The lamentable change is from the best.

Edgar

King Lear                     Act IV, Scene i   Line 5

Okay, so here’s the whole quote. This is Edgar talking to himself.  He’s on the run because his rotten half brother Edmund has turned everyone against him. Edgar knows that he’s on his own now. 

Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd,

Than still contemn'd and flatter'd. To be worst,

The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,

Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear:

The lamentable change is from the best;

The worst returns to laughter. 

The way I read this is that Edgar, talking to himself, is saying that he’s got nowhere to go but up. It’s a fairly optimistic way of looking at things given the situation that he’s got. On the other hand, it might be the best way of looking at things, given the situation he’s got. 

Better to be despised and know it, than to be despised and not know it. If you’re the worst then you can still have hope and not live in fear. The lamentable change is to change from the best. If you’re already the worst (as he considers himself to be now) you can laugh and be happy because you’ve no fear of things going bad. You’re already there!

I don’t think there’s really that many of us who are in as bad a situation as Edgar, but there are times when we all probably feel like we are. So I guess those are the times that we can say ‘The lamentable change is from the best.’ 

Do you know what that yellow circle in the middle of this picture is? I'll tell you. It's a pee stain from a little dog on this carpet. And do you know how new this carpet is? It's brand new. Now if this was a pee stain in an old, beat up rug it wouldn't be so bad. But since it's a brand new rug we can say the lamentable change is from the best. Yes, this is a quite lamentable change; from brand new to pee stained. Very lamentable.

Ay, but not yet to die.

Desdemona

 Othello                                 Act V, Scene ii    Line 54

This is an odd little line. I know, you're probably saying 'well at least it's little!'

Now it seems that we spend quite a bit of time with Othello. And that’s okay because it’s a pretty good play, at least from my perspective. And we’re here in the last scene again and things are about to go downhill fast (things have not unraveled to the point they were at the last time we visited this scene). Othello has decided that he’s going to kill his wife and has informed her that she’s lying on her death-bed. For some reason she agrees that it’s her deathbed, but not today it isn’t. So I’m not exactly sure why she answers with today’s Totally Random line. It seems a little random indeed to me.

In any event I read the whole last scene this morning and it’s pretty interesting. Right at the end, when he is about to stab himself, Othello makes a bit of a strange reference to a 'malignant and turban’d Turk' in, of all places, Aleppo. I think it’s almost bizarre that of all the towns in the Mideast that Will could have used for this last line that he picked one that is so pivotal in today’s Mideast situation; and one that, like this play, is the scene of so much suffering. Some of Will’s stuff seems ageless by design, and some by pure luck.

But I’ve strayed a few hundred lines away from today’s Totally Random line, ‘Ay, but not yet to die’. Tis a strange line. And of course the poor girl turns out to be wrong. Right about the ‘Ay’, but tragically wrong about the ‘not yet to die,’ as Othello kills her a few lines further on. ‘Ay, but not yet to die.’ There’s something there that I’m missing. But what is it?

See that little white squiggle? That's the electric connection being made. This is a little thing that me and my buddy put together for his school science project. We sprayed some different combustible materials in a little container that we snapped into the round grey collar you see there. And then we snapped on the electric current to see which material was most combustible. Well we tried it a bunch of times and only got one explosion. The other times there was something missing, but we never quite figured out what. Sometimes you just can't figure out what's missing.

By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meet but you fall to some discord:

Hostess

King Henry The Fourth Part II            Act II, Scene iv   Line 55

Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley

Into his ruin’d ears, and thus deliver:

Henry Bolingbroke

King Richard The Second               Act III, Scene iii Line 33

We have the last two day’s Totally Random lines here and they are similar in theme. Let's face it, even if they weren't I'd find a way to tell you that they were. But they are because they're both talking about the inability of two people to come to terms. The first one states this right out, and the second one implies it.

