Pray you
then,
Conduct
me to the Queen.
-Paulina
The Winter’s Tale Act II, scene ii Line 7
Okay, this is our second trip to this scene. If you go back
to my September 11 post you can read the setup for what’s going on. It’s not
too long. The next line here is the jailer (spelled Gaoler,
which I think is some Gaelic version because that’s what they still call it in
Ireland) telling Paulina that she’s not allowed to see the Queen. And then we
get into the part of the scene that we already covered. So how about we spend a
little time with the language today and not worry so much about the context.
So I had two things I thought would be worth mentioning. The
first is ‘Pray you then’. This would probably be said ‘would you please’ in
today’s speech. Pray you then vs would you please. Has anyone got anything on
that? I don’t think there’s a heck of a lot of us out there who would say ‘pray
you’ when asking for something. Pray you then, someone please comment. Okay,
now look, I automatically put the word please in that last sentence, but I’m
pretty sure that the ‘pray you’ already implies ‘please’. So that’s a bit of a
tough one to work with.
All right then, how about ‘conduct’? That’s pretty much
meaning ‘lead’. Now we use conduct when talking about leading an orchestra, but
that’s about it. We don’t use conduct when we’re talking about leading a group
of people down the street (or where ever). But we could. What if the bellhop
grabbed your bags and said, ‘Follow me. I will conduct you to your room.’
Certainly you’d understand him or her. And if the hotel were in another country
you would probably wonder where they learned their English language. If that
happened in this country you’d probably look at the bellhop a little funny. Or
maybe you’d just say ‘that’s ok, I’ve got it,’ because you didn’t feel like
tipping them. Or maybe you never stay in hotels that are fancy enough to have
bellhops. I usually don’t, but once in a while…
So that’s all I’ve got on today’s line, a few comments about
the language. Very understandable today, but none the less different than the
words we use today. Interesting, isn’t it?
So this guy was taking our luggage for us, but he wasn't actually conducting us anywhere. He was just taking care of our luggage. But we were pretty happy with what he was doing, and we weren't too concerned about being conducted.
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