Mojo, The Bard, & Me

Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly,

You do not hold the method to enforce

The like from him.

-Charmian

 Antony and Cleopatra                   Act I, scene iii     Line 6

First off, and before we get too far into today's Totally Random line, what about this ‘methinks’ thing. I mean, all you have to do is start off with, or heck even midway through throw in, a ‘methinks’ and you’re putting a Shakespearean spin on it. And why not? You don’t even have to own the Shakespeare part of it, you can just use it and own it for the way it sounds. It sounds good. At least I think it does. But anyway, the line…

So with our first step into Will’s only play set in Egypt (I think it’s his only one. James?) we have a pretty good line because it speaks to a major theme of the play and that is the way that Cleopatra is doing her best to wrap Antony around her little finger. And it seems to be the right hand men and women who want to bring this theme to our attention. In fact, if you go back a few pages to the first lines of the play you’ll see Philo, one of Antony’s friends, talking about this same thing. But today’s Totally Random speaker is Charmian, Cleopatra’s attendant, and she’s reacting to the queen’s commands to basically go spy on Antony. Cleopatra’s been telling Charmian the different things to tell Antony depending on what kind of mood he’s in. And I believe Charmian’s Totally Random line is just saying that if you really love the guy, then be straight with him. But Cleopatra response to this is to tell Charmian that she’s a fool. So while the role of Cleopatra speaks to cleverness, but also the deceitfulness of women, I think that the simple honesty of Charmian speaks to the goodness of women. As in a lot of cases with Will, he’s not painting a picture to tell us how it is, he’s painting of picture with a little bit of everything in it so that we can decide on how it is. Clever fellow that Will.

Now, as a little bit of a post script on today’s blog, this is one of the first plays that I read while listening to the Arkangel Shakespeare CD (yeah, CD; can you believe it?). Cirian Hinds plays Antony. If you don’t recognize the name you would recognize the face and the voice if you heard it. He’s really good. So I’m plugging Arkangel again just because I feel they’re that good. Especially if you’re trying to introduce someone to the written Shakespeare. Get them to listen/read it. You won’t regret it.

What the… What’s that guy doing back? But okay, that’s Ciaran Hinds he’s pointing to. Recognize him? I mean Ciaran, not the guy in the funny outfit.