This
music makes me mad; let it sound no more;
For
though it hath holp madmen to their wits,
In
me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet
blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For
‘tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is
a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
-Richard
King Richard The Second Act V scene v line 62
These six lines are the end of sixty-five lines of Richard’s
rambling. He’s alone in a prison cell and his cousin Bolingbroke has taken over
the throne. Richard knows that his goose is cooked (in fact, he’s dead by the
end of this scene) and so he’s musing about life in general. You get a pretty
good idea of where he’s going with the first few lines of the soliloquy:
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the
world:
And, for because the world is
populous,
And here is not a creature but
myself,
I cannot do it;--yet I’ll hammer it
out.
And it goes from there, flitting back and forth from one
thing to another. Towards the end of the soliloquy some soft music can be heard
playing in the distance. And then he ends with today’s Totally Random lines.
Throughout the whole thing, as he moves from one thing to
another he also moves from one opinion to another about many of the different
subjects he touches on. He does it in the start: how I may compare, but I
cannot, and yet I’ll do it. And so he does in these last six lines. Music makes
me mad, but blessing on the giver of music; It’s a sign of love, in this
all-hating world.
And just as contrasting, Richard is living now, and in a few
more minutes he’ll be dead.
It’s a pretty interesting sixty-five lines, but is this
Will’s summation of existence? I hope not.
It doesn't appear that these two coconuts in prison are ruminating about life and existence. I'd say they're just enjoying getting their picture taken. I suppose that's a good way to be. Of course, they're neither alone, nor stuck in that cell. They're just taking a tour of Alcatraz.
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