I will piece out the comfort with what addition I can: I will not be long from you.

Gloucester

 

King Lear                             Act III, scene vi Line 3

This is Gloucester talking to Lear and company in a farmhouse adjoining the castle. In the castle Edmund is busy throwing his father, Gloucester, under the bus. But Gloucester doesn’t know that yet as he is busy trying to take care of Lear. Out here in the farmhouse Lear has just come in off the heath where he spent a few scenes fighting the weather and trying (arguably unsuccessfully) to keep from going insane. And in the next scene Gloucester will be getting his eyes gouged out. So this is a peaceful little line of kindness in the midst of a lot of turbulence. And I guess that’s like a lot of Will’s stuff; running from one thing to another, from a quiet scene to a scene of complete chaos. Which does a pretty good job of mirroring life, doesn’t it? And it is a pretty good argument for the validity of the total randomness of Totally Random Daily Shakespeare, isn’t it? Today we’ve got the lines of Gloucester talking about comforting Lear. Yesterday we had a father telling his son to save himself in the midst of a battle. And tomorrow... well we're just going to have to wait for tomorrow, won't we? We flip back and forth from calm to storm, and from good to bad, never knowing for sure what's next. It’s just like real life, and as well it’s just like a play from Shakespeare.

Okay, this is a barn, not a farmhouse. But if it's a barn, then a farmhouse must be around here somewhere. Anyway, it's a nice picture of a barn, don't you agree? And I can certainly picture Lear taking refuge here.

In thee thy mother dies, our household’s name,

My death’s revenge, thy youth, and England’s fame.

Lord Talbot

King Henry The Sixth Part I                          Act IV, scene vi Line 39

This is our second visit to this scene. The first time was back on 10/2. If you check out that post you’ll learn that father and son Talbot are stuck in what appears to be a bad situation. At this point in the scene father Talbot is still trying to convince son Talbot to skee-daddle and save his own hide. Today’s Totally Random line is a list of all the things that will die with young Talbot if he stays. I’m not exactly sure what he means by ‘thy mother’; perhaps it’s that father Talbot’s wife is already gone and son Talbot is his only vestige of her.

I’m noticing in this scene that almost every two lines are rhyming. So that’s kind of interesting. That rhyming couplet thing where Will rhymes the last two words of a long speech, or the last two words of a scene is pretty common. But it doesn’t seem like too much of his stuff has rampant rhyming going on. This play is supposedly one of, if not the, first plays he wrote. So maybe he started his career with more rhyming than later on. I’m not sure.

Now I’m a little confused. This Talbot guy has shown up in a number of our Totally Random lines, but I’m not sure if it’s young Talbot or old Talbot that we’ve seen so much of. I believe it’s the older Talbot, because he’s Lord Talbot, and the younger one appears to be John Talbot. It would be nice to know how old this father and son pair is. In any event, I believe they both bite the dust in the next scene. That’s too bad.

In honor of young and old Talbot, here's young and old Blagys. That's me and my dad. Obviously we weren't in the midst of a battle. Actually, I think we were on our way to church. So the stakes weren't quite so high for us as they were for the Talbots. And I can assure you that we didn't bite the dust in the next scene after this one. And since I have three brothers and we're all Americans, even if we did bite the dust in the next scene, it's unlikely that our mother, our household's name, my father's death's revenge, or England's fame would have been at risk.

I do not bid thee beg my life, good lad;

And yet I know thou wilt.

Lucius

Cymbeline                                          Act V, scene v    Line 94

So we’ve got a repetition of two Shakespeare motifs going on here. One is the situation where the king has granted one wish to a person, in this case Imogen. The second is the gender bending since Imogen is currently disguised as a lad called Fidele. Or, as I’ve previously stated, we’ve got a man (the Shakespearean actor) pretending to be a woman (the character Imogen) pretending to be a man (Fidele). The gender bending we see all over the place in Shakespeare, and we've seen quite a bit of it here in Totally Random Daily Shakespeare.

Now just to talk about the language for a minute: what about 'thou wilt'? Does Will ever use you or is it always thou? And is it always wilt, or is it sometimes will? I'm going to keep  my eyes open for these two words in the future, and I hope thou wilt too!

