Caesar and Antony have ever won

More in their officer than person.

-Ventidius

Antony and Cleopatra   Act III, scene i      Line 17

Before I start with today’s Totally Random line can I just say that I realize that you can make some pretty good arguments for why this Totally Random thing that I’m doing is a bit screwy. And maybe it is, but there’s one thing I’d like to say in defense of it. This process makes me look at lines, and sections, that I (and maybe no one else) would otherwise never have keyed in on. And if there’s one thing we’ve come to realize over the past four hundred years it’s that there really isn’t much of anything in Will’s works that’s extemporaneous. It all has meaning, you just have to look for it. I don’t know where I came up with this Totally Random idea, but I’ve been doing it now for eighty-four straight days and I don’t see any signs of stopping. I’m not proud…

And that leads me to today’s line and scene. It’s a short scene with two guys who don’t figure much in this play. Ventidius is one of Antony’s generals and he was sent by Antony to fight the battle in Parthia. Ventidius has fought that battle and won and now his buddy Silius is advising him to go after the routed enemy and make an even greater victory. But Ventidius explains to Silius that he’s not going to do this for fear of accomplishing too much and by doing so showing up Marc Antony. Ventidius is a cagey old soldier and well knows that he has to know his place. He knows that guys like himself are what makes Caesar and Antony great. And this is an important, and well worth noting, point. And it reminds me of a personal story.

When I was first getting started in accounting I was working for a big firm (Big 8 at the time, now it’s Big 4). My manager told me something one day that has stuck with me all these years. He looked at me and said “Your job is to make me look good.” Well my first thought was, ‘Yeah, I don’t think so, buddy!’ But I realized after thinking about it how true that statement is. It was true then, and it’s always been true. And Ventidius knows it too. His job as a subordinate is to make Antony look good. And that’s how Antony, Caesar, George Washington, Admiral Nelson, and all those other great leaders succeeded. They had very capable people, like Ventidius, beneath them. Of course, not all the Ventidius’s of the world know this. But this one does.

This is my only souvenir of my days back in Big Eight accounting. No, it doesn't really have anything to do with making my manager look good. It's a lock that I had to have cut off the briefcase with the work papers in it because I got to the client and realized I'd left the key home. Luckily I was at a client that had a mechanic's shop and that my manager wasn't there that day. So he had no idea that I wasn't making him look particularly good, and that he wasn't winning more in his officer that day.

These good fellows will bring thee where I

am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold

their course for England: Of them I have

much to tell thee.

 

-Horatio (reading a letter written by Hamlet)

 

Hamlet                 Act IV, scene vi   Line 27

What Hamlet has to tell Horatio of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is that they are as good as dead. Yes friends, we’re back to Hamlet, where just about everyone ends up dying. Well, not Horatio. He’s one of the lucky few.

So it’s been a while since I’ve seen or read Hamlet and I’d completely forgotten about Hamlet’s little adventure on the high seas. Now we don’t actually have any scenes in this play taking place at sea like we do in The Tempest and Pericles,  so we don’t get that line about ‘assisting the storm’ (see 10/26 post). In Hamlet we just hear about what happened on the ship via this letter to Horatio. And what happened was that Claudius sent Hamlet to England with these two characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as his guardians. Claudius also sent a note with R&G asking the folks in England to kill Hamlet. Neither R&G nor Hamlet knew the contents of the note initially. But there’s a whole kerfuffle with pirates, and somehow Hamlet gets his hands on the note. Well he changes the note so that it asking the English to kill R&G (this very much unbeknownst to R&G), and he gets away from the pirates and R&G and heads back to Denmark. So now R&G are headed to England without Hamlet and with a note telling the Brits to kill them. So that should be amusing for the Brits. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will be handing a note to them from Claudius saying ‘Please kill these guys handing you the note.’ And who says Will didn’t have a sense of humor?

This is a pic of me and my sister and my cousin when we were kids acting out the scene from Hamlet where Hamlet goes to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Jimmy and Jean (left and center) are R&G, but I can’t remember which one was which, and I’m not sure what the thought process was behind the costumes. The sandbox behind us is the boat, and that’s me playing Hamlet on the right. You can see I’m holding the letter in my hand, and I’m going for that part-confused, part-mad-as-hell look. You know, sort of half way between Olivier and Branagh. I think I really nailed it. What do you think?

For no ill will I bear you.

-Phebe

 

As You Like It                     Act III, scene iv    Line 69

Well today we’re back to one of Will’s scenes with the woman pretending to be a man (again, if you count the actor playing the role of the woman, it’s a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man). In this case it is the country girl Phebe falling instantly in love with Rosalind, the latter being disguised as the young fellow named Ganymede. But of course Rosiland/Ganymede has no feelings for Phebe because she’s not gay and is only interested in men, and in particular in Orlando. So this raises an interesting question; is Will attempting, in his inimitable cagey fashion, to address gayness in 1600 England? Let’s be clear on a few items. First, I’m not historically savvy enough to know much of anything about gay society in 1600 England, but I’d have to guess that it’s not exactly an open thing. Second, Will spent quite a bit of time having various female roles masquerading as men, and in many of these cases it was pretty clear that the sexual orientation question was not on the table (consider Portia/Balthazar in Merchant Of Venice). However, the wordplay and the scenario in this particular scene lends itself to this question of whether or not he’s trying to address gayness. Phebe appears to be head over heels with Ganymede/Rosalind. So I put it to you; Is Will bringing up the matter of gay women or gayness in general, and if he is, what’s he saying about it? In this scene Rosalind realizes that Phebe is interested in her and is doing everything she can to dissuade her. But she’s having a tough time of it. In the meantime Phebe has a man after her, but she seems to want no part of this fellow as she pursues Ganymede/Rosalind. So what gives?

