Today’s Totally Random Lines
Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines?
Julia
The Two Gentelemen of Verona Act I Scene ii, Line 42
Well, there’s an interesting
word, wanton. It’s a word we’ve all run into, but what’s it mean? Honestly, I
can’t give you a definition. Let’s go to the online MW: merciless (wanton cruelty),
without check or limitation (wanton imagination). I think that latter is the one I'm used to seeing.
Hmmm, let’s double-check in the Shakespeare glossary. Okay, the Shakespeare glossary has a total of twelve different possible meanings for wanton used as an adjective. There’s naughty, carefree, casual, cruelly irresponsible, ambiguous, feminine, gay, lascivious, luxuriant, merciless, sexually hot, and unrestrained. So basically the Shakespeare glossary is saying that wanton can mean whatever you want it to mean. Well that narrows it down, doesn’t it. (Sarcasm)
So now, I guess that means we
need context. Okay, here we go.
Julia is talking with her waiting-woman (servant) named Lucetta about the different men who are suitors to Julia. Lucetta is holding a letter and Julia asks her where she got it.
Sir Valentine’s page; and sent, I think, from Proteus.
He would have given it you; but I, being in the way,
Did in your name receive it: pardon the fault, I pray.
Proteus is one of the suitors that the two women had been discussing. Julie responds,
Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker!
Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines?
To whisper and conspire against my youth?
So she’s obviously talking about the lines in the letter from Proteus. Now you tell me, is she saying that the lines in Proteus’s letter are cruelly irresponsible? How about sexually hot? Perhaps naughty? Need I go on?
Basically, in today's line wanton means whatever the heck you want it to mean. How's that?
No, I don't know what wanton means, and I don't care. Can't you see that we're watching a movie?
Mojo has wanton disregard for the question of what wanton means.
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