In thee thy mother dies, our household’s name,

My death’s revenge, thy youth, and England’s fame.

Lord Talbot

King Henry The Sixth Part I                          Act IV, scene vi Line 39

This is our second visit to this scene. The first time was back on 10/2. If you check out that post you’ll learn that father and son Talbot are stuck in what appears to be a bad situation. At this point in the scene father Talbot is still trying to convince son Talbot to skee-daddle and save his own hide. Today’s Totally Random line is a list of all the things that will die with young Talbot if he stays. I’m not exactly sure what he means by ‘thy mother’; perhaps it’s that father Talbot’s wife is already gone and son Talbot is his only vestige of her.

I’m noticing in this scene that almost every two lines are rhyming. So that’s kind of interesting. That rhyming couplet thing where Will rhymes the last two words of a long speech, or the last two words of a scene is pretty common. But it doesn’t seem like too much of his stuff has rampant rhyming going on. This play is supposedly one of, if not the, first plays he wrote. So maybe he started his career with more rhyming than later on. I’m not sure.

Now I’m a little confused. This Talbot guy has shown up in a number of our Totally Random lines, but I’m not sure if it’s young Talbot or old Talbot that we’ve seen so much of. I believe it’s the older Talbot, because he’s Lord Talbot, and the younger one appears to be John Talbot. It would be nice to know how old this father and son pair is. In any event, I believe they both bite the dust in the next scene. That’s too bad.

In honor of young and old Talbot, here's young and old Blagys. That's me and my dad. Obviously we weren't in the midst of a battle. Actually, I think we were on our way to church. So the stakes weren't quite so high for us as they were for the Talbots. And I can assure you that we didn't bite the dust in the next scene after this one. And since I have three brothers and we're all Americans, even if we did bite the dust in the next scene, it's unlikely that our mother, our household's name, my father's death's revenge, or England's fame would have been at risk.

I do not bid thee beg my life, good lad;

And yet I know thou wilt.

Lucius

Cymbeline                                          Act V, scene v    Line 94

So we’ve got a repetition of two Shakespeare motifs going on here. One is the situation where the king has granted one wish to a person, in this case Imogen. The second is the gender bending since Imogen is currently disguised as a lad called Fidele. Or, as I’ve previously stated, we’ve got a man (the Shakespearean actor) pretending to be a woman (the character Imogen) pretending to be a man (Fidele). The gender bending we see all over the place in Shakespeare, and we've seen quite a bit of it here in Totally Random Daily Shakespeare.

Now just to talk about the language for a minute: what about 'thou wilt'? Does Will ever use you or is it always thou? And is it always wilt, or is it sometimes will? I'm going to keep  my eyes open for these two words in the future, and I hope thou wilt too!

Okay, well that didn't take long. See the title? It's Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will, not What Thou Wilt.

And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

Narrator

Lucrece                                                Line 1,378

And here is new territory for us today. Lucrece, also known by the title The Rape Of Lucrece, is an 1,855 line poem by Will. It is, as you might expect, about the rape of a lady named Lucrece. In my compilation it is titled simply Lucrece.

So what do we have for today’s line? It’s sort of interesting, and I’ll give you a little context. Lucrece was raped in her own bed the previous night by a house guest. Her husband is away, the house guest/rapist has left and now Lucrece is wandering around the house quite understandably distressed. She’s stopped at this moment in the poem to look at a painting on the wall. It’s a painting of the battle of Troy. The description of the painting goes on for a whole page, and today’s line is at the beginning. I’m going to give you the whole seven lines of this stanza that are near the beginning of the description of the painting.      

                A thousand lamentable objects there,

                In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:

                Many a dry drop seem’d a weeping tear,

                Shed for the slaughter’d husband by the wife:  

                The red blood reek’t, to show the painter’s strife;

                                And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

                                Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

So you can sort of get a little better sense of the meaning of these words (at least I think you can) with the whole stanza there. Remember, this is presumably a picture of a battle with a bunch of people getting killed. And be advised that as Lucrece is looking at the painting she is not doing very well at all dealing with having been raped, and in fact is going to kill herself over it before this poem is over. All in all, it’s not a very upbeat poem. 

