Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 Today’s Totally Random Line

  

I will, my lord. 

 

First Huntsman

The Taming of the Shrew      Induction, Line 29

Ahh, the induction of The Taming of the Shrew. Induction is sort of the introduction, except that it’s not a proper introduction, so I guess we’d better stick with calling it the induction. It’s a little one scene play that’s got nothing to do with the story of The Taming of the Shrew except that it’s a similar, but unrelated, story. A bit odd.

Anyway, the first Huntsman is answering the lord who’s told him to take care of the hunting dogs. They’ve just returned from the hunt. They briefly mention the different dogs. There’s Echo, Belmont, Brach Merriman (I’m not kidding, I think one of them is named Brach Merriman), and there’s Silver. It’s Silver that caught my eye because I recognized that name from The Tempest when Prospero summons up the dogs to chase Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo. I checked to see if any of the other hounds had the same name, but no. There was Silver, Tyrant, Mountain, and Fury in The Tempest.

But Silver was repeated. So that leads me to believe that one of two things applies. Either Silver was a very common dog name back then, or Silver was a dog that the author knew personally, or perhaps owned.

So that’s today’s takeaway. Silver the dog. Not Silver the horse, as in Hi-Ho Silver, away! I don’t suppose any of you recognize that Hi-Ho Silver thing? That’s okay. I’m old. And I’ve never had, or known, of a dog named Silver in my life (that I can remember). Have you?

This is a picture of Jean Louise Finch, but we called her Scout; not Silver but Scout (she was a rescue dog and never lost that worried look).

Now, if you realize that Hi-Ho Silver was the Lone Ranger's call and Silver was his horse, you might also know that the Lone Ranger's sidekick was named Tonto, and Tonto's horse was named... you guessed it - Scout. 

A perfectly relevant picture.