Lay hands on the villain: I believe a' means to cozen somebody in this city under my countenance.

 

Pedant

The Taming of the Shrew                 Act V, scene I                Line 35

So here is yet another post about hands; new hands this time. ‘Lay hands on the villain.’

The previous two days’ lines were about hands, although the word ‘hands’ never appeared in either one. And now, in a way to confirm and solidify the hands subject, we have a line with that very word and thought as part of it. No, I can’t say I understand all of the discussion of the importance of hands that Othello and Desdemona were having. This one, though, is a bit simpler. Lay hands on him – Grab this guy! He’s gonna do some mischief and get me blamed for it!

So let’s recapitulate. Two days ago we had a scene from Titus Andronicus and they were sitting there having a meal and Titus spent a bit of time talking about himself lacking one of his hands and his daughter lacking both of her hands. Then yesterday we had Othello talking drawing conclusions about his wife based on feeling how soft and moist her hand was. And now tonight we have the Pendant talking about getting his hands on someone. All about the hand. The first one about a very literal lack of hands, the second one drawing conclusions based on a literal hand, and the third one a bit more figurative.

Lots and lots of hands.

Here's a guy who wishes he had some real hands and not just a couple of candles at the end of his arms.

It yet hath felt no age nor known no sorrow.

 

Desdemona

 

Othello                                                 Act III, scene iv                  Line 37

This is part of an exchange that’s all about hands, and specifically Desdemona’s hand.  Just to give you a little more context, at the end of the previous scene Iago has managed to completely convince Othello that Desdemona’s having an affair with Michael Cassio, and Othello has decided that he’s going to be killing Desdemona. Now in this scene he greets Desdemona and right after that says ‘Give me your hand.  This hand is moist, my lady.’ To which Desdemona replies with today’s Totally Random line, ‘It yet hath felt no age nor known no sorrow.’ Well just wait, the sorrow is coming fast. But before that Othello goes on at length about the hand in reply to Desdemona’s reply.

This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart;

Hot, hot, and moist. This hand of yours requires

A sequester from liberty: fasting and prayer,

Much castigation(self discipline, self correction, self denial), exercise devout,

For here’s a young and sweating devil here

That commonly rebels. ‘Tis a good hand,

A frank one.

And Desdemona replies:

You may, indeed, say so;

 For ‘twas that hand that gave away my heart.

And Othello answers: 

A liberal hand. The hearts of old gave hands;

But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts.

And very shortly after this the scene devolves quickly into the ‘Thehandkerchief!’ issue.  In the meantime, though, it's all about hands. Spend some time with the hand back and forth and see what you can come up with. Perhaps we'll follow up on it tomorrow.

Well this hand is not very moist; it's pretty dried out. And it's felt some age, and known a bit of sorrow, but lots of happiness as well.

So, so; now sit: and look you eat no more

Than will preserve just so much strength in us

As will revenge these bitter woes of ours.

 Titus Andronicus

 Titus Andronicus                              Act III, scene ii                   Line 1

This Titus play really keeps me on my toes. I’ve been complaining since last August that every time we visit Titus they’re either committing, or talking about committing, unspeakable acts. Well finally, in this scene, they seem to be taking it a bit easy (well, they get a little crazy going after that fly later in the scene, but we’ll give them that one). ‘Sit and eat no more than will preserve just so much strength in us as will revenge these bitter woes of ours.’ 

So what exactly is he saying here? Eat just enough to give ourselves (and this is not the royal ‘ourselves’ that we hear in the history plays) strength to revenge our bitter woes. The first few times I read this I thought he was talking about dealing just with their woes, not the people who brought about their woes. But now, I’m not so sure. Which is it? I think that in order to understand it fully, we need to read the whole scene. Oh I know what you’re going to say; “Not the whole scene, Pete! This is supposed to be a line or two.” Well, to be fair, it’s only eighty-six lines, and God knows we all need to practice our ability to concentrate on something longer that a thirty second YouTube video. And add to that that one of the lines is ‘O, O, O,’, and three of the lines are the three lines that are today’s Totally Random Daily lines that you’ve already read. So we’re done to eighty-two lines already. But I’m not going to beg you to read the lines. It’s your loss if you don’t. I read them a few times already today. It’s really good stuff. There is just a ton packed into this short scene. 

Here, I’ll give you a super short recap/context in case you want to read it. Brothers Titus and Marcus are sitting down to dinner with daughter Lavinia and grandson Lucius. Two of Titus’s sons have already been murdered and his daughter Lavinia (present at this dinner) has had her hands chopped off and her tongue cut out. As well, Titus was tricked into chopping off one of his own hands. There, that’s enough to get you going without getting into too much of the gory details. So it’s up to you. I’ll be giving you a picture here one way or the other today, since I short-changed you on that part yesterday. But first, here’s the link in the hopes that I’ve peaked your interest enough to read it

Yes, that’s Tarzan. Even he was intrigued by today’s scene and the fact that it didn’t contain any blood, gore, or guts. He actually came down from the rafters to read it! Surely that should be enough to guilt you into reading it too.

