We came into the world like brother and brother;

And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.


-Dromio of Ephesus



The Comedy Of Errors              Act V scene i line 426



These are the last lines of the play. And what can we say about them? 


Well, I saw an old production of this play on TV several months ago. I’m not sure if it was made for TV or not, but in any event it had a pretty young Roger Daltry playing the two Dromio roles. I don’t particularly remember his saying these last two lines, but I can imagine it. I dunno, not particularly memorable lines. 


This play is one of Will’s earlier ones. It’s actually listed as the first on at least one chronology, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen two chronologies that were the same. I guess the point is that this play is not one of his best. And to be fair, the Roger Daltry production was no Kenneth Branagh production either. 


So it got me to thinking. In a previous post I had mentioned that Richard III is considered by many to be Will’s breakout play, sort of like Spielberg’s Jaws. And If that’s the case, then The Comedy Of Errors might be Will's equivalent of Speilberg’s Duel. Remember that one? 

Okay then, I'll assume you didn't see Spielberg's Duel. It was a guy driving a '67 Valiant being chased around a deserted desert highway by a rouge tractor trailer. It was a little odd. Anyway, this is the '67 Valiant I was driving around the decidedly non-deserted Bridgeport roads when I was in high school. Sweet ride, eh?

Nay let me praise you while I have a stomach.

 -Jessica



The Merchant Of Venice            Act III, scene v, line 86



I have my belly full of ford.

 -Falstaff



The Merry Wives Of Windsor     Act III, scene v, line 35



Okay, I’m going to cover two days of Totally Random lines here. Why? Because I can’t stomach letting this opportunity slip by. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.



Jesscia is responding to Lorenzo who’s saying that they should go to dinner. Now I’m not entirely sure what she means by ‘while I have a stomach’. She might be saying that she’s hungry? Or she might be saying ‘While I still want to do it (praise you)’.  Or maybe it’s something else. It’s hard to tell. What’s for certain is that this is the very end of a scene that was dominated by Launcelot Gobo engaging in a bunch of wordplay with Lorenzo. And now that Gobo is gone, here at the end of the scene, it’s hard to tell what’s wordplay here and what’s not.



Falstaff, on the other hand, with yesterday’s line is saying that he’s had enough of Mistress Ford. Mistress Quickly has just shown up and she says that she’s just come from Mistress Ford, and it’s pretty evident that Falstaff has no desire to deal with Mistress Ford, he’s got a belly full of her. This is an expression still in use today. At least I still use it.



So as you can see, it’s two days in a row of stomachs. A belly full of Ford, and having the stomach for, well, something. How about that?

So here I am with a bowl full of Oslo shrimp. I was expecting a dish prepared with shrimp. Instead I got a big bowl of unprepared shrimp. They were whole, little heads and all. Each one had to be meticulously pulled apart to eat, leaving a tiny piece of edible shrimp meat. And they weren't even that tasty. I got tired of cleaning shrimp pretty quickly. I can't say that I literally had my belly full of shrimp, but I certainly had a figurative belly full. And I had no stomach for the whole deal.
Now what do you think of that?

Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for striking him about Bardolf.

-Page

King Henry The Fourth Part II            Act I scene ii line 59

This is the beginning of the play, and this scene is dominated by, you guessed it, Falstaff. I’m not quite sure what the reference regarding ‘the prince for striking him about Bardolf’ is, but that might be irrelevant. At issue is the fact that Falstaff does not want to deal with this nobleman so that he tells his page ‘Wait close; I will not see him’. First he's going to pretend not to see him. And then a few lines further down he tells the page ‘Boy, tell him I am deaf’. Now he will pretend not to hear him. Anything to avoid dealing with the nobleman because Falstaff is certain that the fellow is going to try to hold him responsible for something, which of course he is. And certainly Falstaff does not want to be held accountable for anything. This is the guy, Falstaff, that is supposedly Shakespeare’s greatest creation. I still don’t get it.

First, my own little Falstaff is trying to pretend that he doesn't see or hear me.

 

 

Then, well I'm not even sure he's doing now. Very Falstaffian indeed!

O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Cristian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

-Hamlet

Hamlet                                    Act III scene ii line 34

This is the last sentence of the ‘Speak the speech’ speech that Hamlet gives to the players. It’s a couple of paragraphs long where he’s telling the players, who are going to be putting on a play for the court, how to act. In this last sentence, above, he’s going on about some of the bad actors that he has seen. Strutted and bellowed! Those are good words.

So I guess there are a lot of different ways to go about discussing the ‘Speak the speech’ speech, or even just this one sentence in the last paragraph. But I have work to do right now, so I’m going to leave it to you. It’s a good sentence, albeit a bit long. So do what you will with it. Strut and bellow if you like!

 

This is WP's one hand performance at the roman amphitheater in Merida, Spain. It's wonderfully understated, don't you agree? And not one bit of strutting or bellowing.

Heaven be my witness you do, if you suspect me in any dishonesty.

-Mistress Ford

The Merry Wives Of Windsor             Act IV scene ii line 123

I’ve been trying to do some reading in my Shakespeare criticism books in the past few days to see if I can figure out what is so great about this Falstaff character. So it's fortuitous that I randomly picked a line from Merry Wives today because, after all, this is a play that was specifically written as a vehicle for Falstaff. But I believe I managed to pick a scene without Sir John in it. Oh well, I think I’ll talk about my search anyway.

Since it is Harold Bloom more than any of them who seems to think that Sir John Falstaff is such an incredibly important character, I started with his book and I’ve got to tell you that Professor Bloom is either on a higher level of thought processing, or just bad at explicating ideas (I’ve got to believe it’s the former), because I have a very hard time following his train of thought. So I didn’t read his whole chapter on Henry IV. Instead I switched over to the other Harold, Harold Goddard. And he’s a little easier to read. Not funny papers easy, mind you, but definitely easier than Harold number one. But I don’t have any conclusions yet. I haven’t gotten all of the way through Goddard yet, so I’ve got more reading to do. And of course I still have Marjorie Garber left, and there might be some stuff in the Asimov book. And I have some other books that have Henry IV analysis. So we’re not done yet. Bottom line, I’ll have to get back to you on this Falstaff question, but sooner or later I should be able to tell you what makes Falstaff such a great character. And I’m going to tell you in language you can understand, not Bloomese.

So, in the meantime should we spend a few minutes on Mistress Ford’s line? Nah. 

 These are the four books that I rely on for a lot of my info. Each one of them has a chapter for each of the plays, and each one of them has a slightly different approach to talking about the plays. I have a lot of other books, but none that are as comprehensive as these four.