This day my sister should the cloister enter,

And there receive her approbation:

-Claudio

Measure For Measure                   Act I, scene ii        Line 175

If I’m not mistaken, we  had another Claudio quote only a few days ago. Oh wait, that was Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. Different Claudio, different play. Carry on.

It looks like this is our third visit to this play. We had the ‘wish him well’ line in sept, and the ‘justice, justice, justice, justice line’ earlier this month. Okay, so we haven’t really done a thing with context in this particular play. Well I see no reason to change that today. Besides, as I noted elsewhere we’ve got about 342 years of material for these posts, and we’re only on our 79^th day of posting, so we’ll have plenty of time to flesh out Measure For Measure at a later date. Let’s just look at the line for today.

So he wants his sister to join the convent. Interesting.  I’m really tempted to dive into this one and find out what’s going on and why Claudio wants his sister to join the convent. I can certainly tell you that I never had any thoughts about either of my sisters joining the convent. And they didn’t. They both got married. In fact I was talking to one the other day because she had been in the hospital for a week and a half and I didn’t even know it. Do you run into that kind of stuff with your family? Of course my other sister lives in Phoenix so that if she was in the hospital for a month and a half I might not ever know it. But again, the convent? I don’t think so. And this could get us back to that discussion we were having last week with Prospero’s Tempest line about fathers putting the daughters’ boyfriends to the test. I was saying then that I really didn’t relate to that, and if I don’t relate to trying to control what my daughters are doing then it follows that I’m really not going to relate to trying to control what my sisters are doing. Ooof. So I guess I’ll just say, Jean, Marie, you’re free to join the convent if you want, but please don’t think that I’m advocating it. What our friend Claudio is thinking, well I have no idea. Moving on…

This is what the sisters in the convent looked like when I was a kid. That's Sister Catherine Marie on the right, my eighth grade teacher. I don't know whether or not her brother had anything to do with her joining the convent. Heck, I don't even know if she had a brother.

One, but painted thus,

Would be interpreted a thing perplext

Beyond self-explication.

-Imogen

Cymbeline                          Act III, scene iv    Line 7

I’ve got a new way of working with these lines. I’ve completed downloading all the Shakespeare Arkangel cd’s on to my PC. So now I have at my fingertips every line of every play acted out. This morning’s line didn’t make too much sense right out of the chute. It’s not complete gibberish, but not the clearest. So I read the play summary to see what’s going on (Imogen’s husband thinks she’s cheating on him and so he’s sent Pisanio to kill her. Imogen’s line above is directed to Pisanio who is there to kill her, but doesn’t want to kill her. She doesn’t realize yet that he’s there to kill her). Just having an idea of what’s taking place helps a lot. But then listening to Imogen and Pisanio talking adds even more. What Imogen is saying to Pisanio is that he looks extremely perplexed. And he is. He’s been tasked with killing Imogen and he doesn’t want to, or perhaps doesn’t feel he’s able to. Apparently Pisanio is a servant of Imogen’s husband. Since I’ve not read this play I don’t know what kind of guy Imogen’s husband is. I guess we can assume he’s not all that forgiving for one thing. I’m also not sure whether or not Imogen is guilty as charged either, though from reading further on in the scene I’m guessing not. And also I don’t know how much Pisanio knows about Imogen’s guilt or innocence of the charge. Lots of unknowns!

So let’s just stick with the line, shall we?

You look more perplexed than can be explained, even by you, the one who is perplexed.

That’s what Imogen is saying. Fairly simple. And again, Pisanio is quite perplexed and who can blame him. He has orders from his master to kill this woman, and he does not/cannot kill her. That is perplexing.

Have you ever seen someone who looked perplexed beyond explanation? Perplexed beyond the point that even the perplexed one could not explain why he/she was perplexed? I really feel like I’m that perplexed sometimes. I wonder if people see me that way or if my perplexiveness is apparent or not. Yeah, I really feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time being perplexed. Why do you suppose that is?

So it’s a good line for me. Or at least quite relevant. I’m guessing I won’t be hearing it too soon. But maybe sometime real soon I’ll hear someone say ‘Hey Pete, you look really perplexed.’ And if I do, I can reply, ‘Well do I look like one, but painted thus, would be interpreted a thing perplext beyond self-explication?’ Then they would be the one perplext!

This is Spike. He can't figure out that he can get past this gate just by going around it. He thinks he's stuck. You can't see the expression on his face, but if you could you might say one, but painted thus, would be interpreted a thing perplex beyond self-explication.

Courage enough: I do not fear the flaw:

It hath done to me the worst.

-Pericles

 Pericles                 Act III, scene i      Line 39

Okay, first things first. This is our second trip to Pericles. You can check out the 8/30/16 post for a little (very little) background on the play. Second things second. This is a pretty screwy play. I’m not sure if it’s considered a comedy or a tragedy. It’s listed in my A.L. Rowse compilation as a tragedy, and yet it seems to have a pretty happy ending.