                          Here I clip

The anvil of my sword; and do contest

As hotly and as nobly with thy love

As ever in ambitious strength I did

Contend against thy valour.

Tullus Aufidius

Coriolanus                              Act IV, scene v                  Line 110

My goodness, we end up spending a lot of time in Coriolanus, don’t we? This is the second time that we’ve been on this very page. The last time was on 12/17 when one of the servants was talking about hitting Coriolanus with a cudgel. Remember that?

But this is a pretty interesting line too. This time we have Tullus Aufidius responding to Coriolanus’s offer to join him to fight the Romans. The response? ‘Yes, I love you!’ Well, that’s sort of the response. One way or the other Aufidius makes it clear that he’s pretty fond of Coriolanus and he’s pretty excited about having him join the Volscian army. And why wouldn’t he be? Coriolanus is a kick-ass warrior. Now the part that follows, the part where Aufidius talks about being more excited by the prospect of Coriolanus fighting on his side than he was on his wedding night looking at his bride, well that just gets a little weird if you ask me. But it’s Shakespeare, so who am I to judge. Hear, have a read of Aufidius’s whole speech and see what you think. It’s about thirty four lines starting on line 98 of Act IV, scene v.

This is my Presto Heat Dish. It does a pretty good job of keeping me heated down here in my cellar office in the winter. I'm not sure whether or not it makes me as hot as Aufidius gets with Coriolanus's love, but it's hot enough for me.

Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

Constance

King John                                            Act III, scene iv Line 98

Stick with me for a minute so that I can explain who and what’s involved, and then we’ll get back to the line. Constance, today’s speaker, is the widow of King John’s older brother, Geoffrey. Her young son, Arthur, has a legitimate claim to the throne over King John, and John is very well aware of this. Arthur has just been captured by John’s men and now Constance is sure that John will kill her young son and that she will never see him alive again. She happens to be right, and this is what she’s talking about in this scene.

Cardinal Pandulph (the name alone is enough to make you not like this guy) has just told Constance that she has ‘too heinous a respect for grief’ and that she is ‘as fond of grief as of your child,’ basically, ‘get over it!’ And then she gets into what grief is all about to her.

                Grief fills up the room of my absent child,

                Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

                Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

                Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

                Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

                Then have I reason to be fond of grief!

Yeah, okay, I added the emphasis and the exclamation point on the last line. But I can see these words being spoken by some mistress of the stage, a Streep or a Mirren, and I can’t help but feel that this last line would be spit at Cardinal Pandulph. Honestly, I can’t read these words without being moved. Grief ‘stuffs out his vacant garments.’ I really don’t think Will ever did any better than this. I really don’t.  Can’t you feel a mother’s broken heart? Please tell me you can.

So there's not going to be a picture today. That's right, sorry, no picture. There is no picture that’s worth these 51 words. Today you’re just going to have to savor the words because you’re not going to be reading anything as well written as this for quite some time. Go ahead, one more time read these six lines again. Please.

                             Grief fills up the room of my absent child,

                    Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

                    Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

                    Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

                    Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

                    Then have I reason to be fond of grief!

                               

              

                  

Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion

                              [Wounds his arm]

Of my more fierce endeavor:

Edmund

              

King Lear                                            Act II, scene i     Line 34

This is an interesting line. It’s got a stage direction right in the middle of it. Now Will is a little bit famous for his lack of stage direction. If you read his plays you’ll notice this. It makes it a little hard on the reader, it does. Because as you read the play, and you get all the dialogue, it’s sometimes hard to understand what’s going on. That’s why it’s so much better to see the play. When you see the play you might not understand every word, but when you see what’s going on things are a lot clearer. Anyway, I think this lack of stage direction in his plays has been a kind of good thing because it allows for that much more freedom in interpretation when staging these plays. Don’t you agree?

So this is the scene where the rotten kid Edmund is convincing everyone that the good son Edgar is the bad one. He’s alone as he speaks right now, and he’s going to be telling everyone in a moment how Edgar pulled a sword on him and wounded him. So he’s going to cut himself to show everyone his wound [wounds his arm]. I hope he’s had his tetanus shot.

There’s a lot of talk and show of wounds in Will’s plays. Remember all that talk in Coriolanus of how he’s supposed to show his wounds to the voters? I don’t think the theater goers get to see any actual wounds in that instance though. Except at the end when Coriolanus gets stabbed to death.

Yes, lots of violence and lots of swordplay with Will. Though not so much in King Lear. Except here where our buddy Edmund is playing with his sword on himself. Rotten kid.

Here's a sword that we have in our house. It's not as impressive as it looks, and it's certainly not very sharp. As far as I know no one has ever been wounded with this sword. At least I'm pretty sure that no one's been wounded with it since it came into this house. Before then? Well I just don't know.

…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?