Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

As near as I could sift him on the argument,-

On some apparent danger seen in him

Aim’d at your highness,- no inveterate malice.

 

-John of Gaunt

King Richard the Second                Act I Scene i, Line 12

 

Here we are at the beginning of Richard II, and the also the beginning of the series of Will’s plays that covers the Wars of the Roses; starting with Richard II, continuing with the Henrys IV, V, and VI, and ending with Richard III. And Will wastes no time getting into it.

John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Hereford (also referred to as Bolingbroke and later to become Henry IV) has challenged the Duke of Norfolk (also referred to as Thomas Mowbray – seems like everybody’s got at least two names) to mortal combat. King Richard wants to know if John of Gaunt has found out if Henry just hates Norfolk or if the latter is up to some treachery.  Today’s Totally Random lines are John’s response to that: Henry has no inveterate malice for the Duke (he’s not doing it out of hatred), Henry sees that the Duke is plotting against the throne.

So here’s the funny thing: Henry has challenged The Duke of Norfolk to mortal combat because he believes the Duke is plotting against the king. Yet, it is Henry who will overthrow the king by the end of the play.

Anyway, I’d like to point out the word that jumped out at me this morning. It’s sift. As near as I could sift him. Even though you’ve probably never seen this word used that way before (or maybe you have?), it’s easy to figure out its meaning. He’s sifting him. It makes me envision a flour sifter. In the same way that you pass flour through the sifter, John has gone through Henry’s words to come up with what he believes is the pure truth of the matter. He’s sifted him. What a great use of the word. This could be particularly useful when talking about people who you might have a hard time getting a straight answer out of. 

“Is Evan going to be here this weekend?”

“As near as I could sift him, I believe the answer is yes.”

Evan’s a great guy, but he can be hard to sift sometimes.

And here is the great un-siftable One. It occurs to me that those two little guys, his nephews, are busy right here sifting Uncle Evan, trying to figure out what this guy is all about. Good luck guys.