Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Line(s)

 

 

The parcels and particulars of our grief,-
The with hath been with scorn shoved from the court,-
Whereon this Hydra son of war is born;

  

-Archbishop of York

King Henry the Fourth Part II      Act IV, Scene ii, Line 37

The archbishop is responding to King Henry’s son, Prince John of Lancaster. The latter is saying that the archbishop and his cohorts are leading a revolution against the peace of heaven and King Henry. The archbishop’s full reply is this,

                         Good my Lord of Lancaster,

 I am not here against your father’s peace,

But as I told my Lord of Westmorland,

The time misord’red doth, in common sense,

Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form

To hold our safety up. I sent your Grace

The parcels and particulars of our grief,-
The which hath been with scorn shov’d from the court,
Whereon this Hydra son of war is born,

Whose dangerous eyes may well be charm’d asleep

With grant of our most just and right desires,

And true obedience, of this madness cured,

Stoop tamely to the foot of his majesty.

 In other words, All the king has to do is to give in to our righteous demands, and we’ll forget about this whole deal and stoop tamely to the foot of his majesty. 

The archbishops and the cardinals really got involved with politics and war back then. They were very powerful men and managed to be in the thick of everything. To be sure, today there are still powerful religious leaders (even more so in other countries) but they have to be so in more indirect ways. In the USA at least, if you preach politics from the pulpit, you can lose your non-profit status. And nobody wants to lose that.

How about that big pulpit on the right, all carved out of dark wood and with the marble angel holding it up. I wonder if any politics got preached from that pulpit. 

(And what the heck do you think those two knuckleheads are looking at? Who brings binoculars to a church!?)