So it might be easy to read into today’s Totally Random lines that Will is really talking about Lucrece when he talks about those ‘dying eyes’ and their ‘ashy lights, Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.’ Lots of interesting word choices here. Both lines have subjects described as ‘dying’. The lights are ‘ashy’. That’s an interesting adjective: ‘Ashy ligts’. What image does that conjure? I guess, followed up by the ‘dying coals’ line, we can imagine the wood in the fire after it’s burnt down and we can see a little red among the gray ashes? The flames are long gone, just a memory. The fire is still hot underneath, it’s got life, but left as is it’ll grow cold.

Well, that’s a fairly in-depth analysis of the lines, certainly more than we usually get into. But what’s it telling us? I guess it’s telling us that Lucrece is a goner. And, unfortunately, she is. More than that? I dunno. I don’t want this to get into an English class, but every once in a while I think it’s good to really get into the language. Don’t you agree?

One last note on this stanza: When reading the phrase ‘art gave lifeless life’ for some reason it made me think of that famous Keats poem Ode on a Grecian Urn. If you’re interested you can take a look at that one here. It’s only fifty lines, as opposed to 1,855 lines.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44477

It’s a very different poem, and quite different in mood, not nearly so dark like Lucrece. But there’s something in there that made me think that John Keats drew something from Lucrece. What do you think?

So that fire there's got quite a bit of life left, the flames are still red. I was trying to find a picture of ashy lights, but this is all I could come up with. And yet, it might be the perfect photo for today's stanza. This is an old photo and that's my old friend Matt there in the sweater vest. He's been gone for several years now, and yet 'in scorn of nature' the art of this photo gives 'lifeless life.'

You must begin,-- ‘Will you, Orlando,’--

Rosalind

As You Like It                                     Act IV, scene i    Line 125

This is Rosalind telling her cousin Celia what she has to say in order to perform the wedding of her, Rosalind, and Orlando. So what do we think of that? Celia is not a minister or justice of the peace, or vicar. So why does Rosalind think it’s okay for her to perform a wedding. I don’t really know. If I’m not mistaken these two do manage to get married by the end of the play, don’t they? But right now they’re in a big old rush and you know it's not gonna work out here. But I guess that’s true of lots of couples down through the ages.

Now it just occurred to me that we had another screwy wedding related scene in this play a few weeks back. It was 11/28 and in that scene they actually had a vicar but decided that he wasn’t good enough. And now in this scene they’re trying to make a go of it without a vicar, or a justice of the peace, or anything. What’s up with these kooks?

This is Betty and Mitzy working on this scene. I think they've just finished a few rounds at the bowling alley. They've talked Officer Bob into standing in as Orlando, but I don't think he's all that keen about it. My guess is that Officer Bob doesn't even know the lines he's supposed to be saying. In fact, he looks a little pissed off. But Betty and Mitzy look pretty happy about things, don't they?

But, good lieutenant, is your general wived?

Montano

 

Othello                                                 Act II, scene i     Line 60

Well for goodness sakes, let’s start with ‘good lieutenant’ because it’s our good friend good Michael Cassio that’s being addressed here as good lieutenant. I think that this is only the second time in about 130 Totally Random lines (I guess I could go back and check them all, but I probably won’t) that we have someone being addressed as ‘good’. And guess what? Both times it’s been good Michael Cassio being addressed! Amazing! And the last time he was being addressed as ‘good’ I got all excited about it. Here’s the post if you don’t believe me. So that’s pretty interesting in and of itself, and it also tells you that this guy is good!

Next we have this word lieutenant. I’m not sure whether or not you’re all aware of it or not, but the Brits pronounce this word Lef-ten-ant, as opposed to Lu-ten-ant. Now I have no idea where they got this Lef-ten-ant thing, but like most Brit-speak, I love it. I think I’ve gotten into this stuff before. Schedule is sshhezule, and scenario is senahhrio, and it goes on and on. Yes, Lef-tenant. 

