Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged War hath smoothed his wrinkled frown;

And now-instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

-Richard

Richard The Third                         Act I, Scene i, Line 3

Okay, that’s a bit long, about a third of Richard’s soliloquy that opens this play. Now is the winter of our discontent is a fairly well known line. But to be honest, the reason I quoted thirteen lines here was because I really wanted to get to line twelve: He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber. That’s grim visaged War that we’re talking about. Yes, Mr. War is capering nimbly about a lady’s chamber to the music of a lute, perhaps dancing on the bed. I think that’s a funny image.

Will spends these first thirteen lines talking about the juxtaposition of the merriness of victory and peacetime versus the darkness of war that they’ve just gone through. In line fourteen he starts talking about how he’s not personally fit for capering about a lady’s chamber, and he talks about the mischief he’s going to be up to, but we’re not going to get into that. We’re just going to enjoy the image of War capering; think of Patton or Braveheart or one of those other hardcore military guys prancing about a woman’s bedchamber. Yeah, that’s a good image.

As you might expect, I couldn't find a picture of Patton or Braveheart prancing around on a woman's bed, so I got a pic of grass growing on the roof of a house instead. I thought, well this is a little bit odd, and not what one might expect to see, just like Patton dancing on a bed would be. Right?