Today’s Totally Random
Lines
They say he is already in the forest of
Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin
Hood of England: they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet
the time carelessly, as thy did in the golden world.
Charles
As You Like It Act I, Scene i, Line 119
Who is Charles talking about? He’s talking about the old duke who
has been banished by his younger brother, the new duke. Like many of Will’s
plays, we have two parallel stories/relationships going on. The first is
brothers Olando and Oliver who open this scene in disagreement, and the second is these two dukes
that Charles is talking about in Today’s Lines.
I suppose there are a few things we could take note of in Charles’s lines, the forest of Arden or perhaps the reference to Robin Hood, but I’m going to key in on his last line about the men who flock to the duke. Apparently they like to
fleet the time carelessly, as thy did in the golden world.
First of all, fleet? Well, fleet is a common noun and/or adjective, but you don’t see it used much as a verb these days. MW Online has three meanings of the verb fleet: to fade away, vanish, or flow (that last one is labeled as archaic); to fly swiftly (like fleeting across the sky – that one is not so uncommon); or to drift (that one is considered obsolete). And my Shakespeare online glossary tells me that fleet here means to idle away or while away. That last one seems to be most like the MW Online first one.
And what about the golden world? I guess you can imagine that to be whatever you want it to, but any way you look at it, it seems good since we’re calling it golden.
I think I’ll leave you with that thought about whiling away the time (in a good sense, of course):
Fleeting the time carelessly, as they did
in the golden world.
For me, it brings to mind the Scarecrow, whiling away the hours, conferring with the flowers...
Mojo really enjoyed watching the Scarecrow’s song.
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