The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?—No more o’that, my lord, no more o’that: you mar all with this starting.

-Lady Macbeth

 

Macbeth                              Act V, scene i     Line 44

Well this is the page with ‘Out damned spot!’, which is a really famous line. Robert Frost alluded to it in his poem ‘Out, Out –‘. But we landed a few lines down, so we’ll go with what we have. Anyway, I’m pretty excited that I have the perfect picture for today’s post. You’d be surprised how long it takes to come up with some of those lame pictures. Anyway, the line.

This is Lady Macbeth sleepwalking and sleeptalking. Her gentlewoman, which is to say her servant, has called in the doctor to observe, as apparently this is not the first episode of sleepwalking/talking. And these two are watching the Lady as she walks and talks. This is late in the play, so that the guilt of killing… let’s see, who have they killed so far? They’ve taken out Duncan personally, and put a hitman on Banquo. Anyone else? Yes, I believe Macduff’s wife and whole family was taken care of. Anyway, all of her lines in this short scene are sleeptalking ramblings. She started with the famous ‘spot’ thing, and now in today’s line she’s just sort of rambling. The Thane of Fife is Macduff, and where is his wife now? Dead, thanks to the Macbeths. This Lady is having trouble sleeping? I think the shocker would be if she weren’t having trouble sleeping.

So here’s the pic I was so excited about. This painting I’m standing in front of is on the cover of Harold C. Goddard’s The Meaning of Shakespeare, a book that I own. Well I was wandering the Louvre with my Cordelias a few years ago and I came upon this painting. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had no idea the painting was in the Louvre, or that it was so huge and dark since I’d only seen it on the cover of the book. But it’s a painting of this very scene, Lady Macbeth wandering in her sleep and the doc and the gentlewoman looking at her. The lighting is pretty bad. You can barely see the doc and the gentlewoman on the bottom right in the dark. Here’s a link if you want to see the picture better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking_scene#/media/File:Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_030.jpg

Yeah, believe it or not that’s the same picture. Anyway, I got my picture taken with the picture. And now I’m using the picture! This has got to be the most appropriate and relevant pic for any post that I've come up with yet. Don't you think so? Pretty exciting, eh?

Believe not thy disdain, but presently

Do thine own fortunes that obedient right

Which both thy duty owes and our power claims;

Or I will throw thee from my care for ever

Into the staggers and the careless lapse

Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate

Loosing upon thee, in the name of justice,

Without all terms of pity. Speak; thine answer.

-King

 

All’s Well That Ends Well             Act II, scene iii   Line 168

Yes, I went a little long here on the line. It just seems that some days we need to go with quite a few lines to get any kind of continuity. Sorry about that.

Okay, here’s what’s going on here. Helena found a cure for the king and her reward is that she gets to pick any guy in the kingdom to be her husband. She picks Bertram, who’s a lord and he wants nothing to do with here because she’s a commoner. And the king’s response to that is what he says to Bertram in today’s Totally Random line: Bertram had better take Helena ‘or else!’ And what is Betram’s answer? The little weasel puts his tail between his legs and says that Helena is just fine for him. So that didn’t take much, did it? One quick threat and he caves. Would that all issues could be resolved with a simple threat.

‘You heard me, do thine own fortunes that obedient right which both thy duty owes and our power claims and practice your piano! Now!’

Oh yeah, that’ll work. Sure. Keep dreaming.

And by the way, here’s that disdain word again. Well at least now we know exactly what it means.

That's a nice piano, isn't it? See anyone practicing on it? No, me neither.

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease;

-Narrator

Sonnet 147

Sonnet time again. Turning to the messed up sonnet book we find the following synopsis of Sonnet 147 by Katherine Duncan-Jones:

Identifying his passion for the woman as a disease, the speaker shows himself abandoned by reason and in the grip of love-madness, which has deranged his judgement.

Hmmm. Well today’s lines are the first two lines of the sonnet. Remember, fourteen lines to a sonnet. And I think you can see that Will is certainly doing as Katherine says, describing his love as a disease, a fever. Ms Duncan-Jones also suggests that ‘longing still / For that which longer’ implies that the speaker wants to prolong the fever. Thoughts anyone?

I guess to be fair, if we’re going to get into an analysis of a sonnet, we’d pretty much have to look at the whole thing. Yes, all fourteen lines. But I’m not prepared to do that today. I’m just going to take these two lines as they are. Sounds like, ‘My love is making me delirious with sweat and I want it to continue.’ Yeah, that’s about it. Does that sound right to you?