And finally, wived. Is your lieutenant wived? Who makes a verb out of wife? I guess Will did. I had an English professor when I was getting my MAT about ten years ago who hated when people made verbs out of nouns. I’m not sure what exactly his issue was, but for some reason he just didn’t like it. Well Professor Smart, here’s old Will making a verb out of wife. So I guess you can’t get too wigged out over that.

Now all we’re left with is wondering why Montano is asking good Michael Cassio whether his general is wived. And I'm going to leave it up to you to find the answer to that question.

Yes, believe it or not, even a kook like me can be wived. This is a picture of me and my beautiful wife. Can you, by any chance, guess where we are?

I know vat I have to do. Adieu.

Doctor Caius

The Merry Wives of Windsor                  Act V, scene iii   Line 5

And finally, we’ve got a sample from The Merry Wives Of Windsor. I believe this is the first time we’ve gotten to this work and if I’m not mistaken, the only play now left in my compilation that we’ve not randomly sampled is Julius Caesar. I’ll do some reconnaissance on my random die system just to make sure that numbers 550 to 610 (the corresponding pages in my compilation) are not problematic. I don’t suspect that they are and I’m pretty sure we’ll get to Julius Caesar, as well as back to The Wives, eventually.

Now, The Merry Wives. As I think I mentioned once, this is a play that Will wrote specifically to resurrect the character of Sir John Falstaff. You’ll recall that we’ve twice discussed the scenes in Henry V, here and here that relate to the passing of good Sir John. I’ve also previously mentioned, and reiterate here, that I know very little about this play. And since this is our first foray in, and also because this line is only three pages from the end of the play and I have no idea what’s taken place up to this point, I think we’ll stay in the dark for now and just focus on the line that we have.

This is the first instance I’ve run into where Will is writing the replication of an accent into the script. The ‘vat’ in today’s line is his way of saying how a Frenchman (apparently Dr. Caius is French) would say the word ‘what’. I thought this was what Will was doing but I wasn’t sure, and so I thumbed through the play and can see that the lines of Dr. Caius have these types of spelling throughout. So I think that’s pretty interesting. Vat do you theenk? Will had a healthy sampling of latin and greek, as well as real French in his plays, so he relied on a fairly well educated audience. In this case, however, he’s just working with a bawdy French accent; fairly low brow stuff.

Brief program note: I missed the last two nights due to some health issues. We'll see if we can keep that from happening again. Also, I'm counting this post as Friday, 12/23 post, even though it's now a few hours into Saturday, Christmas Eve. No promises for the next two nights' posts, but we'll try.

And if I don't make it, Merry Christmas!

This is pretty  much the extent of my personal library (I know, pretty messy). I looked all through here for some vestige of the seven years of French that I took, but no luck. And after that seven years, what is the extent of my understanding of French? Well, I understood today's line. And that's pretty  much how I would say it in French. 'I know vat I have to do.'

What is your gracious pleasure?

Seyton

Macbeth                                              Act V, scene iii   Line 29

I’m not sure who this Seyton fellow is, but apparently a lackey of Macbeth. We’re near the end of the play here, just a few pages away from Macduff showing up with Macbeth’s severed head. But for the time being Macbeth’s head is still attached to his shoulders. And the eyes in that head can see that things are starting to unravel, so he calls for his lackey and Seyton comes running asking, with today’s Totally Random line, what his boss wants. All the boss wants is news, but the news tells him that he’s in trouble.

By the way, we’re only one page further on from Lady Macbeth’s line of ten days ago. She was unraveling then, and now the whole thing is coming down on them fast.

Without getting bogged down in the details too much, I thought it might be interesting to look at the name of today’s speaker: Seyton. I couldn’t help but notice that it’s a homonym for Satan. I wonder if that’s a coincidence. It’s not really a major role, but just the same it’s the name of the guy who sticks with Macbeth throughout his devilish reign. Well, something to consider, perhaps oh so briefly.

And one more thing, do you suppose there’s any chance that somewhere along the line, either with the guys putting together the First Folio or even previous to that, someone screwed it up and the line is supposed to read ‘What is your grace’s pleasure?’ It would sound exactly the same when spoken. I don’t know, but that seems to make a little more sense. What do you think?

What do you suppose their pleasure is, gracious or otherwise?

Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back,

I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves

So long as I could see.

Captain

 

Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will         Act I, scene ii      Line 15

This is a pretty interesting line. We were on this same page, just a few lines up from this line, back in the beginning of November. That was just fifteen lines earlier when Viola was asking where they were. Her second question is about her brother who apparently got lost in a shipwreck that she survived, and the captain is telling her that he saw the brother, so we don’t know for now what happened to him. My guess, though, is that he’ll be showing up later in the play, especially since there’s a brother of Viola listed in the cast of characters.

So this line has the word dolphin, not to be confused with dauphin, which we all now know refers to the heir to the French throne. I thought it would be good to make that clear one more time.

I also thought it might be interesting to look at a comparison of today’s lines with the lines from The Tempest in a similar situation. Viola is worried that her brother drowned, and in The Tempest the king is ashore after a shipwreck and he’s worried that his son has drowned. In The Tempest one of the king’s men says of the prince

                I saw him beat the surges under him,

                And ride upon their backs; he trod the water,

                Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted

       The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head

       ‘Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar’d

       Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke

       To the shore, that o’er his wave-worn basis bow’d,

       As stooping to relieve him: I not doubt

       He came alive to land.

And here’s today’s full passage, the captain speaking after Viola notes that hopefully her brother’s not lost.

                True, madam; and, to comfort you with chance,

       Assure yourself, after our ship did split,

       When you, and those poor number saved with you,

       Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,

       Most provident in peril, bind himself-

       Courage and hope both teaching him the practice-

       To a strong mast that lived upon the sea;

       Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back,

       I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves

      So long as I could see.

Anything? Well they were both worrying about someone who they thought had drowned and they both got stories from someone who thought they saw the person not drowning. So I thought it might be worth comparing. You can see that one guy held 'acquaintance with the waves' and the other guy kept 'his bold head 'bove the contentious waves.' So in one the waves were acquaintances and in the other they were contentious. Okay, you don't find that interesting? Well I'm sorry, but it's the best I can do right now. It's getting late and I have to be up early tomorrow to get to work. Remember, I'm working now, so you have to cut me some slack. I'll see if I can make up for it tomorrow.

This is the workbag I'm using for my new job. It holds a laptop and my planner and the moleskine I use for this blog. I keep the moleskine with me in case I come up with any amazing ideas during the day. My son calls the bag a manpurse. He always finds ways to make me feel good.

By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him.

Second Serving-Man

Coriolanus                                          Act IV, scene v Line 148

The third time in four days that we hit Coriolanus, so that’s kind of interesting. This line is from the scene where Coriolanus goes over to the Volscians and offers to fight with them against Rome. In the beginning of the scene no one there knows who he is and he’s trying to talk the servants into letting him into the feast so he can talk to the Volscian general Tullus Aufidius. The servants are ready to throw him out, but finally Aufidius comes out to see what’s going on and he accepts Coriolanus in. Then, left alone, the servants discuss Coriolanus and what just occurred. Today’s Totally Random line is in reference to Coriolanus. I think for his sake, it’s a good thing that Second Servant-Man hadn’t ‘strucken him with a cudgel.’ It probably would have been the last person he would ever have strucken with a cudgel or anything else for that matter.

There’s plenty of stories and songs about really tough guys who are mistaken for not so tough guys. In most of those stories someone ends up paying the price for it. In the case of today’s line, no one paid a price.

And isn't that a great word- cudgel. The modern definition says short thick stick. I'm guessing the Shakespeare glossary is something like that too. You don't hear the word cudgel too much anymore, but it's a great sounding word.

So we could get into that old judging a book by its cover thing (which, by the way, is pretty important if you’re trying to publish and sell a book. At least that’s what I hear), but that's nothing new with Will. We know very well how Will loves to use all sorts of ways to paint his characters as different from what they really are. Sometimes he does it in obvious fashion, like having Rosalind in As You Like It dress up as the man Ganymede. Sometimes it's like Coriolanus here showing up looking more like a beggar than a general. And sometimes it's much more subtle. But Will loves this kind of stuff and he's really good at it. 