In regards to today’s line, this is Pericles on a ship in a storm making reference first to himself, having courage enough, then to the storm or perhaps fate in general, the flaw, and finally to the fact that his wife has just died in childbirth on the ship, It hath done to me the worst. So, yeah, I admit that this sounds a bit tragic at this point, but the tale really does have a happy ending and there’s quite a bit of screwy stuff going on from beginning to end.

And now, a quick note on something I noticed; assisting the storm. A few lines up from today’s Totally Random line, when Pericles shows signs of getting upset that his wife has died in childbirth the nurse says to Pericles ‘do not assist the storm’ (don’t make matters worse). I recognized that ‘assist the storm’ from The Tempest in the first scene when the king’s men are yelling at the sailors in the storm and one of the sailors yells back ‘you do assist the storm.’ From what I’ve read, these two plays were both written about the time that voyages to the New World were very big in the news. And so Will has two plays that have scenes upon the high seas (though, yes, Pericles's seas are the Mediterranean Sea). And in both he uses the same phrase about ‘assisting the storm’. I’m pretty sure that Will never got off dry land, so I wonder if this was a popular phrase from back then in the accounts of sea travel. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting.

So anyway, Courage enough: I do not fear the flaw: It hath done to me the worst. It’s a surprisingly optimistic line if you think about it. He’s taken just about everything that fate can throw at him, and he’s still standing. It seems like he feels good about that. Yeah, that’s right: Pericles may not be an actual bad ass, but he’s not backing down or giving up either. We could all use a little of Pericles attitude to get us through the day. Joel Osteen would be proud of Pericles, and good for him!

                                                                                         My wife is big on Joel. Good for her!

Go with me to my tent, where you shall see

How hardly I was drawn into this war,

How calm and gentle I proceeded still

In all my writings.

-Octavius Caesar

 

Antony and Cleopatra                   Act V, scene i       Line 75

These are the words of Octavius Caesar upon learning of the death of Antony. For starters, ‘hardly’ in this context means ‘with great difficulty’. Consider now that Caesar came all the way to Egypt to fight Antony because Antony was rebelling, sort of. Consider also that Caesar and Antony were compatriots, even friends, at one point. Caesar does not sound triumphant in this line. Contrast this with “Taking Comfort” at the severed head of Macbeth in the 8/27 post. Caesar sounds tired in this line, and in the lines that lead up to this he’s downright sad. If you listen to this scene acted out (it’s a pretty short scene and this is the end of it), which I did, you’ll really get the sadness and resignation in Caesar’s voice.

I’m not quite sure what Will is making reference to in ‘all my writings’. There are actual writings of Octavius Caesars that survived, but this is a little confusing. It’s an interesting little line and it seems to get more interesting the more I look at it. Like almost all of Will’s stuff. Somehow the tone of this line reminds me a little of Prospero at the end of The Tempest when he’s inviting Alonso and his group back to his cell. It’s a very different play, a comedy as opposed to a tragedy, but there’s just something about the tone that I find familiar. I can’t help but think that over the course of thirty-whatever plays that Will wrote that he came to the same place of human feelings many times, even if this is not what I think it is in regards to The Tempest specifically. In any event, I think that’s all I’ve got on this one for today.

                         The death of the just is like the aurora of a beautiful day which will never end.

This is a picture I took today of a grave marker on a church grounds in Southington. It’s the only marker there, and it doesn’t appear to be a cemetery, but there it was nonetheless. I was struck by the death of the just... epitaph on the stone more than anything else, and I felt it resonated somehow with the death of Mark Antony, a death that precipitated today’s Totally Random line.

Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her,

And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,

Suff’ring my friend for my sake to approve her;

-Narrator

Sonnet 42

And here were are, finally; Sonnets. Now if you thought reading A Lover’s Complaint was tough, well think again. You’re probably thinking ‘Wait a minute Pete, I’ve heard some of these sonnets, and they’re not so tough. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”’ Yeah, well that one’s not too bad, but unfortunately most of the other ones (there’s 154 of them in total) are not so simple. And it seems that they are mostly all connected and they keep following a theme, almost a story, and they can get pretty difficult to comprehend.

Now take this one here. I have (actually, it’s ‘had’; past tense—see the picture below) a really good book of Wills’ Sonnets with really good explanations. Keep in mind that these sonnets are all fourteen lines long. That’s pretty short. My book has footnotes for just about every line of every sonnet, and also a brief summary/explanation of each sonnet. Here’s the summary of Sonnet 42:

The poet grieves more for the loss of his young friend than for that of his mistress, but tries to persuade himself that the common ground between the young lovers is himself, and that, in loving the youth, the woman is manifesting her love for the poet with whom the youth, too, is united in love. An exercise in self-consolation, sonnet 42 explores what may be said in the manner of Sidney’s Astrophil’s attempts ‘to make myself believe that all is well’.

Got that? Yeah, that’s what I said.

Just for reference, and in case you're keeping score, that’s a quote from The Arden Shakespeare copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones. That’s about as good as I’m going to get for citing here; I hope that’s enough for you.

