Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

They shall be satisfied: I’ll read enough,

When I do see the very book indeed

Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.  

 

King Richard

King Richard the Second   Act IV, Scene i, Line 273

Bolingbroke has won. They are in Westminster Hall and everyone is present. King Richard has been brought forth and is being asked to read aloud a list of his wrong doings as a way of justifying Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne. Richard is quibbling about doing this, and Bolingbroke says he doesn’t have to. Northumberland remarks that the masses will not be satisfied unless Richard reads the list of his sins, and this is what Richard is responding to above. 

So that took me eight and a half lines to set up today’s three lines. Oh, and Richard has already requested a mirror, so that’s what he’s referring to when he says, When I do see the very book. He’s talking about his face. He has a nice little speech when he looks in the mirror. It’s thirteen lines. Oh what the heck.

Give me the glass, and therein will I read.-

No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck

So many blows upon this face of mine,

And made no deeper wounds! – O flattering glass,

Like to my followers in prosperity,

Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face

That every day under his household roof

Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face

That, like the sun, did make beholders wink:

Was this the face that faced so many follies,

And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke?

A brittle glory shineth in this face:

As brittle as the glory is the face;

                       [dashes the glass against the ground]

For there it is, crackt in a hundred shivers.—

Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport,--

How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face.

 

And Bolingbroke replies,

The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy’d

The shadow of your face.

 

Richard seems surprised,

                                      Say that again.

The shadow of my sorrow? Ha, let’s see:--

‘Tis very true, my grief lies all within;

And then he goes on, but we won't.

I’m not sure why I felt a need to give you all that. There’s a lot of what Richard has to say in this play that’s really great. I guess I just felt that here’s some of that, so that I wanted to make sure you got it. It’s pretty great just reading it, the beauty of the language; and of course there’s all sorts of meaning that can be mined out of it should you decide to put on your miners helmet with the light and dive on in.

But let’s face it: that's up to you. 

 

He doesn’t think I noticed that he snuck the word ‘face’ into that last sentence just because the whole thing was about faces and facing. 

I noticed. 

This face notices everything!