If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you

as had beards that pleased me, complexions

that liked me, and breaths that I defied not:

Rosiland

 

As You Like It                                    Epilogue               Line 18

Okay, I took stock today. There are epilogues in six of the thirty-seven plays in my compilation. Three are in histories and three are in comedies. You’d think he might have thrown one or two in the tragedies where we really could have used and epilogue to tell us what went wrong.

This is also the only epilogue to be spoken by a female character. Though to be fair, in King Henry The Eighth the speaker of the epilogue is not named, so I guess that could be a woman as well. The other four epilogues are given by a dancer, a chorus, a king, and Prospero. So that’s a pretty wide range of characters.

So I think a lot of this epilogue, like the part that is today’s Totally Random lines, is pretty meaningless, and the meaning that does come out on the whole is simply that she hopes you liked the play. That's it. And if you read the epilogue of The Tempest, that one spoken by Prospero, you’ll find that its meaning is the same; he hopes you liked the play. So I suppose that means I should go read the other four epilogues and see if they all say the same thing. Tell you what, you go read them and let me know.

This is my illustrator (on the left) and his father-in-law. Question: Do you think the beard pleased his father-in-law?

To lend me arms and aid when I required them;

The which you both denied.

Octavius Caesar

Antony And Cleopatra                                 Act II, scene ii    Line 92

This is Antony and Cleopatra, and Antony and Octavius are trying to work out some differences. Octavius is talking about the article of the oath that Antony broke. I’m not too sure of the details so that I can’t tell you exactly where or when Antony failed to provide Octavius the arms and the aid. But before this scene is over it gets decided that the best way to bury the hatchet between these two is for Antony to marry Octavius’s sister Octavia. Yes, that’s right. Octavius’s sister is named Octavia. Apparently the parents were hung up on the eight thing. Maybe they met on the eighth day of the eighth month. Surely I don’t know, but just as surely they liked Octav for a name.

And also just as surely I have a very apt anecdote for today’s line. I was trying to wash out my coffee pot earlier this evening, and was having a hard time fitting my big fat mitt into the pot. I wanted to scrub the bottom inside because there was some burnt coffee inside. My son passed by on his way through the kitchen and I asked him to try because his hands are smaller, but he pretty much ignored me and kept going. Then my wife passed by on her way through the kitchen and I asked her to try, because her hands are smaller and she pretty much ignored me and kept going. So what did I do? Well of course I went to the end of the hallway they had both disappeared down and I yelled. And you know what I yelled, don’t you?

To lend me arms (more so in this case, hands) and aid when

I required them; the which you both denied!

Yeah, I’m not kidding. That actually happened today and that’s what I yelled. I was able to use today’s Totally Random line. Today. It was fantastic.

The aforementioned pot, sponge, and over-sized mitt.

Your uncle York is join’d with Bolingbroke, And all your northern castles yielded up,

And all your southern gentlemen in arms

Upon his party.

Sir Stephen Scroop

 

King Richard The Second              Act III, scene ii   Line 201

Yes, that’s right, Scroop is basically saying to King Richard ‘You’re screwed, pal.’ Bolingbroke is the guy who’s about to become Henry IV. He’s returned from exile while Richard was over in Ireland and he’s managed to get pretty much all of England on his side. Now Richard has returned from Ireland, he’s just landed on the west coast of England, and he’s asking his buddy Scroop what the situation is.  Uncle York is the guy that Richard left in charge while he went on his Irish expedition. And if Uncle York, and everybody in the north and the south has gone over to Bolingbroke’s side, well then… that doesn’t leave too much left for Richard.

About ten lines further down Richard ends the scene with a rhyming couplet that pretty much sums it up.

                Discharge my followers: let them hence away,

                From Richard’s night to Bolingbroke’s fair day.

This was a very fair day, and it's me on my Irish expedition. That's Howth Castle there in the background and I think the Irish Sea beyond that, and yes, that's a golf club I'm holding. I'm golfing with my buddy Garrett just outside Dublin. I wasn't in Ireland to subdue a rebellion like Richard was. And fortunately I didn't come home to a country turned against me. That would have really sucked!

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.