And partly, seeing that you are beautified

With goodly shape, and by your own report

A linguist, and a man of such perfection

As we do in our quality much want,--

 

-First Outlaw    

 

Two Gentlemen of Verona          Act IV, scene i    Line 55

From feast to famine! I wonder if that saying has its roots in Shakespeare? Oh well and anyway. Yes, from nothing yesterday to four lines of….well, not much. In any event we’ve only traveled four pages forward  since yesterday, from Act III scene i to Act IV scene I; same play. We still don’t know much of what’s going on with this play, but I’ll give you some very brief context for today’s line. Valentine, yesterday’s speaker, is now traveling through the woods when he gets accosted by ‘certain outlaws’. After a brief exchange these three outlaws decide they want to recruit Valentine as their leader. This First Outlaw, speaking above, gets interrupted by Second Outlaw who completes the sentence and asks if Valentine will become their general. And he does. Yeah, pretty kooky stuff, but I guess we’d have to better understand the full story to understand what’s going on here. On the other hand, we do have two lines already and they were both spoken by Valentine. The first might give us some clue because he was saying something about having gotten so much bad news. So maybe Valentine is so fed up with how things are going for him that he’s ripe for the picking by these outlaws. Who knows? I suppose we could listen to the play. Did I already mention that I have the Arkangel version of this play on CD. Well I do. Am I going to listen to it? Not today. Sorry.

However, let’s take a little closer look at this. Here we have one of those instances where I’m not completely sure of how to interpret this because I know I’m not thinking like a sixteenth century Englishman. I assume, though, that this line is comedy. Put this into modern context. Can you imagine a guy running into three hoods on a dark street. They start to rough him up, looking to rob him. But then they realize he’s got no money, and that he’s an educated fellow, so instead of robbing him they recruit him as their leader. But it's not only that they want him for their leader, it's why they want him; ‘You’re a good looking fellow, and well spoken. A fellow of your qualities is exactly what we’ve been looking for to be our leader.’ Yes, I believe that would be part of a comedy script. Again, it’s hard to appreciate much of Shakespeare without seeing it performed. And of course even a little harder when you’re getting it one random line at a time!

Nothing.

-Valentine

Two Gentlemen of Verona          Act III, scene i    Line 198

Well, I guess I should have known that we’d come up with this sooner or later. Nothing. Just plain nothing. We came up with nothing. But it’s not literally nothing, it’s the word ‘nothing’. It’s Valentines response to Proteus. It's not that he doesn't say anything; he says, ‘Nothing’. So, as usual there are a few directions I can go here. I could do a little reading above and below this line and see what they’re talking about. I could spend some time writing about nothing. I could spend some time writing about the play in general (except for the fact that I know pretty much nothing about this play; ahh! Nothing!).

However, the first thing I'd like to write about that I noticed about today's line is that it is seven lines away from the Totally Random Daily Shakespeare line of two days ago. That's right, I've managed to randomly end up on the same page (1 of 1,252) and only seven lines above the line that I randomly picked two days ago. Se we're actually in the very same conversation. I think that's a little odd, and I'm not sure what to do with it. Should I perhaps do nothing?

But doing nothing is tricky. It can sometimes be a good idea. After all, it can be better to do nothing than to do something terribly wrong. The old ‘do no harm’ axiom. On the other hand, I’ve usually found that doing something, anything, in an attempt to get something done is better than doing nothing, because doing nothing just gets you more frustrated. Something about ‘don’t act and get frustrated, or act and don’t be frustrated’. That’s not it, but it’s along those lines. Look at Hamlet. Sometimes I feel like Hamlet. I guess we all do.

So, once again, nothing. It really is an interesting line/word. It’s a line Cordelia uses at the beginning of King Lear when Lear is asking her what more she has to say; ‘Nothing’. To which Lear responds, ‘Nothing will come of nothing.’ It’s a good response to ‘nothing’ and in fact I use it often with my wife and son when I get a ‘nothing’ response from them. ‘Nothing will come of nothing!’ By now they’ve come to expect this response, and their response back to me is of course the eyes rolling back in the head and... Nothing.

