Sunday, September 7, 2025

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

                                       

I would they were, that I might die at once;

For now they kill me with a living death.

Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,

Shamed their aspects with store of childish drops:

These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear,

No, when my father York and Edward wept

To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made

When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him;

Nor when thy warlike father, like a child,

Told the sad story of my father’s death,

And twenty times made pause to sob and weep,

That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks,

Like trees bedasht with rain; in that sad time

My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;

And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,

The beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.

 

Duke of Gloster (later to become Richard III)      

King Richard the Third      Act I, Scene ii, Line 151

 

I should probably have first given you the set up, and then had you read Today’s Lines; but you are certainly free to go back and re-read them after I give it to you, so here goes. 

Henry VI has died and Lady Anne (who is the widow of Henry VI’s son, Edward) is mourning over his body. Gloster (soon to become Richard III) shows up and begins wooing Lady Anne. The catch: Richard killed both Henry VI and his son Edward, and Lady Anne knows this.

As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a testy exchange, at least at the start. Then the subject turns to eyes and Richard complements Anne on her beautiful eyes, whereupon Anne says,

Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead!

And that gets us to Today’s Lines.

So you can see that the subject of these lines, they in the first two lines and them in the last line, and much in between, is eyes. It’s all about the eyes.

So, now knowing the context, and armed with the knowledge of the eyes, you should give Today’s Lines another look. There is some really marvelous stuff in there; some of Will’s finest work, so take another look. Yes, you heard me, lay your eyes on them again: your eyes. You won’t regret it.



Eyes.







No comments:

  Today’s Totally Random Lines                                    [Enter Diomedes and Troilus] Troilus Fly not: for shouldst thou ta...