And there will we be too, ere it be long,

Or else reproach be Talbot’s greatest fame!--

 Lord Talbot

King Henry The Sixth Part I          Act III, scene ii   Line 76

And here’s that crazy Talbot guy again. It seems that we just can’t be rid of this guy. And you thought he was dead after the last time we heard from him.

Well this line is from page 16 in my compilation and the last time we heard from him, a few days ago, we were on page 23. So we’ve had a Totally Random line from pages 14, 15, 16, and 17.  In the 139 Random lines that we’ve picked so far we’ve hit these four pages in a row out of a total of 1,252 pages. Kind of makes you question the Randomness of this whole deal, doesn’t it? And yet, on we go.

This is a funny scene. It takes place at the town of Rouen. It begins with English holding the town and Joan sneaking in to open the gates (see Sept post). And then the rest of the French come in and kick out the Brits, who are led by the magnificent Talbot. And then further on in the scene the Brits rally and retake the town. So by the end of the scene we’re back to the beginning. Anyway, today’s line is in the middle right after the French take over the town and they’re talking to the Brits who’re outside looking up at the walls. I’m not quite sure how this scene would be staged but it appears that the entire scene is shown from outside the gates/walls of the town and the players on the wall and outside the wall just keep switching sides. Pretty interesting, don’t you agree?

And by the way, I think Talbot and Gaston (from Beauty andthe Beast, see Nov post) really are pretty interchangeable.

                No one fights like Gaston

                Douses lights like Gaston

                In a wrestling match nobody bites like Gaston

 So this is my wife playing the part of Joan. She’s standing on the parapet yelling down ‘Away, captains! Let’s get us from the walls; ForTalbot means no goodness by his looks.—God b’ wi’ you, my lord! We came but to tell you that we are here.’ Now there were other people around, mind you, and they looked a bit confused. But when I yelled back ‘And there will we be too, ere it be long, Or else reproach be Talbot’s greatest fame!—‘ I think they caught on. In any event, I think she pulled off the Joan La Pucelle part pretty well, though she didn’t quite have her part memorized. If you zoom in on the picture you can make out my little friend to the right. He’s got his hoodie up and he’s facing the other way, but you can see that he’s reading the lines off his Ipod to help my wife. All in all though, I thought she did quite well with her part.

Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstories toward the south-north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction?

 Clown

 

Twelfth Night    Act IV, scene ii   Line 38

And of course, barricades aren’t transparent, there is no such direction as north-south, and clearstories are high window that are supposed to let in light so that ‘lustrous as ebony’ doesn’t make much sense either. But it’s Feste the clown talking, so you know that he’s going to be giving you silly nonsense, don’t you? And his contradictions couldn't possibly make any sense. Could they?

If you zoom in on this picture of Lyman Hall's grave in Wallingford, CT you'll see that the writing on the side of it says

The state of Georgia having removed to Augusta the remains of Lyman Hall a signer of the Declaration of Independence and there erected a monument to his memory, the tablet originally covering his grave was in 1857 presented by William Dantignac to this state by whose order it is deposited in his native town.

So that this picture of the grave of Lyman Hall is, in fact, not the grave of Lyman Hall at all. Do you suppose Feste the clown had anything to do with this?

And yet, forsooth, she is a virgin pure.—

Strumpet, thy words condemn thy brat and thee:

Use no entreaty, for it is in vain.

 Duke of York

 

King Henry The Sixth Part I          Act V, scene iv   Line 93

Okay, what’ve we got here? This is the Duke of York talking to Joan, with obvious disdain and scorn. It looks like we covered this scene back on 11/17.  Remember? Joan was talking about being pregnant, and then a virgin, and then this one was the father, and then that one. She was saying anything and everything, trying to get out of being hanged, or burnt at the stake, or whatever they were planning on doing to her. Well this is the Duke’s comment before Joan responds with resignation, and a certain amount of venom, whilst being led away. So what should we talk about today?

Well here’s that ‘forsooth’ word again. Gotta love forsooth. And what about ‘strumpet'. That’s a good one. I think you get the idea that strumpet is not a term of endearment, but let’s take a look in the Shakespeare glossary to get a proper definition. Ooh, not so good. It’s harlot, prostitute or whore. Well that’s not very nice at all. As I’ve said before, Joan may have been made a saint for the French, but I don’t think the English, especially of Will’s time, thought so highly of here.

Anything else on today’s line? I think I’ll end by giving you the Duke’s final words spoken to Joan as she’s being led away and leave you with that. And I’ll let you decide what you think the Brits opinion of Joan is.

           Break thou in pieces, and consume to ashes,

          Thou foul accursed minister of hell!

And this is what the French eventually did with that accursed minister of hell. They put her on a postage stamp. No, really. This is a genuine French postage stamp. I'm not sure, but I don't think you'll be finding too many British postage stamps with Joan on them.

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.'