Now, before I go to today's picture I wanted to tell you about an article I was reading in Arts and Letters an hour ago. It was about a book review of a new book that purports to answer the question of who Will was writing the sonnets to. So that's kind of relevant, don't you think? If you're interested, here's the link to the sonnet article. 

Okay, now you can have the pic.

I don't remember exactly what I was doing this day, but I was obviously working hard because I'm wearing my eye protection and my patented sponge sweatband. So I'm pretty sure it wasn't the delirium of love that was making me sweat (or causing me to give that hairy eyeball).

That goldsmith there, were he not pack’d with her,

Could witness it, for he was with me then;

Who parted with me to go fetch a chain,

Promising to bring it to the Porpentine,

Where Balthazar and I did dine together.

-Antipholus of Ephesus

The Comedy Of Errors    Act V, scene i     Line 224

The MW online gives us the definition of porpentine as an obsolete version of porcupine. Fair enough. But whether you go with porpentine or porcupine, I think it’s a delightful name for an inn or restaurant which is what we have here.

I believe this is our first foray into The Comedy of Errors. Since my knowledge of this play is non-existent, I did a little reading on it, and a little listening of it. Certainly I didn’t cover the whole thing, but I’ve got a pretty good sense of the gist of it, and this one is pure comedy farce (unlike some of the other comedies – for instance, The Merchant Of Venice). Let me see if I can summarize.

There are two sets of twins separated shortly after birth. One set of twins are rich kids, and the other set of twins are poor kids who become the servants of each of these two rich kids. Somehow or other, the two rich brothers have the same name, Antipholus, and the two servants have the same name, Dromio. Throughout the play they are referred to as Antipholus of Ephisus or Antipholus of Syracuse (same for the Dromios) in the text so that we can keep them straight. The play takes place in Ephisus where the Syracusans are visiting. All the other people in the play can’t tell the twins apart and up until the final scene the twins don’t end up in the same place at the same time. And also, none of the twins know that their other twins are in this town. As you can imagine, the misunderstandings abound, and that’s what the play is built on; misunderstanding after misunderstanding. At this point in the play we are moments away from the two sets of twins appearing on the stage together as we’re in the final scene and only a few hundred lines are left.  

So there are all sorts of amazing coincidences built into this play that we’d have to overlook, but we can do that. We can just say ‘Well, that’s Hollywood,’ like we would do for a lot of movies. And  we assume that they used one guy to play both Antipholuses and one guy to play both Dromios, but I do wonder how they pulled off the very end of the play where the two Antipholuses and the two Dromios finally end up on stage together. Anyway, today's Totally Random line is part of just one of many, many misunderstandings that come about in the play. But I’d prefer to get back to the Porpentine.

For one thing, I think it’s a great word. And much better than porcupine which isn’t pronounced por-cue-pine, it’s pronounced por-kee-pine. Why not go with a word that we can pronounce as we see it? And for another thing, what a great name for an inn or restaurant. The Porpentine (or Porcupine). I googled it, and there is at least one Porcupine Inn, and one Porcupine Restaurant in the U.S. I didn’t spend any time on it, so I’m guessing there’s more than one. And why not? It’s a great name for a place. And he dined there with Balthazar. Balthazar! There’s gotta be few of those kicking around as well. Can you imagine? Someone asks you where you were and you would be able to say I was dining at the Porpentine with Balthazar? I just think it would be fabulous to be able to say that. ‘I dined with Balthazar at the Porpentine.’

Don’t you?

I tried to find an interestingly named restaurant that I'd been to. All I could come up with was the place where we had this stuff. I don't even remember what this stuff was. I think that might be reindeer meat on the top. The place was interesting because it was a really fancy place and it was in the middle of nowhere. Literally. But it was called Husset, which is not nearly as good as the Porpentine. I don't know what Husset means, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean Porcupine.

O heaven! O heavenly powers!

 

-Emilia

 

Othello                 Act V, scene ii    Line 218

All right then, just two days ago we had the ‘The handkerchief!’ line from Act III, scene iv of Othello. Now today we’ve zipped right to the very end of the play. We’re in the last scene, and there are just 154 lines left in the play.

Everything’s hitting the fan here as we’re way past asking about a hanky. Othello has already suffocated his wife Desdemona in their bedroom, and now Iago’s wife Emilia, along with Iago, Gratiano, and Montano are there, and Othello is explaining that his wife was unfaithful with Michael Cassio and that’s why he killed her. When he finishes his statement with the part about Cassio having the handkerchief Emilia can’t control herself any longer. That’s when she lets loose with today’s Random line crying O heaven! O heavenly powers! A few lines later she explains that she stole the hanky and gave it to Iago, not realizing what her rat of a husband was going to do with it. And if things weren’t unraveling before, well that really does it.

