Thursday, January 12, 2017


Trouble yourselves no further: pray you, hasten
Your generals after.
Lepidus
 
Antony And Cleopatra                                 Act II, scene iv  Line 1
This is a scene where Antony is back in Rome, though in fact Antony’s not in this short scene at all. It’s a really short scene, I think ten lines, and I’m not even sure why it’s needed. But of course it’s Will, so you can bet there’s some really good reason. I think that if I was watching the play, this scene would make more sense, because I’d have a better idea who these guys were and what they’re up to.

But since I don’t know, maybe we could just talk about ‘Trouble yourselves no further.’ I added the ‘hasten your generals after’ because it was part of the thought that began with ‘pray you,’ and ‘pray you, hasten’ was on the line that I picked today. Here look; today’s Totally random line was

Trouble yourselves no further: pray you, hasten

And the next line in the book that followed was

Your generals after.

So you see why I had to add those last three words, don’t you? I get faced with this more days than not. In fact it’s not all that often that I can just take the one line that I randomly picked and use it as a stand- alone line. Am I spending too much time explaining this? Perhaps I am. Well then, if you’re not interested and you’re content to let me worry about how I pick the lines, then I guess I could say to you

                Trouble yourselves no further.

I certainly hope you saw that line coming.
Well here's something that you certainly didn't see coming. It's a picture of my La Brea Tar Pits pencil. What's it got to do with today's Totally Random line? To be honest, I just grabbed a random pencil from my pile of pencils, because I really couldn't think of a relevant picture. But then I got to thinking about it, and well, it seems that I kind of got stuck today trying to come up with much to say about today's line. And the more I tried, the more stuck I got. Sort of like those animals in the tar pits. Once they were in the pit, the more they tried to get out, the more stuck they got. So this is actually a perfectly relevant picture for today's line.
And if you find yourself having a problem with that explanation, then I guess I'd just say
Trouble yourselves no further.


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