Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Line(s)

  

                          But hear thee, Gratiano:

Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice,-

Parts that become thee happily enough,

And in such eyes as ours appear not faults;

But where thou art not known, why, there thy show

Something too liberal. Prithee, take pain

To allay with some cold drops of modesty

Thy skipping spirit; lest, through thy wild behaviour,

I be misconstrued in the place I go to,

And lose my hopes.

  

Bassiano

The Merchant of Venice           Act II,  Scene ii,  Line 184

 

Bassiano has told Gratiano that he can come with him to Belmont, and in today’s lines he’s telling him to behave.

Yes, I gave you two sentences. I did this because today’s random line is the one that begins Showing too liberal. Thus it has the end of one sentence and the beginning of another. But though I gave you ten lines, they’re an easy ten lines; easy to read and understand. At least, I think they are.

And here’s something interesting: the first line is an example of using a comma whilst addressing someone. But hear thee, (comma) Gratiano. Some would construe that as validation for using a comma in the sentence Thanks, Pete, when thanking Pete for something. Some would, but probably not me.

Before we accept that this is proof positive, we would need to consider a few things:
For starters, Will made up the rules as he went along.
For enders, we know that the only sanctioned copy of the plays was published after his death, and that the final say on punctuation and spelling in that printed copy was made by the guys who were doing the very laborious task of setting the type in the printing press, mostly letter by letter, and punctuation mark by punctuation mark.

So before we point to this and say, Ah hah! It must be right because that’s how Will does it! Before we say that, I would say… well what would I say? I would say it’s a nice Friday morning here in my safe and sound living room, and I would say to Will, Thanks for the example. That’s right, I’d say –

Thanks, Will.

 

Diane Hacker's The Bedford Handbook. The section on commas goes from page 382 to 408. That's twenty-six pages, but I couldn't find the answer to the question.

Thanks for nothing, Diane.

or should I say,

Thanks for nothing Diane.

Who knows?