So you’ve got to wonder if that’s the first thing Will came up with for Emilia’s line. Consider that it’s an exclamation about the terrible doings of Iago, and she uses the word ‘heaven’ twice when in fact what’s taking place here is about as far away from heavenly as it can be. I’m thinking that Will went through a few ideas before coming up with this one.

 “Okay, let’s see, he’s just killed his wife, and he’s about to kill himself. And that rat Iago’s wife has just realized that she helped the rat by stealing the hanky. So what should I have her say? Hmmm. Have her scream? No, that can’t be right. Too predictable. There’s got to be something better than that. ‘Rat, you dirty rat!’ No, no, that’s not right either. Something else, there’s got to be something else. I’ve got it! ‘Heavens!’ Yes, ‘heavens!.’ Everything’s going straight to hell in a handbasket, so what should she say? ‘Heavens!’ Of course! Oh that’s hysterical!”

That old Will had himself one serious sense of humor.

Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eye

For all the treasure that thine uncle owes:

 

-Hubert De Burgh

 

King John            Act IV, scene i    Line 122

We talked about this scene (even though we didn’t actually have a line from it) back on August 21st. I said at the time that I found it to be a touching scene, and I still do. This is Hubert De Burgh, who young Arthur considers a friend, finally relenting and telling the lad that he’s not going to be burning his eyes out. Up to this point in the scene he had been determined to do it, because he’s been told that he has to, and here he finally says that he won’t. Arthurs’ reply is that now Hubert looks like Hubert, and that before he relented he appeared to be disguised.

That’s an interesting observation on the part of young Arthur, and one that we might be able to appreciate. Can you imagine someone you care about and trust all of a sudden threatening you. I don’t suppose you would recognize them as themselves either. And yet, they wouldn’t be wearing a disguise, or actually have a different appearance. But maybe it would be something in their eyes that told you that this person is not the person you think it is. That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? I can’t think of any instance in my life where this rings true. But I can imagine it, and I think it would scare the heck out of me. And it must have been a very good thing for Arthur in the end when he recognized that his good friend Hubert was back. I hope for Arthur’s sake that Hubert doesn’t go away again any time soon.

Hold on there now, this person really is disguised! Hey, wait a minute. That's my wife!

The handkerchief!

 

-Othello

Othello                 Act III, scene iv Line 91

Well this is a fabulous line! The handkerchief! It’s just unbelievable how we manage to get to these places in completely random fashion. Sort of reminds me of life in general. But anyway, the line.

So for the uninitiated, this play is about the rat Iago making a mess of everyone’s lives. There are some earlier posts on this play if you go to the Will's Works/Pete's Posts tab. But for now, one of the main things Iago's going to do is convince Othello that his wife is having an affair with Michael Cassio. Iago’s going to do this by getting his hands on Desdemona’s hanky that her husband Othello gave her. Then he’s going to plant the hanky on Cassio, but in the meantime he’s going to tell Othello that Cassio’s got the hanky and that Cassio’s been getting more than that from Desdemona. At this point in the play Iago has the hanky and has told Othello that he’s seen Cassio with it. Now Othello is alone with Desdemona and he wants to find out that Iago’s wrong so he’s asking her to show him the hanky. She keeps putting him off, not realizing that he suspects infidelity. She doesn’t have the hanky with her, but doesn’t even realize yet that it’s gone from her possession. The conversation has devolved to the point where Desdemona is trying to sort of change the subject and Othello just keeps pushing back to the darn hanky. This is his second ‘The handkerchief!’, and there will be one more ‘The handkerchief!’ before he storms out. And it’s just a silly little hanky! It’s amazing that so much in this play hinges on that little square piece of cloth! Can you think of any other prop in a play or movie that's so small and yet so pivotal?

This is a picture of my brother Dave and my daughter Nina from a few years back. We were all away together on vacation and Dave decided that it would be fun to try to act out this very scene from Othello. So he wrapped this stuff around his head to make himself look like the Othello the Moor (or so he thought) and he hung the hanky on his glasses (obviously a twist from the original script). He tells Nina that she’s Desdemona, and then he keeps saying “The handkerchief!” I guess he thought it would help Nina if the handkerchief was right in front of her. But without knowing the play very well, of course it didn’t, and she just kept staring at Uncle Dave thinking ‘What the heck are you talking about?’ I guess we’ve all got an Uncle Dave in our family, don’t we.