Anyway, the point is that these sonnets are pretty tough. I wish they were all ‘Shall I compare thee…’ but they’re not. Let’s let this one go for now. The next time we hit the sonnets (they take of 19 of the 1,252 pages of my book) we’ll perhaps get into it a little more. In the meantime, I’m off to the Giant (see picture in yesterday’s post).

And this is my Arden Shakespeare's Sonnets. If you're wondering what happened to it, I'll tell you. I was sitting in the living room reading it, and one of the dogs walked in, looked at me, and proceeded to lift his leg and pee on the cabinet. Without taking his eyes off me! Well I threw the book at him, and of course it ended up landing in the puddle. I rinsed it off and put it outside to dry. But I'm afraid my Arden Shakespeare's Sonnets isn't ever going to be the same. Oh world, thy slippery turns!

I would I were invisible, to catch the strong fellow by the leg.

-Celia

 As You Like It     Act I, scene ii        Line 206

This is a pretty easy scene to set. Orlando (one of the main characters) is going to wrestle Charles (a very minor character, but in this scene he’s the ‘strong fellow’). I think they’re wrestling for money. In any event, they’re wrestling for a crowd, and Charles is a professional wrestler while Orlando is not. Celia (the speaker) is in the crowd with her cousin Rosalind. Apparently Orlando is quite the young hunk because it seems like both Celia and Rosalind are instantly in his fan club. You’ll remember that in our 8/23 post we had Rosalind giving Orlando a chain to wear. That line was from the same page that we’re on now, but occurs after the wrestling match is over. And you might guess based on that line that it’s Rosalind who ends up with Orlando. But for now, it’s Celia who’s sending her wishes that she could help Orlando in the wrestling match.

There, that’s what’s going on and why Celia utters today’s Totally Random line. Anyone out there got any thoughts? Because I have to be honest, I’m drawing a blank. For once I am very familiar with the play and the scene. And the language is perfectly easy to understand. But I just can’t think of much to add. So where do we go from here?

This makes me think of the time I was in Composition 101 as a freshman at St. Bonaventure. One day the professor had us write an essay in class. He told us to pick any subject, absolutely anything, and write a few pages on it. Everybody else started writing away. I sat there thinking, and thinking, and thinking. Finally I started writing about the fact that I couldn’t think of anything to write about. And I wrote a couple of pages on that. I handed that in and got a decent grade.

So I can think about a fairly meaningless experience I had in 1976, but I can’t think of anything to say about Celia’s comment that she’d like to get invisible so she can help Orlando win the wrestling match. Well this isn’t going to be a very good Totally Random Daily Shakespeare post if all you get is my lame story from 1976. But it will certainly qualify as Totally Random, and with the line up above you’re getting your Daily Shakespeare. Hmmm. I guess I can get away with that for today. Come to think of it, not much different than what I got away with in 1976, is it? I guess I’d just as soon be a little bit invisible today. How about you? Ever feel like being a little bit invisible?

Today’s Totally Random line is the first one that touches on any sport, in this case wrestling. There’s a lot of fighting in Will’s plays, but very little sports. Tomorrow morning I’m going to take a crack at my favorite sport. Can you guess what it is? And by the way, this sport was invented in Scotland about a hundred years before Will was born. Hey, I wonder if it's mentioned in any of his plays?

This done, see that you take no longer days,

But send the midwife presently to me.

-Aaron

 Titus Andronicus              Act IV, scene ii     Line 166

Let’s be clear here. The ‘this done’ that the speaker is referring to is the burying of the body of the nurse he just killed. And the reason he wants them to send the midwife to him is so that he can kill her too. So we’ve picked one Totally Random line from this play (okay, there’s two lines because I wanted to finish the sentence) and it is talking about not one, but two, murders. Now this is the second time that we’ve come across Titus Andronicus and if you’ll recall, the last time we were here (I believe it was 8/29) we were dealing with a severed hand and two severed heads. At that time I was ranting about what a bizarre and violent play this is. I guess I can just continue the rant, eh?

Titus was one of the first plays that Will wrote, and of course we really have no idea what he was thinking when he went into this one. Oh the Greenblatts and the Shapiros would have you know that Will ‘could have’ been reacting to his event, or ‘may have’ been present at that event which ‘might possibly’ have shaped his way of thinking. But the reality is that we just don’t know (one of these days I’m going to get into a serious rant about how much we don’t know about Will, but not today). We don’t even know for sure when he wrote this play but it seems to be in pretty good agreement that it was one of his first. That being said, was he going for the shock and awe effect, or what? I guess I could go back and count the murders and dismemberments, but…

So I guess the moral of the story is that if you’re trying to get some teenage boys interested in Shakespeare then, sorry to say, you might want to use this play. And that comment can lead us into a really long discussion of violence in today’s society, video games, movies, etc., etc. But I’m really not prepared to go there right now.  Let’s see if we can’t just find something a bit more restful or peaceful to end today’s post on.

                                                                   This is a Tennessee sunset. Pretty, isn't it? And Peaceful.