Mojo, The Bard, & Me

He gave you all the duties of a man;

Trimm’d up your praises with a princely tongue,

Spoke your deservings like a chronicle,

Making you ever better than his praise

By still dispraising praise valued with you;

 

-Sir Richard Vernon

 King Henry The Fourth Part I      Act V, scene ii    Line 57

Today we’re back to the history plays. Yes, we got away from these guys for a while, but since they make up about a quarter of my compilation we were bound to get back to them sooner or later. Our Totally Random line(s) is Sir Richard Vernon describing to Hotspur (Harry Percy), the manner in which Prince Hal issued his challenge. Hotspur assumed it was with contempt, but Sir Richard is explaining that Hal issued it very modestly. Sir Richard goes on for several more lines after this to the point that Hotspur finally asks Richard if he’s got a crush on Prince Hal. Well, not exactly, but he sort of says that. And it’s a fair question considering the way Richard is going on and on about Prince Hal.

Now this is a pretty common practice of Will to take something and really run and run and run with it. Richard’s reply goes on and on and on about how nice Prince Hal is being in offering this challenge to Hotspur. It’s eighteen lines (of which we have five for today’s Totally Random lines) of an answer to Hotspur’s question. The question is ‘When Hal issued the challenge did he do it with contempt?’ It’s literally a yes or no question to which Richard gives a ‘Tony, long-story-short’ answer. Tony was a guy that I worked with (really nice guy) who would tell stories that went on forever with a level of detail that no one needed, and all throughout the story Tony would be saying ‘long story short…’. And we would all be thinking (sometimes saying) ‘Tony, there’s nothing short about this story!’ So I can just imagine Hotspur breaking in around line five or six of Richard’s replay with ‘Okay Tony, I get it! Hal’s a nice guy, fine!’ But of course he doesn’t do that. He does give a pretty good response to Richard though. ‘Cousin, I think thou are enamoured on his follies.’  i.e. ‘Dude, are you in love with this guy, or what?’

Long story short, these houses have lawns for roofs. Don't ask me how that works, or whether they have to mow their roofs, or what that has to do with today's post. I just thought it was an interesting picture.