Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Proportionable to the enemy

-Bushy

King Richard II                       Act II, Scene ii, Line 124

Proportionable gets the red underline from Word, but if you look it up, it’s there. It’s the archaic term for proportional, which doesn’t get the red underline.

Now, today’s line is part of a longer sentence, but I thought it an odd little line, so I wanted to present it alone. And note, it’s perfect iambic pentameter:

pro POR, tion A, ble TO, the EN, e MY.

Perfect.

Anyway, here’s the full thought from Bushy.

        The wind rains fair for news to go to Ireland,

But none returns. For us to levy power

Proportionable to the enemy

Is all unpossible.

Bushy, Bagot, and Green are Richard’s boys. He left them in London whilst he went to Ireland to quell the rebellion. Now Bolingbroke – the future Henry IV – has returned from exile and it looks like mostly everyone is going over to his side. Consequently, these three fellows are trying to decide what to do. Bushy’s observations are quite accurate: they have no news from Richard in Ireland, and there’s no way they’re going to be able to raise a power to hold back Bolingbroke.

What to do? What to do?   

Bushy, Bagot, and Green: sounds like names you'd find being used by another English writer, eh? 

Perhaps one who claimed to not care much for Shakespeare.