So I think we’ll stick with that for our commentary on this line. And nothing more.

I wonder how the king escaped our hands.     

-Earl of Warwick

King Henry the Sixth Part III     Act I, scene i       Line 1

All right then, we've done it. We've picked the very first line of the play. Totally Random Daily Shakespeare works! I haven't gotten to a last line yet, but I've gotten close, and I'll get there. Now then, I've already mentioned that I don't know much about this play, so don't expect too much engagement on it today. It appears that there is a bit of a scramble going on for the throne in this play and it starts right off with it. 'I wonder how the king escaped our hands.' This line makes me think of Richard Burton's song in Camelot; 'I wonder what the king is doing tonight. He's wishing he were in Scotland fishing tonight.' Ah, but that was King Arthur who didn't even really exist but in legend. And it was Lerner and Lowe doing the writing, not Will. I'm a bit surprised that our friend Will never took on the story of King Arthur. He borrowed lots of old stories of royalty; Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Coriolanus... the list goes on. Oh well.

‘I wonder how the king escaped our hands.’ So those are the very first words uttered in this play. What do they tell you? We know nothing about this play (well, maybe you do). We’re given that the setting is the Parliament House and that the people on stage are six Nobles and some soldiers. I’m not sure that as theater goers we’d be able to recognize who the noblemen on the stage are, or what they’re up to, but this first line would tell us a few things: The king is not among the men on the stage, these men are after the king, and there appears to be some discombobulation in the kingdom if there are a bunch of Nobles in parliament with armed soldiers trying to catch the king. The next lines are these fellows talking about action that has just occurred and whom they’ve just killed, and in fact one of the fellows has the head of the Duke of Somerset with him. No, I’m not kidding. The stage direction after Richard’s line is ‘Throwing down the Duke of Somerset’s head.’ I’m trying to picture this scene being performed in 1591 and I have to wonder how good the props were back then. We do know that the Globe Theater burned down in the early 1600’s in a fire caused by the sparks from a cannon fired off during a performance of Henry the Eighth. So apparently they tried to get as realistic as they could with their props. Maybe they used a real head that they got from a mortuary? Well, probably not, but it’s still an interesting thought. And after all, this isn’t the first time we’ve run into a head in Totally Random. Remember Macbeth’s head on a stick? Remember Titus’s two sons’ heads? Lots of heads in Shakespeare!

So you can probably tell that I’m not going to go into context today. I’m not prepared to do a lot of reading on Henry VI this morning. Oh we’ll probably get to it at some point. For goodness sakes, there are three full plays devoted to Henry VI so we’re bound to get back to the fellow. But not today. For now let’s be content to think about how well the first lines uttered on stage that day got things going (along with the severed head gag). And we’ll leave it at that.

                                                                             

My ears are stopt, and cannot hear good news,

So much of bad already hath possest them.

-Valentine

Two Gentlemen of Verona          Act IIi, scene i    Line 205

Okay, before I get into today’s line, I’m going to finish up on yesterday’s discussion. So I got the Arkangel CD and listened to it while reading Coriolanus last evening. No, I didn’t fall asleep. Now let’s be clear, I’m not going to be getting through every play that I don’t know like this, so don’t be thinking that I am. I’m still going to be using Wikipedia and other stuff to work through a lot of this stuff. But I have to say that gaining your own interpretation beats the heck out of relying on someone else’s summary. Now hopefully we’ll get some more Coriolanus lines in the near future.

So it turns out that these two guys that Menenius is talking to really are the schmucks. Turns out Coriolanus was probably a pretty good guy. But it also turns out that this play is pretty complicated. I was never quite sure whether or not Coriolanus (who got the name, by the way, from conquering the city of Corioli) was a good leader or not. It’s clear that he’s a good military leader, but not whether or not he’s a good peacetime leader. What is clear is that he is not a good politician. He refuses to tell the people what they wanted to hear and by doing so he manages to get himself banished. After that he ends up allying with Rome’s enemy and coming back to threaten Rome. In the end his mother and wife talk him out of sacking Rome, but then the guys he allied with end up killing him. Yes, tragedy. It’s a good play to read during an election year because it’s really all about politics and the themes are relevant to today’s politics. And it’s a really interesting play. So why doesn’t it get more air time? I dunno. It should. And again, hopefully we’ll end up back here soon.

