Saturday, January 11, 2025

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw

Thy murderous falchion (sword) smoking in his blood;

The which thou once didst bend against her breast,

But that thy brothers beat aside the point.

 

 

Lady Anne

King Richard the Third            Act I, Scene ii, Line 93


Yes, there’s a lot of this type of talk in the play King Richard the Third. And certainly much of it involves, in one way or another, Richard. In the case of today’s line, it is he who is being accused by Lady Anne of killing her husband. This is the scene where Richard talks Anne into marrying him, even though Anne is right: Richard did kill her husband. Strange times, eh?

It’s hard to say just how much Will fictionalized and sensationalized the actual historical facts in the process of writing this play. It's a little hard to fathom a fellow being able to successfully seduce a woman just a few minutes after she confronts him about killing her husband. But remember, Will's job was to fill theaters, not lecture as a history professor. It’s a known fact that he got the basic stories right in his history plays, but it’s also a known fact that he took a lot of liberties with the details. Richard the Third is remembered historically as being a reasonably rotten guy, but in recent years his history has been rewritten a little by modern day historians who’ve taken a second look, and question whether history might have given him a bad rap, helped on a bit by Will’s famous portrayal of him. It's hard to tell exactly who’s got the story right. But it did make for a good play. Some considered King Richard the Third Will’s breakthrough play, the one that first put him on the map in his day.

By the way, I put the word sword in parentheses so that you would know what a falchion was as you read the line. I’ve not previously done this, but it seems like a good way to help make the line easier to understand as it’s being read, instead of giving you the explanation afterwards. So I think I might adopt this method going forward. Just know that whenever you see a word in parentheses that it’s my word being inserted, not something that Will wrote. 

 

 

Our titular hero literally fell asleep on my wrist as I was typing today’s Mojo, The Bard, And Me.

Perhaps I should take that as a sign?

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  Today’s Totally Random Lines   In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw Thy murderous falchion (sword) smoking in his blo...