Mojo, The Bard, & Me

Monster, come, put some lime on your fingers, and away with the rest.

-Trinculo

The Tempest                Act IV, Scene i, Line 265

I’m not sure what ‘put some lime on your fingers’ refers to. I would guess that it’s something that was done by thieves and murderers to throw the hound dogs off their trail. But I do know that this is the scene where Prospero and Ariel put some fancy clothes out on the clothesline to trap Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban. While Prospero and Ariel hide out of sight the three knuckleheads come on stage, see the clothes and decide to steal them. Caliban however is more interested in killing Prospero, and he knows the clothes are a trap. With today’s line Trinculo is trying to get Caliban (Monster) to join them in trying on the clothes. But Caliban will have none of it. And momentarily Prospero and Ariel will jump out at them with a bunch of hunting dogs and chase the three would be thieves/murderers off. Ah, I just realized: the lime and the hunting dogs! It goes together.

Now here’s the thing, I know this play almost by heart because I wrote a retelling, that is to say, a modernized version of it. In fact, this blog (not today’s post, the blog as a whole) is an offshoot of that retelling. You see, once we (I say ‘we’ because my brother Will worked on it with me as the illustrator) were pretty much done with the book I found out that if we wanted to publish and market a book we needed a platform, preferably in social media. And so I started this blog. And that’s the short version of why I know The Tempest so well.

Anyway, I’ve finally decided to move forward with that book so I’m hoping to have that out sometime in the latter part of this year. And so this blog may be turning toward our retelling of The Tempest sometime soon. And there’s something for you to look forward to!

 

  Now this is a fancy little piece of clothing that I almost purchased. And to be clear, I had no lime on my fingers at the time. Nor did I get chased by any dogs.