Okay, well that didn't take long. See the title? It's Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will, not What Thou Wilt.

And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

Narrator

Lucrece                                                Line 1,378

And here is new territory for us today. Lucrece, also known by the title The Rape Of Lucrece, is an 1,855 line poem by Will. It is, as you might expect, about the rape of a lady named Lucrece. In my compilation it is titled simply Lucrece.

So what do we have for today’s line? It’s sort of interesting, and I’ll give you a little context. Lucrece was raped in her own bed the previous night by a house guest. Her husband is away, the house guest/rapist has left and now Lucrece is wandering around the house quite understandably distressed. She’s stopped at this moment in the poem to look at a painting on the wall. It’s a painting of the battle of Troy. The description of the painting goes on for a whole page, and today’s line is at the beginning. I’m going to give you the whole seven lines of this stanza that are near the beginning of the description of the painting.      

                A thousand lamentable objects there,

                In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:

                Many a dry drop seem’d a weeping tear,

                Shed for the slaughter’d husband by the wife:  

                The red blood reek’t, to show the painter’s strife;

                                And dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights,

                                Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

So you can sort of get a little better sense of the meaning of these words (at least I think you can) with the whole stanza there. Remember, this is presumably a picture of a battle with a bunch of people getting killed. And be advised that as Lucrece is looking at the painting she is not doing very well at all dealing with having been raped, and in fact is going to kill herself over it before this poem is over. All in all, it’s not a very upbeat poem. 

So it might be easy to read into today’s Totally Random lines that Will is really talking about Lucrece when he talks about those ‘dying eyes’ and their ‘ashy lights, Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.’ Lots of interesting word choices here. Both lines have subjects described as ‘dying’. The lights are ‘ashy’. That’s an interesting adjective: ‘Ashy ligts’. What image does that conjure? I guess, followed up by the ‘dying coals’ line, we can imagine the wood in the fire after it’s burnt down and we can see a little red among the gray ashes? The flames are long gone, just a memory. The fire is still hot underneath, it’s got life, but left as is it’ll grow cold.

Well, that’s a fairly in-depth analysis of the lines, certainly more than we usually get into. But what’s it telling us? I guess it’s telling us that Lucrece is a goner. And, unfortunately, she is. More than that? I dunno. I don’t want this to get into an English class, but every once in a while I think it’s good to really get into the language. Don’t you agree?

One last note on this stanza: When reading the phrase ‘art gave lifeless life’ for some reason it made me think of that famous Keats poem Ode on a Grecian Urn. If you’re interested you can take a look at that one here. It’s only fifty lines, as opposed to 1,855 lines.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44477

It’s a very different poem, and quite different in mood, not nearly so dark like Lucrece. But there’s something in there that made me think that John Keats drew something from Lucrece. What do you think?

So that fire there's got quite a bit of life left, the flames are still red. I was trying to find a picture of ashy lights, but this is all I could come up with. And yet, it might be the perfect photo for today's stanza. This is an old photo and that's my old friend Matt there in the sweater vest. He's been gone for several years now, and yet 'in scorn of nature' the art of this photo gives 'lifeless life.'

You must begin,-- ‘Will you, Orlando,’--

Rosalind

As You Like It                                     Act IV, scene i    Line 125

This is Rosalind telling her cousin Celia what she has to say in order to perform the wedding of her, Rosalind, and Orlando. So what do we think of that? Celia is not a minister or justice of the peace, or vicar. So why does Rosalind think it’s okay for her to perform a wedding. I don’t really know. If I’m not mistaken these two do manage to get married by the end of the play, don’t they? But right now they’re in a big old rush and you know it's not gonna work out here. But I guess that’s true of lots of couples down through the ages.

Now it just occurred to me that we had another screwy wedding related scene in this play a few weeks back. It was 11/28 and in that scene they actually had a vicar but decided that he wasn’t good enough. And now in this scene they’re trying to make a go of it without a vicar, or a justice of the peace, or anything. What’s up with these kooks?