Yesterday’s line comes from Henry the Fourth Part II. And just to be perfectly clear, Henry IV is Henry Bolingbroke, the guy talking about Richard’s ruin’d ear in the second line. But it’s not Henry being referred to in the first line. This ‘By my troth’ line is the Hostess talking to and about Doll Tearsheet and Falstaff. And the fight between Falstaff and Doll is one that’s very much out in the open, but also very much a lot of bluster as opposed to substance.

Substance, however, is what the second line is all about. Deliver what? What is Bolingbroke (soon to be Henry IV) talking about by sending the ‘breath of parley’ into Richard’s ‘ruin’d ears’. Should I have included exactly what he wanted delivered in today’s line? Perhaps. So I’ll tell you what he said, but here’s the thing; the tone and words of the message he gives Northumberland to give to Richard are completely different than the tone and message he uses above. He talks about ‘brazen trumpet’ and ‘ruin’d ears’. You can tell that he’s not thinking too highly of Richard. Anyway, the message he wants delivered is that he, Bolingbroke, pledges allegiance to King Richard and all he wants is his land and inheritance back; the stuff Richard stole after he banished Bolingbroke. Of course the bottom line is that Bolingbroke is going for broke here (pun intended). He plans to take the throne from Richard and just about everyone, including Richard, knows that. This line is in the very scene after the one that ended with Richard’s ‘From Richard’s night to Bolingbroke’s fair day’.

So there you go. Two lines about two pairs of people trying, or maybe not trying, to get along. For the record, Falstaff and Doll will get along. Henry and Richard? Not so much.

Since today's theme is trying, or not being able, to get along, here's a pic from a few years back of me at Gettysburg. This is one of the monuments at that battlefield (there's lots of monument's there!), and it seems a little funny to me that we erect monuments on the battlefields of a war that was all about two sides of one country not being able to get along. Now it's a pretty cool monument, especially seeing that it's a huge statue of a book, but maybe if we made big deals out of the ways we were able to get along, our country would be just a little better off today. By my troth, I'm just sayin'.

I have, sir, as I was commanded from you, Spoke with the king and have procured his leave For present parting;

Helena

 All's Well That Ends Well                         Act II, Scene v    Line 57

My husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff as he will chafe at the doctor's marrying my daughter:

Mistress Page

The Merry Wives Of Windsor              Act V, Scene iii   Line 7

Okay, today we're going to try the two Totally Random lines in one post thing again. I know we've done this at least one time before and it was a big hit, so we'll take another shot at it.

The first line is from a scene that has Lafeu, just like Beauty and the Beast. I wonder if Beauty and the Beast took anything else from All’s Well That Ends Well. After thinking about it, and taking a look at the play a little more, I think no. Bertram is a bit of a beast in this play, and in the end he appears to come around to loving Helena, but that’s about it. I think the Disney folks just borrowed the name of Lafeu, and that’s about it. 

Anyway, this is Helena talking to Bertram her husband. If you remember from one of our earlier posts back in December, she won her husband as a reward and he wasn’t too interested in becoming her husband. Now she addresses him as ‘sir’, and talks about what he commanded her to do. So that’s a little interesting, don’t you think?

Our second line is from the Merry Wives Of Windsor and it's interesting on a few notes. For one thing it’s only one line away from our only other post on The Merry Wives. That was the doctor saying

I know vat I have to do. Adieu.

And Mistress Page answers

Fare you well, sir. 

Then after the doc leaves she says today's Totally Random line

So we’ve hit this play but twice, and we’ve struck it on the same page only two lines apart.

So this is two days in a row that we have lines that have something to say about marriages. And really, neither one of them appears to be saying anything particularly good about this fine institution.

Come to think of it, Beauty And The Beast didn't say too much good stuff about marriage either, did it?

Our thunder from the south

Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.

King Phillip

King John                                            Act III, Scene i    Line 411

Yes, that’s right, line 411. And the scene goes to line 598, so that’s a pretty long scene.

Now it’s Interesting that there was only one John among the English kings. It seems like a pretty common name. A bunch of Henrys, and Georges, and Edwards, and more. But only one John. Interesting. 

