The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy

particular prosperity, and love thee no worse

than thy old father Menenius does!

Menenius Agrippa

Coriolanus                                          Act V, scene ii    Line 68

Here we are back at Coriolanus. We were just here the day before yesterday, weren't we?. Today’s line is quite near the end of the play. Coriolanus is back at the gates of Rome heading up an enemy army of Volscians who are getting ready to sack Rome. Menenius, his old advisor, and I guess you’d call him a friend, has come out to talk to Coriolanus and hopefully talk him out of sacking Rome. Today’s line is the first words he says to Coriolanus upon meeting him. He’s obviously trying to kiss some butt here telling him that the gods are shining down on him and they love him as much as he, Menenius does. Spoiler alert: Coriolanus doesn’t buy it and tells Menenius to go pound sand. Well what did you expect? Coriolanus fought hard for Rome and for his efforts he got banished because he refused to act humble. I think I’d tell Menenius to go pound sand too.

I guess we could compare this to the post of two days ago when Coriolanus was being told what to do by his mother. He didn't tell her to pound any sand. He listened to her. And second spoiler alert: His mother's going to be the next one to come out and ask Coriolanus not to sack Rome. Think he'll listen to her? I'm not going to tell you. Here's a link to the Act V scene iii if you want to find out.

And here's my little guys acting out the scene again. They're really good at Coriolanus scenes because it's their favorite play. That's Menenius on the left in the red hat. You can see that the fellow playing Coriolanus is pretty much ignoring him at this point. A few minutes later he lays into Menenius and tells him to get lost. They're pretty convincing.

Pray you then,

Conduct me to the Queen.

-Paulina

 

The Winter’s Tale                                            Act II, scene ii    Line 7

Okay, this is our second trip to this scene. If you go back to my September 11 post you can read the setup for what’s going on. It’s not too long. The next line here is the jailer (spelled Gaoler, which I think is some Gaelic version because that’s what they still call it in Ireland) telling Paulina that she’s not allowed to see the Queen. And then we get into the part of the scene that we already covered. So how about we spend a little time with the language today and not worry so much about the context.

So I had two things I thought would be worth mentioning. The first is ‘Pray you then’. This would probably be said ‘would you please’ in today’s speech. Pray you then vs would you please. Has anyone got anything on that? I don’t think there’s a heck of a lot of us out there who would say ‘pray you’ when asking for something. Pray you then, someone please comment. Okay, now look, I automatically put the word please in that last sentence, but I’m pretty sure that the ‘pray you’ already implies ‘please’. So that’s a bit of a tough one to work with.

All right then, how about ‘conduct’? That’s pretty much meaning ‘lead’. Now we use conduct when talking about leading an orchestra, but that’s about it. We don’t use conduct when we’re talking about leading a group of people down the street (or where ever). But we could. What if the bellhop grabbed your bags and said, ‘Follow me. I will conduct you to your room.’ Certainly you’d understand him or her. And if the hotel were in another country you would probably wonder where they learned their English language. If that happened in this country you’d probably look at the bellhop a little funny. Or maybe you’d just say ‘that’s ok, I’ve got it,’ because you didn’t feel like tipping them. Or maybe you never stay in hotels that are fancy enough to have bellhops. I usually don’t, but once in a while…

So that’s all I’ve got on today’s line, a few comments about the language. Very understandable today, but none the less different than the words we use today. Interesting, isn’t it?

So this guy was taking our luggage for us, but he wasn't actually conducting us anywhere. He was just taking care of our luggage. But we were pretty happy with what he was doing, and we weren't too concerned about being conducted.

…but thou wilt frame

Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far

As thou hast power and person.

-Volumnia

Coriolanus                                          Act III, scene ii   Line 86

Lots of interesting things here. First off, how about the name Volumnia. That’s Coriolanus’s mother and she’s giving Coriolanus some advice of how to appear to be more likeable to the masses so as to win their approval. But what about that name, Volumnia. All I can think of when I see that name is volume. So it seems like a good name for a person with a lot of volume. That is to say, a large person. In other words, it doesn’t seem like a name that any woman would want. I’m just saying. And what about this thing where mom is telling him what he has to do? He’s a general who kicks butt on the battlefield, and he’s ascended to the leadership of the country, and now mom is telling him what he’s gotta do. And she’s not making a suggestion here. It’s not ‘Well, maybe you should consider framing yourself.’ No, it's ‘Thou wilt frame thyself’. And Coriolanus listens. He listens to his mother and at least tries to act the part. He can’t quite pull it off, but he tries.