In the meantime, on to today’s line. Two Gentlemen of Verona, a play I started to read once, but never got very far with.

Today’s line makes me think of the line from that song; ‘If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all!’

So we move from a tragedy where the poor guy gets slaughtered in the end, to a comedy. And yet the Totally Random Daily Shakespeare line is all about doom and gloom. I don’t know this play, so I don’t know what bad news Valentine is talking about. Is it real bad news, or is he like an awful lot of us; someone who’s got it pretty good but finds things to worry about. Should we spend some time reading the previous page or two to find out? Honestly, I don’t think I’m going to do that this morning. I put in quite a bit of time yesterday on Coriolanus, and mind you it was time well spent, but I think I’m going to have to back off a little today. So I’m going to leave this one up to you. It’s a perfectly understandable line, so you don’t need my help with it in that sense. If anyone is out there reading this, perhaps you can tell me; what is Valentine talking about? What’s all the bad news? And what’s this good news that’s come along now. I’ve added links to a few different sites where you can read the plays. Just go to the Links tab at the top of this blog (right underneath the picture of me and my brother chasing Will). We’ll see if anybody’s out there.

In the meantime, tomorrow’s random line will be coming from King Henry the Sixth Part III. That’s right, the life of Henry VI took up three plays. And unfortunately, though I’ve read both parts of Henry IV and Henry V, I know little to nothing about Henry VI. But I guess we’ll get to know at least a little bit of something tomorrow, eh?

This is strange now: do you two know how you

are censured here in the city, I mean of us o’the

right-hand file? Do you?

-Menenius Agrippa

Coriolanus          Act Ii, scene i      Line 15

What we have here is a bit of a rhetorical question by this Menenius Agrippa fellow to the two guys he’s chatting with. These two have just been criticizing Coriolanus as proud and boastful, and Menenius is about to rip into these guys telling him that they’re the ones who are proud as well as stupid. In fact, he’s going to spend the next little while telling these two what shmucks they are. And these guys are tribunes (politicians).

Now if I’m not mistaken (and I’m not because I just checked) we had one previous Totally Random Daily Shakespeare line from Coriolanus and it was also commenting about someone’s character, and that instance also had to do with politicians. In fact, I gave you a pic of the Donald and Hillary on that occasion. From which I guess we can draw the conclusion that this play is about politics? Well, in fact it is, albeit slightly different politics than what we have today. Nonetheless, it’s about the people who are leading, or trying to lead, the country.

So here’s what I’m gonna do. I have to run some errands right now and one of them is at the library. I’m going to get the Arkangel CD of Coriolanus and I’m going to try to listen to it tonight. My wife and son are away at the Minnesota State Fair for a few days, so I have the place to myself. Tonight is Coriolanus night. I’ll give you a report tomorrow on whether I get through it or not.

Wish me luck!

My life, sir, in any case: not that I am afraid

to die; but that, my offences being many, I

would repent out the remainder of nature: let

me live, sir, in a dungeon, I’the stocks, or any

where, so I may live.

-Parolles

All’s Well That Ends Well             Act IV, scene iii  Line 241-245

Okay, this is the second time we’ve hit All’s Well That Ends Well, and this time I've given you an earful. The first time we had the King talking about not buying into the advice of medical quacks. This time we’ve apparently got some guy named Parolles trying to bargain for his life. I could have given you just a piece of this, but I thought it was better to kind of give the whole statement. Just to give you a little context, the line previous to today’s Totally Random Daily Shakespeare is First Soldier saying ‘I perceive sir, by our general’s looks, we shall be fain to hang you.’ And, well you see the response above; this is Parolles pretty much pleading for his life. So what do we do with this? Well I’m not quite sure.

