Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Aye, and it makes men hate one another.

 

 First Serving-Man

Coriolanus             Act IV, Scene iv, Line 225

I bet that in a million years you could not guess what it is these guys are saying makes men hate one another. Give up? It’s peace. Yes, peace makes men hate one another.

Reason: because they then less need one another.

Yup, that’s the simple explanation given by Third Serving Man as to why peace makes men hate one another: because then they don’t need each other as much as they do in war.

These are three waiters talking amongst themselves. They are working a feast where the Volscians have just decided to go and attack Rome. These guys, the waiters that is, think that’s great. Listen to the exchange between the three of them when they hear the news that they’re going to war (though it seems unlikely that these three will be going anywhere).

Why, then we shall have a stirring world again. This peace is nothing, but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed ballad-makers.

Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy (unconsciousness), lethargy; mull’d, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.

‘Tis so: and as war, in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds.

Ay, and it makes men hate one another.  

So these guys, who are not going to be having any part of the war, think war is a great idea and a much greater thing than peace. And one of the reasons is that even though war is a ravisher, peace results in more bastard children being born. That’s right, it’s better to have people being killed, than to have a bunch of out-of-wedlock or extra-marital sex taking place.

I was taking this seriously and was a bit aghast, until I realized that Will is going for a laugh here. He likes to use anonymous characters to add a little comic relief in his tragedies. At least, I hope this is comic relief. It must be; right?

  

I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Mr. Blagys. Those guys back then had a pretty different outlook on life. You know what they said: 'better dead than sexually fed'...

 

They did not say that, Mojo. You're a piece of work. 'Better dead than sexually fed'; Where do you even come up with this stuff?