Next, we’ve managed to sneak that word ‘forsooth’ in here. I looked this one up in the Shakespeare glossary that’s in my Shakespeare I phone app. We’ve all heard that word used in old stuff, but I wanted to see what the real definition was. It’s an adverb meaning ‘in truth, certainly, truly, indeed.’ So it really has little meaning, it’s just a sort of minor exclamation. I say ‘indeed’ a lot when I’m responding to something that someone says and I don’t really have anything to say.

‘Dad, I saw a guy today who had two heads.’

‘Indeed.’

And it seems to work. But it really doesn’t add much. If we took ‘forsooth’ out of today’s Totally Random line it wouldn’t really change the line much, would it. In fact, I think it might make it slightly more understandable for us twenty first centurians. Yes, I realize that centurian is not a word, but what else do you call someone living in the twenty first century? Anyway, Will put ‘forsooth’ there, so I guess it belongs.

So the question is, will Coriolanus have the power and the person to pull this off. Will he be able to go in front of the masses and appear civil, as opposed to condescending? Well, if you’ve been reading these posts you’ll know that he does indeed end up getting the boot. So I guess the answer is no. And I’m personally still left with the question: Is Coriolanus a better man for being true to what he is, even if that's a guy who thinks he’s much better than the common folk. Or would he be a better man if he was able to swallow his pride a bit and act more humble so as to be a more effective leader? It’s a tricky question, forsooth.

This is me and my mom. I'm not sure, but I think I probably stopped doing what she told me not too long after this picture was taken. And you can see by the tight grip she's go on me that I'm probably even trying to go against her here and fall on my head. I definitely didn't give her the respect she deserved. Not like that Coriolanus guy. Now there was a good son!

We took him setting of boys’ copies.

-Smith

 

King Henry The Sixth Part II                        Act IV, scene ii   Line 84

Just to be clear, I’m kind of estimating these line numbers. My compilation notes the official (at least, I think it’s official) line number at the top of the page, and then I count down to the line number that I’ve randomly picked to give you the semi-official line number. But the way it’s printed I’m not always sure. So today’s line is either actually line 84, or something close. Maybe 83 or 85. I’m not sure.

Anyway, Henry the Sixth and Jack Cade. Jack was the leader of a popular revolt, a revolt of the people. He’s not really a part of the Rose War which was royal against royal. So let’s see if we can tell what he’s talking about.

Right then, I listened to the scene right there. I wish I could figure out how to put an audio file on this post. I’ll work on that. In the meantime…

So Jack Cade is drumming up a rebellion. Smith the Weaver is one of his followers at the moment and he’s the guy doing the talking. This is a crowd scene and Jack’s doing a lot of yelling and a lot of what he’s saying appears to be nonsense. At this point in the proceedings they’ve brought forth the Clerk of Chatham and it appears that they’re going to be scapegoating this guy because he’s an example of the establishment because of the fact that he can read and write. And that’s the gist of today’s Random line. If he was setting boys copies then he knows how to read and write. And so they hustle him off to hang him. Now there’s some justice for you!

Oh well. Tomorrow, back to Coriolanus.

See? My book is telling me that the lines here are 54-98 (it's at the top). So I count down to the line that I randomly picked. But when it's prose like this I'm not always sure I'm getting to the correct official line number. Oh well. Anyway, as you can see I couldn't come up with any better picture for today. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Nor, showing, as the manner is, his wounds

To the people, beg their stinking breaths.

-Junius Brutus

Coriolanus                          Act II, scene i     Line 237

And once again we’ve got this Junius Brutus guy from Coriolanus. I don’t know if you recall, but he’s a minor character in Coriolanus. He’s a sleazy politician, and pretty much throughout the play he’s working against Coriolanus. We've seen him before. Here's the link if you don't recall. I never quite got my head around this guy to figure out what his deal was. The best I could figure is that Will just wanted to portray a sleazy politician. And he did a good job with it.

Politician Junius is talking about Coriolanus in today’s Totally Random line, and he’s telling us where Coriolanus is coming up short. Remember, the thing that brought Coriolanus down in the end was his unwillingness/inability to show humility and play the political game. And Junius here is expert at playing the political game. He’s a politician! And apparently in Coriolanus’s time some part of the game and the humility is to show your war wounds, literally, to the public. That’s what Junius is talking about. But you can see also what contempt Junius actually has for the people, the voters, when he refers to ‘their stinking breaths.’ The guy is just a sleaze ball. I can't help but think, based on this Junius character, that Will didn't think too much of politics or politicians. What do you think?

Here's my latest war wound. I fell down and cracked my noggin on the tv table. So I guess you could say I got this is in the war of everyday living. But since I don't have any plans to run for public office I probably won't have to show the wound to the public. Just as well. It's not a very impressive wound.

That were a kind of bastard hope, indeed: so the

sins of my mother should be visited upon me.

