Mojo, Will, & Me

You that have been so tenderly officious
With Lady Margery, your midwife there,
To save this bastard's life,—for 'tis a bastard,
So sure as thy beard's grey,—what will you
adventure
To save this brat's life?

-Leontes

                                   

The Winter's Tale          Act II, Scene iii, Line 160

'To save this bastard's life, -- for 'tis a bastard,' 
that's today's Totally Random line. I just gave you the lines before and after that in order to complete the full sentence. And by the way, obliging, attentive, or diligent are the ways to define 'officious' in the first line above. I looked that word up this morning, and believe it or not I had to look it up again now, only five hours later. Oof, gettin' old.

But what of the line? Bastard, bastard. It seems pretty apparent that King Leontes is convinced that the baby his wife had is not his. And, of course, he's wrong. It's his kid all right. I think it all gets straightened out by the end of the play. But for now, this kid's a bastard. But not really.

Interesting word, isn't it? In another one of Will's plays he has a character named 'The Bastard'. I think it's one of the Henry VI plays. He's literally listed as that in the cast of characters and throughout the play when it notes who's speaking. 'The Bastard'. Or maybe it's just 'Bastard'. I forget. Then there's the bastard son of Richard the Lion Hearted in King John. And of course there's the bastard Edmund in King Lear who spends a bunch of time talking about his bastardness.  Yeah, old Will didn't shy away from bastards, even though in this instance the word is being misused. In fact, he seems to have a bit of a fascination with bastards, even though there is no actual bastard here in The Winter's Tale. A brat maybe, but no bastard.

This is a picture of a bustard, not a bastard, that I snapped from my Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. As far as I know it's not a bastard bustard, just a bustard.