Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Come,-- what’s Agamemnon?

-Achilles

Troilus and Cressida              Act II, scene iii, line 43

 

Achilles, his buddy Patroclus, and Thersites are talking. I’m not familiar with Thersites (I’ve never read this play completely through), but he’s listed in the cast of characters as a deform’d and scurrilous Grecian. In fact, he appears to be another one of Will’s characters best described as Fool. Anyway, in this part of this scene the three of them are talking, going back and forth with questions about each other. Thersites’s answer to Achilles’s question about Agamemnon is Thy commander, Achilles. Then they go back and forth with then what’s this one, and what’s that one, before Thersites sums it up,

Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles; Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool; and Patroclus is a fool positive.

In other words, Patroclus is just a plain fool, period. Fools, all of them. And all of us, I suppose.

This is the sort of Random Line that gets me waxing philosophical. As I may have told you, I’ve been certified as a philosopher by Dr. Andrew Davis who is an actual Doctor of Philosophy. In fact, Dr. Davis told me that there really is no qualification needed to be considered a philosopher. One merely needs to philosophize to be considered a philosopher, and pretty much anyone is capable of philosophizing. I spend way too much time philosophizing. But that's a story for another day.

I thought this was a pretty good philosophizing pic. This is the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway. It's full of statues of naked people. This particular statue, and the young lady in front of it, look like they're doing a bit of philosophizing, don't they?