A little program note here. I started a new job on Wednesday. Yes, back to the world of accounting. Now I had not been working for about a year, so it was a little easier to do this blog. But the important thing is that I'm still enjoying doing it, so we'll keep working on it and see how it goes. And as a side note I should mention that my job is about a half hour commute each way, so I intend to utilize that time to listen to some Arkangel Shakespeare in the car. Gonna start with the Richards and Henrys. One more thing; I missed my post last night not because of the new job, but because my friend was down here in my office monopolizing my PC. But you can bet that we'll be working something out so that won't be happening again. Okay, here's your pic for today. You earned it (well, it's nothing great, so don't get too excited).

These are my old cudgels. They hang in the rafters above my desk. I have a newer set of Calloway X Hots in my bag that I use on the course. I have not ever strucken anything but golf balls with my cudgels. I'd like to keep it that way. 

The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy

particular prosperity, and love thee no worse

than thy old father Menenius does!

Menenius Agrippa

Coriolanus                                          Act V, scene ii    Line 68

Here we are back at Coriolanus. We were just here the day before yesterday, weren't we?. Today’s line is quite near the end of the play. Coriolanus is back at the gates of Rome heading up an enemy army of Volscians who are getting ready to sack Rome. Menenius, his old advisor, and I guess you’d call him a friend, has come out to talk to Coriolanus and hopefully talk him out of sacking Rome. Today’s line is the first words he says to Coriolanus upon meeting him. He’s obviously trying to kiss some butt here telling him that the gods are shining down on him and they love him as much as he, Menenius does. Spoiler alert: Coriolanus doesn’t buy it and tells Menenius to go pound sand. Well what did you expect? Coriolanus fought hard for Rome and for his efforts he got banished because he refused to act humble. I think I’d tell Menenius to go pound sand too.

I guess we could compare this to the post of two days ago when Coriolanus was being told what to do by his mother. He didn't tell her to pound any sand. He listened to her. And second spoiler alert: His mother's going to be the next one to come out and ask Coriolanus not to sack Rome. Think he'll listen to her? I'm not going to tell you. Here's a link to the Act V scene iii if you want to find out.

And here's my little guys acting out the scene again. They're really good at Coriolanus scenes because it's their favorite play. That's Menenius on the left in the red hat. You can see that the fellow playing Coriolanus is pretty much ignoring him at this point. A few minutes later he lays into Menenius and tells him to get lost. They're pretty convincing.

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.

…but thou wilt frame

Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far

As thou hast power and person.

-Volumnia

Coriolanus                                          Act III, scene ii   Line 86

Lots of interesting things here. First off, how about the name Volumnia. That’s Coriolanus’s mother and she’s giving Coriolanus some advice of how to appear to be more likeable to the masses so as to win their approval. But what about that name, Volumnia. All I can think of when I see that name is volume. So it seems like a good name for a person with a lot of volume. That is to say, a large person. In other words, it doesn’t seem like a name that any woman would want. I’m just saying. And what about this thing where mom is telling him what he has to do? He’s a general who kicks butt on the battlefield, and he’s ascended to the leadership of the country, and now mom is telling him what he’s gotta do. And she’s not making a suggestion here. It’s not ‘Well, maybe you should consider framing yourself.’ No, it's ‘Thou wilt frame thyself’. And Coriolanus listens. He listens to his mother and at least tries to act the part. He can’t quite pull it off, but he tries.

Next, we’ve managed to sneak that word ‘forsooth’ in here. I looked this one up in the Shakespeare glossary that’s in my Shakespeare I phone app. We’ve all heard that word used in old stuff, but I wanted to see what the real definition was. It’s an adverb meaning ‘in truth, certainly, truly, indeed.’ So it really has little meaning, it’s just a sort of minor exclamation. I say ‘indeed’ a lot when I’m responding to something that someone says and I don’t really have anything to say.

‘Dad, I saw a guy today who had two heads.’

‘Indeed.’

And it seems to work. But it really doesn’t add much. If we took ‘forsooth’ out of today’s Totally Random line it wouldn’t really change the line much, would it. In fact, I think it might make it slightly more understandable for us twenty first centurians. Yes, I realize that centurian is not a word, but what else do you call someone living in the twenty first century? Anyway, Will put ‘forsooth’ there, so I guess it belongs.

