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?
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