This is Betty and Mitzy working on this scene. I think they've just finished a few rounds at the bowling alley. They've talked Officer Bob into standing in as Orlando, but I don't think he's all that keen about it. My guess is that Officer Bob doesn't even know the lines he's supposed to be saying. In fact, he looks a little pissed off. But Betty and Mitzy look pretty happy about things, don't they?

But, good lieutenant, is your general wived?

Montano

 

Othello                                                 Act II, scene i     Line 60

Well for goodness sakes, let’s start with ‘good lieutenant’ because it’s our good friend good Michael Cassio that’s being addressed here as good lieutenant. I think that this is only the second time in about 130 Totally Random lines (I guess I could go back and check them all, but I probably won’t) that we have someone being addressed as ‘good’. And guess what? Both times it’s been good Michael Cassio being addressed! Amazing! And the last time he was being addressed as ‘good’ I got all excited about it. Here’s the post if you don’t believe me. So that’s pretty interesting in and of itself, and it also tells you that this guy is good!

Next we have this word lieutenant. I’m not sure whether or not you’re all aware of it or not, but the Brits pronounce this word Lef-ten-ant, as opposed to Lu-ten-ant. Now I have no idea where they got this Lef-ten-ant thing, but like most Brit-speak, I love it. I think I’ve gotten into this stuff before. Schedule is sshhezule, and scenario is senahhrio, and it goes on and on. Yes, Lef-tenant. 

And finally, wived. Is your lieutenant wived? Who makes a verb out of wife? I guess Will did. I had an English professor when I was getting my MAT about ten years ago who hated when people made verbs out of nouns. I’m not sure what exactly his issue was, but for some reason he just didn’t like it. Well Professor Smart, here’s old Will making a verb out of wife. So I guess you can’t get too wigged out over that.

Now all we’re left with is wondering why Montano is asking good Michael Cassio whether his general is wived. And I'm going to leave it up to you to find the answer to that question.

Yes, believe it or not, even a kook like me can be wived. This is a picture of me and my beautiful wife. Can you, by any chance, guess where we are?

I know vat I have to do. Adieu.

Doctor Caius

The Merry Wives of Windsor                  Act V, scene iii   Line 5

And finally, we’ve got a sample from The Merry Wives Of Windsor. I believe this is the first time we’ve gotten to this work and if I’m not mistaken, the only play now left in my compilation that we’ve not randomly sampled is Julius Caesar. I’ll do some reconnaissance on my random die system just to make sure that numbers 550 to 610 (the corresponding pages in my compilation) are not problematic. I don’t suspect that they are and I’m pretty sure we’ll get to Julius Caesar, as well as back to The Wives, eventually.

Now, The Merry Wives. As I think I mentioned once, this is a play that Will wrote specifically to resurrect the character of Sir John Falstaff. You’ll recall that we’ve twice discussed the scenes in Henry V, here and here that relate to the passing of good Sir John. I’ve also previously mentioned, and reiterate here, that I know very little about this play. And since this is our first foray in, and also because this line is only three pages from the end of the play and I have no idea what’s taken place up to this point, I think we’ll stay in the dark for now and just focus on the line that we have.

This is the first instance I’ve run into where Will is writing the replication of an accent into the script. The ‘vat’ in today’s line is his way of saying how a Frenchman (apparently Dr. Caius is French) would say the word ‘what’. I thought this was what Will was doing but I wasn’t sure, and so I thumbed through the play and can see that the lines of Dr. Caius have these types of spelling throughout. So I think that’s pretty interesting. Vat do you theenk? Will had a healthy sampling of latin and greek, as well as real French in his plays, so he relied on a fairly well educated audience. In this case, however, he’s just working with a bawdy French accent; fairly low brow stuff.

Brief program note: I missed the last two nights due to some health issues. We'll see if we can keep that from happening again. Also, I'm counting this post as Friday, 12/23 post, even though it's now a few hours into Saturday, Christmas Eve. No promises for the next two nights' posts, but we'll try.

And if I don't make it, Merry Christmas!

This is pretty  much the extent of my personal library (I know, pretty messy). I looked all through here for some vestige of the seven years of French that I took, but no luck. And after that seven years, what is the extent of my understanding of French? Well, I understood today's line. And that's pretty  much how I would say it in French. 'I know vat I have to do.'