So the question is, will Coriolanus have the power and the person to pull this off. Will he be able to go in front of the masses and appear civil, as opposed to condescending? Well, if you’ve been reading these posts you’ll know that he does indeed end up getting the boot. So I guess the answer is no. And I’m personally still left with the question: Is Coriolanus a better man for being true to what he is, even if that's a guy who thinks he’s much better than the common folk. Or would he be a better man if he was able to swallow his pride a bit and act more humble so as to be a more effective leader? It’s a tricky question, forsooth.

This is me and my mom. I'm not sure, but I think I probably stopped doing what she told me not too long after this picture was taken. And you can see by the tight grip she's go on me that I'm probably even trying to go against her here and fall on my head. I definitely didn't give her the respect she deserved. Not like that Coriolanus guy. Now there was a good son!

We took him setting of boys’ copies.

-Smith

 

King Henry The Sixth Part II                        Act IV, scene ii   Line 84

Just to be clear, I’m kind of estimating these line numbers. My compilation notes the official (at least, I think it’s official) line number at the top of the page, and then I count down to the line number that I’ve randomly picked to give you the semi-official line number. But the way it’s printed I’m not always sure. So today’s line is either actually line 84, or something close. Maybe 83 or 85. I’m not sure.

Anyway, Henry the Sixth and Jack Cade. Jack was the leader of a popular revolt, a revolt of the people. He’s not really a part of the Rose War which was royal against royal. So let’s see if we can tell what he’s talking about.

Right then, I listened to the scene right there. I wish I could figure out how to put an audio file on this post. I’ll work on that. In the meantime…

So Jack Cade is drumming up a rebellion. Smith the Weaver is one of his followers at the moment and he’s the guy doing the talking. This is a crowd scene and Jack’s doing a lot of yelling and a lot of what he’s saying appears to be nonsense. At this point in the proceedings they’ve brought forth the Clerk of Chatham and it appears that they’re going to be scapegoating this guy because he’s an example of the establishment because of the fact that he can read and write. And that’s the gist of today’s Random line. If he was setting boys copies then he knows how to read and write. And so they hustle him off to hang him. Now there’s some justice for you!

Oh well. Tomorrow, back to Coriolanus.

See? My book is telling me that the lines here are 54-98 (it's at the top). So I count down to the line that I randomly picked. But when it's prose like this I'm not always sure I'm getting to the correct official line number. Oh well. Anyway, as you can see I couldn't come up with any better picture for today. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Nor, showing, as the manner is, his wounds

To the people, beg their stinking breaths.

-Junius Brutus

Coriolanus                          Act II, scene i     Line 237

And once again we’ve got this Junius Brutus guy from Coriolanus. I don’t know if you recall, but he’s a minor character in Coriolanus. He’s a sleazy politician, and pretty much throughout the play he’s working against Coriolanus. We've seen him before. Here's the link if you don't recall. I never quite got my head around this guy to figure out what his deal was. The best I could figure is that Will just wanted to portray a sleazy politician. And he did a good job with it.

Politician Junius is talking about Coriolanus in today’s Totally Random line, and he’s telling us where Coriolanus is coming up short. Remember, the thing that brought Coriolanus down in the end was his unwillingness/inability to show humility and play the political game. And Junius here is expert at playing the political game. He’s a politician! And apparently in Coriolanus’s time some part of the game and the humility is to show your war wounds, literally, to the public. That’s what Junius is talking about. But you can see also what contempt Junius actually has for the people, the voters, when he refers to ‘their stinking breaths.’ The guy is just a sleaze ball. I can't help but think, based on this Junius character, that Will didn't think too much of politics or politicians. What do you think?

Here's my latest war wound. I fell down and cracked my noggin on the tv table. So I guess you could say I got this is in the war of everyday living. But since I don't have any plans to run for public office I probably won't have to show the wound to the public. Just as well. It's not a very impressive wound.

That were a kind of bastard hope, indeed: so the

sins of my mother should be visited upon me.

