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.
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