Now
he will be swinged for reading my letter,- an unmannerly slave, that will
thrust himself into secrets! I’ll after, to rejoice in the boy’s correction.
-Launce
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act III, Scene i, Line 380
One definition should help here. Swinged
means beaten, thrashed, or flogged. Now it should make pretty good
sense. Well, that is to say, the lines will make sense. Exactly who ‘he’ is and
what letter he read, that’s a separate issue. Since these are the last lines of
a fairly long scene which I have not read, and since I have very little
familiarity with this play on the whole, I don’t know the answers to those
questions. I only know that ‘he’, whoever he is, is a boy without manners who
is facing a beating for reading Launce’s letter, and that Launce is going to be
happy to see this beating take place.
I suppose we’d have to dig into at least this
scene, if not the whole play, in order to get a full understanding of today’s
lines. I don’t really have time for that this morning. Perhaps you do?
I don't have time to go digging for a pic today either. Perhaps when I retire in a few years...
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