Mojo, The Bard, & Me

My ears are stopt, and cannot hear good news,

So much of bad already hath possest them.

-Valentine

Two Gentlemen of Verona          Act IIi, scene i    Line 205

Okay, before I get into today’s line, I’m going to finish up on yesterday’s discussion. So I got the Arkangel CD and listened to it while reading Coriolanus last evening. No, I didn’t fall asleep. Now let’s be clear, I’m not going to be getting through every play that I don’t know like this, so don’t be thinking that I am. I’m still going to be using Wikipedia and other stuff to work through a lot of this stuff. But I have to say that gaining your own interpretation beats the heck out of relying on someone else’s summary. Now hopefully we’ll get some more Coriolanus lines in the near future.

So it turns out that these two guys that Menenius is talking to really are the schmucks. Turns out Coriolanus was probably a pretty good guy. But it also turns out that this play is pretty complicated. I was never quite sure whether or not Coriolanus (who got the name, by the way, from conquering the city of Corioli) was a good leader or not. It’s clear that he’s a good military leader, but not whether or not he’s a good peacetime leader. What is clear is that he is not a good politician. He refuses to tell the people what they wanted to hear and by doing so he manages to get himself banished. After that he ends up allying with Rome’s enemy and coming back to threaten Rome. In the end his mother and wife talk him out of sacking Rome, but then the guys he allied with end up killing him. Yes, tragedy. It’s a good play to read during an election year because it’s really all about politics and the themes are relevant to today’s politics. And it’s a really interesting play. So why doesn’t it get more air time? I dunno. It should. And again, hopefully we’ll end up back here soon.

In the meantime, on to today’s line. Two Gentlemen of Verona, a play I started to read once, but never got very far with.

Today’s line makes me think of the line from that song; ‘If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all!’

So we move from a tragedy where the poor guy gets slaughtered in the end, to a comedy. And yet the Totally Random Daily Shakespeare line is all about doom and gloom. I don’t know this play, so I don’t know what bad news Valentine is talking about. Is it real bad news, or is he like an awful lot of us; someone who’s got it pretty good but finds things to worry about. Should we spend some time reading the previous page or two to find out? Honestly, I don’t think I’m going to do that this morning. I put in quite a bit of time yesterday on Coriolanus, and mind you it was time well spent, but I think I’m going to have to back off a little today. So I’m going to leave this one up to you. It’s a perfectly understandable line, so you don’t need my help with it in that sense. If anyone is out there reading this, perhaps you can tell me; what is Valentine talking about? What’s all the bad news? And what’s this good news that’s come along now. I’ve added links to a few different sites where you can read the plays. Just go to the Links tab at the top of this blog (right underneath the picture of me and my brother chasing Will). We’ll see if anybody’s out there.

In the meantime, tomorrow’s random line will be coming from King Henry the Sixth Part III. That’s right, the life of Henry VI took up three plays. And unfortunately, though I’ve read both parts of Henry IV and Henry V, I know little to nothing about Henry VI. But I guess we’ll get to know at least a little bit of something tomorrow, eh?