Friday, December 30, 2016




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.

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