For no ill will I bear you. That’s what infatuated Phebe is saying to Ganymede/Rosalind. Is Will talking here? Is he saying that he’s perfectly accepting of women who are attracted to other women (even if she is dressed as a man)? Well, what do you think?

In the interest of fair disclosure, and to recognize Halloween (which I’m pretty sure was not being celebrated as a costume holiday in Will’s time), here’s a pic of two young ladies I know. I believe I had something to do with the older one’s costume which is her being dressed up as a guy (I can't take any credit for the little cheeseburger LT, that was Aunt Nancy's doing). And I’m pretty sure I wasn’t trying to make any kind of a statement about gayness at the time, so maybe I’m just completely off base with my line of thinking about Will above. Oh, and this pic is pretty old, about twenty years or so, but apparently you can’t dress as a hobo anymore because it’s insensitive. So, sorry about that.

Nay, then I’ll stop your mouth. --- Bring

thou her husband:

-Chiron

Titus Andronicus                              Act II, scene iii     Line 185

Today I’m keeping it short, and I’m tempted, and not for the first time, to toss the Totally Random thing and go back to yesterday’s play, Othello. Yes, there’s a bunch of bad stuff to come in that one, but Good Michael, look you to the guard tonight. It’s such a simple line and the Good Michael is just so lovely.

But we'll move to today’s line. To be clear, Chiron is talking to Lavinia, telling her he’s going to shut her up, and then telling his brother to bring over the dead body of Lavinia’s husband. Oh, and what was Lavinia talking about that Chiron wants to shut her up? Lavinia was pleading with Chiron’s mother Tamora to kill her instead of letting Tamora’s two son’s Chiron and Demetrius rape her. No, Tamora’s not going to be stopping them. She’s cheering them on. And for the record, Chiron’s going to stop her mouth (after they rape her) by cutting out her tongue. Oh and they’ll cut off her hands for good measure. Sweet Jesus, give me ‘Good Michael’ any day!

Okay, this is pretty random, but I wanted to put a picture of something good, and completely apart from today's Totally Random line. This is about the best book I ever read, and I remember the first time I read it almost fifty years ago.

Good Michael, look you to the guard tonight:

-Othello

Othello                 Act II, scene ii      Line 1

Okay, the first thing I have to talk about, and something that I don’t remember at all from when I studied this play ten years ago is the name Michael. Cassio’s name is Michael Cassio. There’s Othello, and Iago, and Rodrigo, and a bunch of other one name guys, and then there’s Michael Cassio. How does this guy rate two names? It reminds me a little of Michael Corleone. It’s a very nice name though. All the other guys sound like they belong living in 16^th century Venice, which is appropriate. But Michael Cassio? That sounds like someone I might have gone to high school with. Now I forget what happens to Mr. Cassio, but I’m thinking it can’t be good. Iago makes such a mess of things that just about everyone is either targeted or just collateral damage. Ah wait, remember? Back on our 8/31 post. That was from Act V and the rat Iago stabs Cassio there. But I’m not sure if Michael dies or not. I’m hoping not because I’m really feeling good about Mr. Cassio. Guess we’ll have to get back to that one.

Good Michael, look you to the guard tonight. It’s a very pleasant demeanor displayed by our tragic hero Othello in this line. He’s a good guy that Othello. In fact, as I recall pretty much everyone in this play is a pretty decent. Except for that one trouble maker Iago. He is not a decent fellow and he makes trouble for just about everyone up to the very end of the play. And nobody picks up on it. How is that possible? Just five lines down from today’s Totally Random line is Othello saying “Iago is most honest.” Really!?!

But getting back to Will’s good guys and bad guys, and the ones we’re not sure about. Well I think we’re pretty sure about this guy Iago from the giddyup. No, the other folks in the play are fooled. But we the audience, we know pretty much from the start that this guy is just plain evil. Almost to the point where we want to yell to the other actors on the stage and warn them. I wonder if anyone ever did? Maybe the groundlings? I guess we’ll never know.

In the meantime, let’s let this be our take away. Let’s try to address someone today prefixing it with ‘good’. Wait, I just realized something; this is going to work much better with some names than others. You need a name with the accent on the first syllable, like Michael. Good Peter, Good William, Good Walker… these all work. Good Patrice, not so much. So assuming you can find someone with a good name, give it a try. Nothing fancy…

Good Walker, can you hand me that book over there.

Good William, how was your day.

See how it works. I’m thinking people will like being addressed as ‘good’. And if you can make someone happy with something as simple as this, why not do it? What do you say, good reader?

I met a fellow named Michael from Ukraine this afternoon. He was a salesman helping us in a furniture store. As we were leaving I said 'Good Michael, thank you very much.'

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.