Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Why, these balls bound; there’s noise in it.—

‘Tis hard:

A young man married is a man that’s marr’d:

Therefore, away, and leave her; bravely go:

The king has done you wrong; hush, ‘tis so.

 

Parolles

All’s Well That Ends Well      Act III, Scene ii, Line 113

 

Okay, Bertram is telling his buddy Parolles that the king has just forced him, Bertram, to marry a woman he had no desire to marry; so he’s decided to run off to the wars immediately without consummating the marriage.

Today’s lines are Parolles scene-ending, concluding comments.
The first of these four lines is figurative speech, assessing the situation as a whole. The last three lines are pretty easy to understand, so let’s take a look at that first line.

My dad used to say, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I think Parolles’s statement may not be too far from that. The balls bounding is the events transpiring. The noise is the negative aspect of the events, and hard is hard.
So once again we are given a phrase to use. When we, or someone we know, is faced with a somewhat difficult situation we can say
These balls bound; there’s noise in it.— ‘Tis hard.

And that, of course will get you the obligatory eye-roll. Yes, it certainly will. No worries though: the odds of me remembering this line to use are pretty remote. Your eyes may rest easy.

How about this ball? I can tell you that it definitely bounds, but it's not very noisy, nor is it hard. It's probably not exactly the type of ball that Parolles was picturing for his euphemism.