…face to face

And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear

Th’accuser and the accused freely speak:--

King Richard

King Richard The Second                              Act I, scene i       Line 16

Richard’s not talking about a group here, he’s referring to himself as ourelves in the plural. Oh sure, there’s other people there, but Richard is just talking about himself when he refers to ourselves. It’s that royal ‘we’ thing. I guess a reference to themselves as the state and as such, not just themselves, but representing all.

Anyway, this is the very beginning of the play, the sixteenth line of the first act. Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV) and Thomas Mowbray are being brought before Richard. Each of them’s going to be accusing the other of some sort of treason or other and in the end Richard will exile them both. But for now he’s just talking about having them face each other, ‘face to face and frowning brow to brow’. That gives a pretty good mental picture, doesn’t it? There not just going to be in the same place looking at each other, it sounds like they’re going to be on top of each other. Brow to brow. Will their faces be touching each other? It sort of sounds like it, doesn’t it? I can’t remember the last time I was frowning brow to brow with someone. Can you?

We got face to face, and very nearly brow to brow with these critters. But I couldn't quite tell if they were frowning or not. Can you?

Trouble yourselves no further: pray you, hasten

Your generals after.

Lepidus

 

Antony And Cleopatra                                 Act II, scene iv  Line 1

This is a scene where Antony is back in Rome, though in fact Antony’s not in this short scene at all. It’s a really short scene, I think ten lines, and I’m not even sure why it’s needed. But of course it’s Will, so you can bet there’s some really good reason. I think that if I was watching the play, this scene would make more sense, because I’d have a better idea who these guys were and what they’re up to.

But since I don’t know, maybe we could just talk about ‘Trouble yourselves no further.’ I added the ‘hasten your generals after’ because it was part of the thought that began with ‘pray you,’ and ‘pray you, hasten’ was on the line that I picked today. Here look; today’s Totally random line was

Trouble yourselves no further: pray you, hasten

And the next line in the book that followed was

Your generals after.

So you see why I had to add those last three words, don’t you? I get faced with this more days than not. In fact it’s not all that often that I can just take the one line that I randomly picked and use it as a stand- alone line. Am I spending too much time explaining this? Perhaps I am. Well then, if you’re not interested and you’re content to let me worry about how I pick the lines, then I guess I could say to you

                Trouble yourselves no further.

I certainly hope you saw that line coming.

Well here's something that you certainly didn't see coming. It's a picture of my La Brea Tar Pits pencil. What's it got to do with today's Totally Random line? To be honest, I just grabbed a random pencil from my pile of pencils, because I really couldn't think of a relevant picture. But then I got to thinking about it, and well, it seems that I kind of got stuck today trying to come up with much to say about today's line. And the more I tried, the more stuck I got. Sort of like those animals in the tar pits. Once they were in the pit, the more they tried to get out, the more stuck they got. So this is actually a perfectly relevant picture for today's line.

And if you find yourself having a problem with that explanation, then I guess I'd just say

Trouble yourselves no further.

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.