Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done

Since last we saw in France?

 

Duke of Buckingham

King Henry the Eighth      Act I, Scene i, Line 1

Well, well, well. We have the first line of the play- sort of. King Henry the Eighth starts with a Prologue, so I guess that’s the first lines of the play. But this is the first line of Act One, Scene One. Buckingham is speaking with Norfolk and they’re here to do a little table setting for us- give us an idea of what’s going on. You might have thought that the Prologue could have taken care of that for us, but I guess not.

In any event, since we’re not going to be proceeding any further into the play this morning, I don’t think we need to get into the info that these two are going to give us. Rather, I thought I’d say a few words about the word morrow.

Morrow, in 1600’s England could mean either tomorrow or morning. In Today’s Line it’s obviously the latter. Good morning, and well met. This double usage most likely comes to us from the German morgen, which means (you guessed it) tomorrow or morning -  morgen fruh: tomorrow morning, and guten morgen: good morning. As you know, Old English is primarily a Germanic language, so there you have it.

So, today’s takeaway? When reading or listening to Shakespeare morrow might mean morning. Yup, that’s it.  

 

My little Pikachu does not seem to be buying into my explanation of morrow; I see a significant amount of doubt written on that cute little face. Her friend Mojo, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to give a hoot. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he wasn’t even listening. But I know that can’t be; he finds my posts riveting.