Mojo, The Bard, & Me

I will piece out the comfort with what addition I can: I will not be long from you.

Gloucester

 

King Lear                             Act III, scene vi Line 3

This is Gloucester talking to Lear and company in a farmhouse adjoining the castle. In the castle Edmund is busy throwing his father, Gloucester, under the bus. But Gloucester doesn’t know that yet as he is busy trying to take care of Lear. Out here in the farmhouse Lear has just come in off the heath where he spent a few scenes fighting the weather and trying (arguably unsuccessfully) to keep from going insane. And in the next scene Gloucester will be getting his eyes gouged out. So this is a peaceful little line of kindness in the midst of a lot of turbulence. And I guess that’s like a lot of Will’s stuff; running from one thing to another, from a quiet scene to a scene of complete chaos. Which does a pretty good job of mirroring life, doesn’t it? And it is a pretty good argument for the validity of the total randomness of Totally Random Daily Shakespeare, isn’t it? Today we’ve got the lines of Gloucester talking about comforting Lear. Yesterday we had a father telling his son to save himself in the midst of a battle. And tomorrow... well we're just going to have to wait for tomorrow, won't we? We flip back and forth from calm to storm, and from good to bad, never knowing for sure what's next. It’s just like real life, and as well it’s just like a play from Shakespeare.

Okay, this is a barn, not a farmhouse. But if it's a barn, then a farmhouse must be around here somewhere. Anyway, it's a nice picture of a barn, don't you agree? And I can certainly picture Lear taking refuge here.