Mojo, The Bard, & Me

Thy other banisht son, with this dear sight

Struck pale and bloodless;

-Marcus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus              Act III, scene i    Line 258

This line is only a few lines above our August 29 post, so we’ve already discussed the two severed heads in this scene. In fact, today’s Totally Random line leads me to consider setting up some rules governing just how close to another line we can get before disqualifying it as being already covered. But for today, I’m going to give this line some coverage.

So we know what’s going on, and we can conclude without belaboring the point that we’ve sampled Titus again and we’re in the middle of horrible stuff again (actually, repeat of some same horrible stuff). So let’s just look at the words. What about using that ‘t’ instead of ‘ed’ in ‘banisht’? What’s up with that? At first I thought that it was just being used here instead of ‘banished’ for some artistic reason. But I went back to Richard II because, of course, Bolingbroke and Mobray get banished in that play. I found out that they got ‘banisht’ as well, with no sign of ‘banished’. So apparently that was the word back then, ‘banisht’. Both spellings come out sounding the same. I’m not sure how they got to banisht when they very obviously had adopted ‘ed’ for past tense at this point. I guess the next step is to see what the Brits are using today. Is it still ‘banisht’? I dunno. Any Brits out there?

In any event, this is our fifth go round with Titus Andronicus and not one of our Titus Totally Random lines has been in a scene that didn’t have horrible stuff, or wondrous things as Aaron refers to it. So maybe we should just make a rule about skipping Titus altogether? Well, give it some thought. In the meantime I hope you don't get faced with too much that leaves you pale and bloodless.

I think if I ran into this guy it would leave me pale and bloodless. First of all he's all ready for battle with the helmet and the sword, and yet he's buck naked. And second of all he's got a shaft of metal stuck in his leg. What in the world is going on with this guy?