Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

His absence, sir,

Lays blame upon his promise. Please’t your highness

To grace us with your royal company.

 

Ross

Macbeth                  Act III, Scene iv, Line 80

Macbeth has just made note that Banquo hasn’t shown up for the banquet, even though he promised to. Of course, Macbeth knows why Banquo’s not there. He, Macbeth, sent out two guys to murder Banquo.

Today’s lines are Ross’s reply to Macbeth.

Lays blame upon his promise. That’s interesting phraseology, isn’t. The words are simple, and I believe the 1590 meaning of each of them is the same as it is today. But even though you might hear each of these words today, you probably wouldn’t hear them put together like this. You’d probably hear 2023 Ross say, ‘So much for his promise to show up, eh?’

Lays blame upon his promise. I wonder if that was common phraseology for the day, or if our buddy Will was practicing his usual linguistic gymnastics? His failure to show up laid blame on his promise. I’m not sure I exactly understand how that works, or exactly what it’s saying. Ah wait; if I lay blame on someone, then they did it. So if we lay blame on the promise, then the promise is the culprit. Does that make sense. How is the promise the culprit. Isn’t Banquo the culprit for not showing up (never mind Macbeth being the culprit for having him killed). What is it saying if the promise is the culprit. Still thinking. Banquo shouldn’t have made the promise. It turned out to be an empty promise. And I guess an empty promise is something to be considered the culprit. And perhaps, since Will knows that it’s really not Banquo’s fault anyway (since he’s been murdered), he’s extending that lack of fault to Ross’s comment. Does that make any sense? It’s hard to tell, isn’t it. Nonetheless, it’s a nice phrase.

See, now this is a line, or a part of a line, that would make a good discussion in a class. Wouldn’t it? You could personalize it.

“Okay, let’s just say that Wally here promised to bring in donuts for everybody today. But Wally, you didn’t bring in any donuts. I guess we could say that the lack of donuts lays blame on your promise. So are we saying that the promise is at fault, and not Wally? How does that make sense?”

And that would quickly devolve into a discussion of Wally and donuts. Who knew that Will wrote about a twenty-first century kid named Wally and his donuts, or lack thereof. Amazing!

Naturally, I wanted to give you a pic of donuts, since of a pic of Wally would be impossible. However, today I had muffins not donuts. To further complicate the situation, I've eaten the muffins. But that's where they were a little while ago, right in the empty spot there on my desk. So perhaps you can just imagine two home baked bran muffins sitting right there. 

Amazing!