-Jessica

 

The Merchant Of Venice               Act III, scene v   Line 13

Well, there’s a few directions we can head off in with this line. Yes, indeed.

Okay, let’s start with Jessica. I’ve heard that Shakespeare made up this name, or at the very least, that this is the first printed work where that name appears. So I think that’s a bit interesting. It’s certainly a popular name now, and even more so in the 1980’s. And it really is a beautiful name.

Next. The context of this line has to do with Launcelot Gobo telling Jessica that she’s going to be damned to hell for being a Jew and that one of her only hopes is that her mother cheated on Shylock her father with a non-Jew so that Jessica’s real father, and therefore Jessica, were/are not Jews. In this case ‘The sins of her mother’, i.e. infidelity, would actually be her salvation. Now of course if we want to get into this context it’s hard to ignore the whole question of the treatment of Jews by Shakespeare (and by most other Brits of Shakespeare’s time), and that fact that being Jewish would be considered a sin. And since that’s a real can of worms, the opening of which brings about all sorts of issues and risks, I’m not going to go any further with that right now. Maybe at a later date. Maybe the next time we hit Merchant.

We could look at the play on words (doesn’t Will love playing with words!) of the ‘bastard hope’. But I think I’ll leave that one to you. And, by the way, it’s a short scene so here’s the link if you’d like to read it in its entirety.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/merchant.3.5.html.

Finally (for now, because when we start digging into these lines it seems there’s almost an endless number of things to look at), we can look for a moment at the whole sins of the mother, and by extension, sins of the parents thing. And again, I’m going to look at it in a sort of general way without getting into this particular damned for being Jewish thing. What’s Will saying, if anything, about us dealing with, or being in any way responsible for the sins of our parents? Not surprisingly, in this instance he’s attacking this question with a double meaning. He’s claiming that Jessica has sin just for being born of a certain religion (her parents’ religion). So that seems to advocate that we do inherit sins of our parents. But then he gets into sins of our parents (in this case infidelity) being redemptive. And to further complicate it, we should remember that it’s Launcelot Gobo who’s bringing this up in the first place. Launcelot, who’s listed in the cast of characters as a clown. So the whole thing gets a bit confusing and contradictory; like life in general, and like most of Will’s work.

Well, what do you think Will is saying about the sins of the parents? Do we inherit them, or not?

This is my parents. Whilst I'm sure they weren't perfect, I'm not aware of any great sins that they might have passed down to me. So I guess I'm lucky that I don't even have to worry about the question. Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.

…the posts come tiring on,

And not a man of them brings other news

Than they have learn’d of me: from Rumour’s tongues

They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.

-Rumour

 

King Henry The Fourth Part II     Induction             Line 39

This line is pretty interesting. It’s the induction, which is sort of an introduction to the play. And the speaker is Rumour, who in this case is a personification of rumor. The stage direction at the very start is ‘Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.’ This induction (introduction) is the precursor to the line we discussed in the 9/29 post  when Northumberland is finding out about his son’s death. The rumor was that his son Hotspur defeated Hal. The truth is that Hal killed Hotspur. In the forty line Induction Rumour talks about the false rumor of Hotspur beating Hal. Today’s lines are the end of Rumour’s speech. And they ring very true when he says that the smooth comforts of false rumours are worse than true wrongs.

Wait, ‘true wrongs?’ True wrongs? Smooth comforts false, which would be easier understood if stated ‘the smooth comforts of falsehoods,’ makes sense and is easily understood. But ‘true wrongs’ is a little harder. ‘True’ is understandable. But ‘wrongs’? Is he just meaning ‘bad news’ by ‘wrongs’? That seems a bit stretched, but that must be it. Wrongs is just bad stuff. Okay, that works.

Now as a side note, and unrelated to today's Totally Random line, here’s some interesting things I learned this week. I learned that Isaac Asimov, the scientist and incredibly prolific sci-fi writer, wrote a book on Shakespeare. Can you believe it? I was absolutely astounded. I also found that Shakespeare is the only author to have his own Dewey Decimal number. That’s the numbering system used in public libraries. It’s 822.33 in case you’re interested. So the next time you’re in any public library and you feel like browsing the Shakespeare section just go right to the stacks that have the 822’s. There, that’s today’s interesting Shakespeare facts.

These are the Asimov books I have, The Foundation Trilogy. They are classics of the sci-fi genre of which Isaac Asimov is one of the biggies. But I googled the guy after I found his Shakespeare book and it turns out that aside from the fiction and science books, the guy has history books, books on the bible, humor, Sherlock Holmes and you name it, a whole bunch of other stuff. Basically this guy has covered just about every genre, fiction and non-fiction that there is. He's the Gunter Gebel-Williams of authors.