Anyway, this is King Phillip talking, but he’s the king of France, not England. Though King John (of England) is here as well. In this scene they’re together with their people outside the gates of Angiers, a town in France. I find this scene a bit confusing because what it boils down to is that John and Phillip have decided to join forces to level the town. And they’re just talking now about the specifics of the attack. Apparently Phillip’s going to take care of attacking from the south, though I’m still not sure why Phillip, the king of France, is going to join forces with John, the king of England, to level a French town. Can you see why I might be confused? And the ‘drift of bullets’ that he’s talking about is apparently cannon balls. I’m not sure if this might not be another of Will’s anachronisms or not, but I guess we’ll just let that one slide. 

This is an old walled town in France that I was visiting with the girls a few years back. I remember mentioning to them at the time that it made me think of this scene in King John at the gate of Angiers, and they said 'Geez Dad, you're absolutely right, we were thinking the same thing.' And then they went into a laughing fit for the next ten minutes, so I'm not so sure they actually meant what they said. 

Being at Greenwich,

After your highness had reproved the duke

About Sir William Blomer,--

Surveyor

King Henry The Eighth                                   Act I, Scene ii     Line 191

And then the surveyor gets interrupted by King Henry. The eighth. King Henry the Eighth. That is to say, the eighth Henry. We’ve spent quite a bit of time on Henrys IV, V, and VI because between them Will wrote six plays. He skipped over number seven, and wrote just one on the eighth Henry, and it was to be one of Will’s last plays. Remember now the Henry the Eighth was the father of Queen Elizabeth and that Elizabeth was alive when Will did about half of his writing (she was dead and buried when he wrote Henry the Eighth). So Will had to be careful and probably would not have used her father as a subject for one of his plays while she was still alive. All those other Hanks were a few generations back, and thus a little safer as play fodder. Not that he didn’t have to be a little careful about them as well.

So today’s line is from the Surveyor who is being questioned by Henry about the Duke of Buckingham. Now I’m not sure what politics are going on here, but I believe the Surveyor is the guy who takes care of Buckingham’s estate. So he’s got some info for the king about what Buckingham’s been up to. And I don’t think the king’s particularly happy with old Buck. In fact, I think that Buck might be making an early exit from this play. But I’m not sure. I guess you could up and read the play yourself if you want to find out.

This, believe it or not, is the top of the brick wall that surrounds the back yard of Buckingham Palace. And while the palace is not named after the Buckingham referred to in today's line, I'm going to nonetheless consider it relevant for today's pic. And I'm also going to say that the surveyor of this Buckingham estate has got quite a job on his hands.

a knave very voluble;

Iago

Othello                                 Act II, Scene i     Line 241

And just like that, back to Othello. It’s like a roller coaster ride, isn’t it? Just getting whipped around from one place to another. 

Anyway, this time it’s Iago talking and I had some thoughts on this guy. Iago never once seems to say anything particularly truthful and yet constantly he’s being referred to as ‘honest Iago.’ It’s almost to the point where it’s incredulous. Like, what was Will doing here, and why have people bought into this play? Are we to assume the he had been something different prior to the time of the play, something good that grew a good reputation, and that just now he’s turned rotten (talking about Iago here, not Will). That doesn’t seem plausible because he’s just too rotten and too good at being rotten for that to make sense. 

In today’s Totally Random line Mr. Rat-Fink Iago is talking about Good Michael Cassio. He’s talking to Roderigo, who’s no angel  (and apparently no Einstein) either, and of course Iago is bad mouthing Good Michael. He’s calling him a voluble knave, which is an insincere, simplistic scoundrel or rascal. Pot, kettle, black!!! 

I couldn't think of anything particularly clever, so I'm giving you a picture of Edwin Booth (yes, John Wilkes's brother) portraying Iago. It's from my A.L. Rowse Annotated Shakespeare book. Apparently Edwin was quite the Shakespearean actor.