To be honest, I’m a little jaded by some of the good stuff we’ve come up with in the past week or so. Macbeth, Lear, Othello! And now we’re back to this play I know nothing about. Okay, well why don’t we just see what we can do with this line without trying to get too much into the play itself.

So first off, what’s the deal with this prose? I mean, where’s the blank verse iambic pentameter? It looks like this whole play is written in prose as opposed to the famous blank verse. Also, interestingly, I notice by looking at my cheat sheet that this play was written right between writing Othello and King Lear. So Will was in his heyday at this point. I never got a satisfactory answer about why Will worked sometimes in prose and sometimes in blank verse. In some plays, Henry IV for example, he uses both within the same play, switching back and forth. I suppose at some point we’re going to have to get into this a little further. Not now.

How about we cheat and talk about the word ‘fain’. I am fain to do so. It’s actually in the lead up First Soldier’s line and not the actual Totally Random Daily Shakespeare line, but it’s a good word nonetheless. Now this word is in the Shakespeare glossary, but it’s also in the modern dictionary even though it’s noted as archaic. It simply means ‘pleased’ (as I used it a few sentences ago), or ‘obliged’ (as the First Soldier used it). This is one of those words that I’ll actually use on occasion. Yes, I get the rolling eyeballs when I use it, but what the heck. It’s a perfectly good word, and why should we be discarding vocabulary? We shouldn't! I think I’ve previously mentioned ‘whilst’ and that I would be fain to have this word be brought back into popular usage. Well 'fain' is in the same boat.

So let's get at it People. That is today’s assignment (and also as far as we're going to go with today's line). I want you to find a way to work the word ‘fain’ into a conversation today. Honest, that word is still in the dictionary. Perfectly good English. So get at it. I am fain that you do so.

France is a bawd to Fortune and King John,

That strumpet Fortune, that usurping John!

-Constance

King John            Act III, scene i    Line 60-61

And we’re back to King John. Apparently fortune favors King John as this is our third visit here in 23 days. I guess I’m really going to have to start reading/listening to more of these plays so that I know the whole thing. Anyway, I keep reading more parts of King John, albeit randomly, as we go along. So what’s this line about? Let’s take a look.

Well apparently the whole play King John is about John trying to keep the throne while other people are trying to take it away from him, with other countries, principally France, getting involved backing different people. One of the people with a good claim to the throne is young Arthur. This kid's parents are Geoffrey (John's older brother who's now deceased) and Constance. Arthur's mother Constance is the speaker here and she's making reference to the fact that there's just been some sort of deal brokered whereby France will be backing John’s right to the throne. Of course, she’s not too happy that her kid Arthur is getting screwed out of his right to the throne (which would have made her the mother of the king; not a bad job all things considered). Keep in mind that this is the same Arthur that John eventually imprisons and tries to have killed later in the play, and who eventually dies trying to escape (see August 21 post). Anyway, at this point Constance is just plain pissed off. In 1600 terms a bawd is a pimp and a strumpet is a prostitute. So you can put the line together from there and realize that she’s saying some pretty not nice things about France and her brother-in-law John. Of course, she’s speaking figuratively. (it just occurred to me that even though I don’t have a brother-in-law named John, I do have ones named Richard and Edward. And though neither of them was a British monarch, they both have British monarch names. Hey, how about that!)

On a separate note, In 23 random lines so far I believe this is at least the third one where we’ve run into Will’s reference to prostitution in either a figurative sense (here and August 25 post) or literal sense (August 30). So can we assume that the bawdy old Bard had some sort of fixation with prostitution? Well, that’s probably not enough evidence for that. Yet.

And finally, let’s talk about using (or not using) those Shakespearean insults. You can find whole websites devoted to Shakespearean insults where you can get all sorts of neat sounding insults to use against your friends and enemies without them actually knowing that you’re insulting them. I’m not really a big advocate of the Shakespearean insult thing. I mean, we’ve just learned that Strumpet is prostitute and bawd is pimp. Well even though you could get away with using these words because no one will know what you’re saying, you should consider what they really mean and realize that you probably don’t want to call that person a prostitute. Do you?