-Jessica

 

The Merchant Of Venice               Act III, scene v   Line 13

Well, there’s a few directions we can head off in with this line. Yes, indeed.

Okay, let’s start with Jessica. I’ve heard that Shakespeare made up this name, or at the very least, that this is the first printed work where that name appears. So I think that’s a bit interesting. It’s certainly a popular name now, and even more so in the 1980’s. And it really is a beautiful name.

Next. The context of this line has to do with Launcelot Gobo telling Jessica that she’s going to be damned to hell for being a Jew and that one of her only hopes is that her mother cheated on Shylock her father with a non-Jew so that Jessica’s real father, and therefore Jessica, were/are not Jews. In this case ‘The sins of her mother’, i.e. infidelity, would actually be her salvation. Now of course if we want to get into this context it’s hard to ignore the whole question of the treatment of Jews by Shakespeare (and by most other Brits of Shakespeare’s time), and that fact that being Jewish would be considered a sin. And since that’s a real can of worms, the opening of which brings about all sorts of issues and risks, I’m not going to go any further with that right now. Maybe at a later date. Maybe the next time we hit Merchant.

We could look at the play on words (doesn’t Will love playing with words!) of the ‘bastard hope’. But I think I’ll leave that one to you. And, by the way, it’s a short scene so here’s the link if you’d like to read it in its entirety.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/merchant.3.5.html.

Finally (for now, because when we start digging into these lines it seems there’s almost an endless number of things to look at), we can look for a moment at the whole sins of the mother, and by extension, sins of the parents thing. And again, I’m going to look at it in a sort of general way without getting into this particular damned for being Jewish thing. What’s Will saying, if anything, about us dealing with, or being in any way responsible for the sins of our parents? Not surprisingly, in this instance he’s attacking this question with a double meaning. He’s claiming that Jessica has sin just for being born of a certain religion (her parents’ religion). So that seems to advocate that we do inherit sins of our parents. But then he gets into sins of our parents (in this case infidelity) being redemptive. And to further complicate it, we should remember that it’s Launcelot Gobo who’s bringing this up in the first place. Launcelot, who’s listed in the cast of characters as a clown. So the whole thing gets a bit confusing and contradictory; like life in general, and like most of Will’s work.

Well, what do you think Will is saying about the sins of the parents? Do we inherit them, or not?

This is my parents. Whilst I'm sure they weren't perfect, I'm not aware of any great sins that they might have passed down to me. So I guess I'm lucky that I don't even have to worry about the question. Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.

…the posts come tiring on,

And not a man of them brings other news

Than they have learn’d of me: from Rumour’s tongues

They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.

-Rumour

 

King Henry The Fourth Part II     Induction             Line 39

This line is pretty interesting. It’s the induction, which is sort of an introduction to the play. And the speaker is Rumour, who in this case is a personification of rumor. The stage direction at the very start is ‘Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.’ This induction (introduction) is the precursor to the line we discussed in the 9/29 post  when Northumberland is finding out about his son’s death. The rumor was that his son Hotspur defeated Hal. The truth is that Hal killed Hotspur. In the forty line Induction Rumour talks about the false rumor of Hotspur beating Hal. Today’s lines are the end of Rumour’s speech. And they ring very true when he says that the smooth comforts of false rumours are worse than true wrongs.

Wait, ‘true wrongs?’ True wrongs? Smooth comforts false, which would be easier understood if stated ‘the smooth comforts of falsehoods,’ makes sense and is easily understood. But ‘true wrongs’ is a little harder. ‘True’ is understandable. But ‘wrongs’? Is he just meaning ‘bad news’ by ‘wrongs’? That seems a bit stretched, but that must be it. Wrongs is just bad stuff. Okay, that works.

Now as a side note, and unrelated to today's Totally Random line, here’s some interesting things I learned this week. I learned that Isaac Asimov, the scientist and incredibly prolific sci-fi writer, wrote a book on Shakespeare. Can you believe it? I was absolutely astounded. I also found that Shakespeare is the only author to have his own Dewey Decimal number. That’s the numbering system used in public libraries. It’s 822.33 in case you’re interested. So the next time you’re in any public library and you feel like browsing the Shakespeare section just go right to the stacks that have the 822’s. There, that’s today’s interesting Shakespeare facts.

