The veins unfill’d, our blood is cold, and then

We pout upon the morning, are unapt

To give or to forgive; but when we’ve stuft

These pipes and these conveyances of our blood

With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls

Than in our priest-like fasts;

Menenius Agrippa

Coriolanus          Act V, scene i     Line 52

This is our old friend Menenius and, oh boy, Menenius is saying that he thinks that if he catches Coriolanus on a full stomach and a belly full of wine that he’ll have a better chance of having Coriolanus listen to him and that he’ll be able to talk the General into not sacking Rome. I’m not sure what Menenius has been smoking, but it just don’t work that easy with Coriolanus. You should have seen Ralph Finnes portrayal of the General. If you had, you would know what a mistake Menenius is making. Yes, the way to a man’s heart may be through his stomach. Sometimes. Not this time.

I'm not sure it's this time either. Yes, that's me, but I have no idea what the heck that is that I'm trying to get into my stomach.

By the eighth hour: is that the uttermost?

Marcus Butus

 

Julius Caesar     Act II, scene i     Line 213

Oh boy, lots to talk about here. For starters, now that we’ve covered Julius Caesar we’ve hit all the plays in my compilation. So that’s 37 plays and it took 141 days. We’ve spent a lot of time on all those Henrys, and quite a bit on Coriolanus. But now we’ve hit them all at least once. So that’s a relief.

Now this is a very interesting scene for one particular thing: it’s got a clock in it. In fact, this line makes reference to that by talking about the eighth hour. Of course you know that Julius Caesar takes place in Roman times. Well a few lines earlier there’s a stage direction Clock Strikes. Of course clocks were not invented until centuries later. I guess they did have sundials, but I’ve no way of knowing whether or not the sundials gave them the ability to schedule things by the eighth hour or not. In any event, when you look up the word anachronistic you have a pretty good chance of getting Julius Caesar’s clock striking as an example. So that’s pretty interesting.

This is also one of the first Shakespearean plays I ever saw. We saw it performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Theater. This was in Connecticut and I was in high school, so it was in the seventies. I don’t know if that theater is even still there. The only thing I remember about the play was that they used a lot of fake blood in the scene where Caesar gets killed. It figures that’s all I remember.

This is the oldest clock I own, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't date back to Shakespeare's time, let alone Julius Caesar's.

I’m vanquished; these haughty words of hers

Have batter’d me like roaring cannon-shot,

And made me almost yield upon my knees.—

 

Duke of Burgundy

 

King Henry The Sixth Part I          Act III, scene iii Line 78

Today’s line is in response to Joan telling the Duke that he needs to switch sides, and he does. As I explained on 11/14, the Duke is a Frenchie who’s been fighting with the Brits. And Joan tells him to get with the program and start fighting against the Brits. And of course he listens.

Now this is the Duke of Burgundy and he’s making an aside in regards to what Joan has just said to him (more on asides in a moment). I think it’s interesting that pretty much all of the French listen to, and are in awe of Joan. Conversely, pretty much all the Brits think she’s some form of witch or prostitute. I mean it’s really amazing, almost alarming.

Okay, asides. There’s a lot of these in the plays. It shows up next to the speaker’s name before the script

                                                Duke of Burgundy [aside]

                I’m vanquished; these haughty words of hers…..             

And it means that the Duke’s not talking to anyone on stage, he’s just telling the audience what he’s thinking. So basically this entire Totally Random line is an aside. Maybe I’ll go back and put that at the beginning of the first post just to cover myself. Anyway, I think (I’m not sure, I didn’t go back and check) that this is the first time in 140 Totally Random lines that we’ve hit an aside, and that’s pretty surprising. There are two asides on this one page alone. To be sure, Will is famous for his lack of stage directions in his works, but he’s fairly liberal with his asides, which are a sort of stage direction.

In any event, it seems to me that the Duke here comes off as a bit of a weenie in that Joan simply tells him he should be fighting with the French since he is, well, French. And he’s all ‘vanquished’ and ‘battered’ and ‘made to yield upon his knees.’ What’s up with that?

Now if you want to talk about something that's battered and vanquished, how about these puppies. These are my little buddie's school shoes, and I think he got about as much out of them as we could have hoped for. In fact, with the shape that they're in I'm surprised he wasn't made to yield upon his knees!

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.