Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

 

I’ll startle you

Worse than the sacring bell, when the brown wench

Lay kissing in your arms, lord Cardinal.

 

Earl of Surrey

King Henry the Eighth         Act III, Scene ii, Line 295

 

Well that’s an interesting line! What’s this sacring bell, and who’s the brown wench? Time to look for some notes.

But first off, let me tell you that this is a scene where a bunch of noblemen, all who hate Cardinal Wolsey, are reveling in the fact that the Cardinal’s improprieties have come to the attention of the king, and now the Cardinal’s goose is cooked. The Cardinal is still denying any wrong-doing, and now the Earl of Surrey has told him that he’s going to show the Cardinal the grand sum of his sins, the articles collected from his life. It’s with this that the Earl will startle the Cardinal worse than the scaring bell…

So, here’s part of it: the sacring bell is bell the altar boy rings when the priest lifts the host during mass, the most solemn part of mass. I can’t seem to find anything on the brown wench. Is Surrey suggesting that Cardinal Wolsey has been lying with a wench while mass was going on, and a brown wench at that? He’s certainly not painting a very good picture of the Cardinal, is he?

Speaking of pictures,

this is an interesting sticker book that I found at Blick's Art Supplies yesterday. It's full of stickers of all sorts of things. I had thought that I would be able to use it for my blog illustrations. I haven't been able to figure out exactly how I'm going to do that. If I find a relevant sticker, where do I stick it in order to take a picture of it. Or do I just take a picture of it in the book without using the sticker. And of course, this assumes that I'll be able to find a relevant sticker. Alas, today, no relevant sticker. I'd hoped for a bell, (the brown wench was a real long shot), but no such luck. So I guess that gives me at least another day to figure out how to use the relevant sticker when I find it. Right?