These are the Asimov books I have, The Foundation Trilogy. They are classics of the sci-fi genre of which Isaac Asimov is one of the biggies. But I googled the guy after I found his Shakespeare book and it turns out that aside from the fiction and science books, the guy has history books, books on the bible, humor, Sherlock Holmes and you name it, a whole bunch of other stuff. Basically this guy has covered just about every genre, fiction and non-fiction that there is. He's the Gunter Gebel-Williams of authors.

The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?—No more o’that, my lord, no more o’that: you mar all with this starting.

-Lady Macbeth

 

Macbeth                              Act V, scene i     Line 44

Well this is the page with ‘Out damned spot!’, which is a really famous line. Robert Frost alluded to it in his poem ‘Out, Out –‘. But we landed a few lines down, so we’ll go with what we have. Anyway, I’m pretty excited that I have the perfect picture for today’s post. You’d be surprised how long it takes to come up with some of those lame pictures. Anyway, the line.

This is Lady Macbeth sleepwalking and sleeptalking. Her gentlewoman, which is to say her servant, has called in the doctor to observe, as apparently this is not the first episode of sleepwalking/talking. And these two are watching the Lady as she walks and talks. This is late in the play, so that the guilt of killing… let’s see, who have they killed so far? They’ve taken out Duncan personally, and put a hitman on Banquo. Anyone else? Yes, I believe Macduff’s wife and whole family was taken care of. Anyway, all of her lines in this short scene are sleeptalking ramblings. She started with the famous ‘spot’ thing, and now in today’s line she’s just sort of rambling. The Thane of Fife is Macduff, and where is his wife now? Dead, thanks to the Macbeths. This Lady is having trouble sleeping? I think the shocker would be if she weren’t having trouble sleeping.

So here’s the pic I was so excited about. This painting I’m standing in front of is on the cover of Harold C. Goddard’s The Meaning of Shakespeare, a book that I own. Well I was wandering the Louvre with my Cordelias a few years ago and I came upon this painting. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had no idea the painting was in the Louvre, or that it was so huge and dark since I’d only seen it on the cover of the book. But it’s a painting of this very scene, Lady Macbeth wandering in her sleep and the doc and the gentlewoman looking at her. The lighting is pretty bad. You can barely see the doc and the gentlewoman on the bottom right in the dark. Here’s a link if you want to see the picture better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking_scene#/media/File:Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_030.jpg

Yeah, believe it or not that’s the same picture. Anyway, I got my picture taken with the picture. And now I’m using the picture! This has got to be the most appropriate and relevant pic for any post that I've come up with yet. Don't you think so? Pretty exciting, eh?

Believe not thy disdain, but presently

Do thine own fortunes that obedient right

Which both thy duty owes and our power claims;

Or I will throw thee from my care for ever

Into the staggers and the careless lapse

Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate

Loosing upon thee, in the name of justice,

Without all terms of pity. Speak; thine answer.

-King

 

All’s Well That Ends Well             Act II, scene iii   Line 168

Yes, I went a little long here on the line. It just seems that some days we need to go with quite a few lines to get any kind of continuity. Sorry about that.

Okay, here’s what’s going on here. Helena found a cure for the king and her reward is that she gets to pick any guy in the kingdom to be her husband. She picks Bertram, who’s a lord and he wants nothing to do with here because she’s a commoner. And the king’s response to that is what he says to Bertram in today’s Totally Random line: Bertram had better take Helena ‘or else!’ And what is Betram’s answer? The little weasel puts his tail between his legs and says that Helena is just fine for him. So that didn’t take much, did it? One quick threat and he caves. Would that all issues could be resolved with a simple threat.

‘You heard me, do thine own fortunes that obedient right which both thy duty owes and our power claims and practice your piano! Now!’

Oh yeah, that’ll work. Sure. Keep dreaming.

And by the way, here’s that disdain word again. Well at least now we know exactly what it means.

That's a nice piano, isn't it? See anyone practicing on it? No, me neither.