feels good about that. Yeah, that’s
right: Pericles may not be an actual bad ass, but he’s not backing down or
giving up either. We could all use a little of Pericles attitude to get us
through the day. Joel Osteen would be proud of Pericles, and good for him!
My wife is big on Joel. Good for her!
No comments:
Post a Comment