Now, trust me, were it not against our laws, Against my crown, my oath, my dignity, Which princes, would they, may not disannul,

My soul would sue as advocate for thee.

Duke Solinus

The Comedy Of Errors                    Act I, Scene i      Line 142

This is an interesting line, and it’s the very beginning of the play. The Duke is talking to Aegeon, who has been sentenced to death, and he's telling Aegeon that he'd like to help him but... oh well. Aegeon's crime? He’s a Syracusian who’s showed up in Ephesus ostensibly with the intent of trading. Now, to be clear, this is not the theme of this play, but it is a premise of the play. Aegeon will argue that he’s not a trader, but the sentence sticks. Oh don’t worry, this is a comedy and it’ll all turn out okay in the end. 

But what makes this particularly interesting is that I was reading a different text of one current world leader who spoke yesterday to congress, and I can’t help but draw parallels between him and the Duke above. This current fellow is intent on going backwards from globalization. He’s intent on restricting international trade, and he’s intent on restricting certain internationals from even entering our country based purely on where they’re coming from, and of course he wants to build a wall. Once again I cannot help but marvel at the relevance of this four hundred year old work. Back in the fall I was talking about how relevant Coriolanus was, taking into account the election that was going on. And now we’re right back to it. I wish I was teaching Shakespeare in class today. Yeah, I guess that’s where I should be. 

But I’m not

This is me about to go into my Gene Kelly impersonation. Relevance? Yes indeed. Can you see where I am in this picture? That's right, I'm on the Great Wall of China. No, really, I am. So since we're talking today (ever so briefly) about xenophobia and keeping foreigners out, what better example than the Great Wall. At least that's what I was thinking. And by the way, it really was quite the soft shoe that I demonstrated after this picture was taken. You'll just have to take my word for it.

A solemn air and the best comforter
To an unsettled fancy cure thy brains,
Now useless, boil'd within thy skull!

Prospero

The Tempest                                      Act V, Scene i     Line 60

Okay, before we get into it I’m going to give you the stage direction that appears immediately before Prospero speaks this line. It might help. Might not, but it might.

Re-enter ARIEL before: then ALONSO, with a frantic gesture, attended by GONZALO; SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO in like manner, attended by ADRIAN and FRANCISCO they all enter the circle which PROSPERO had made, and there stand charmed; which PROSPERO observing, speaks:

And then Prospero gives today's Totally Random line.

I don’t think we’ve covered any lines this late in The Tempest. There’s a lot going on in this play, and it all takes place over a pretty short span of time. And here in Act V, scene i Prospero wraps everything up, pretty quickly I might add. The first thing he takes care of is this group that he had put under his spell earlier in the play. Prospero is talking to these guys now who are under his spell, or in a trance, or whatever you want to call it. He’s bringing them out of this trance, and that’s what he’s talking about. So their brains are not literally boiled within their skulls. No, of course not.  Though it’s going to take a little more than fresh air to bring them to their senses. It’s going to take Prospero. Sometimes I feel like my brains are just a little boiled. Those are the times I could use old Prospero to help me out. Ever feel that way?

Wait a minute! Is that Dracula behind Nina? And why isn't she scared? And what's that little kid doing on the fountain? Is he gonna jump in? Holy cow this is a crazy picture! And what's it got to do with today's Totally Random line? Maybe nothing. Maybe it's just a Totally Random picture.

Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoop of liquor.

First Clown

Hamlet                                                 Act V, Scene i     Line 60

This is the graveyard scene from Hamlet. You know; Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well. Except that it’s Alas poor Yorick,  I knew him, Horatio. Except that’s not today’s line. But that is today’s scene. Today’s line is one gravedigger talking to the other. Why are they listed as ‘clowns’? I dunno. If you watch Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hamlet you’ll get the treat of seeing Billy Crystal perform this scene, and this line. Believe it or not he does a super job with it. Robin Williams has a small role near the end of this play as Osric too. It’s an amazing movie.

Anyway, this is the graveyard scene, shortly before the Yorick line and Hamlet and Horatio are watching and listening to the two gravedigger/clowns. The latter spend the first part of this scene conversing as they dig the grave for Ophelia. Ophelia, if you remember, drowned herself over the lost love of Hamlet. Hamlet will find out for the first time, later in this scene, that Ophelia is dead. Today’s Totally Random line is the last bit of conversation between the gravediggers as Billy Crystal sends the other guy off to get some liquor. I have no idea whether Yaughan is a person or a place, but knowing Will it has some relevance or other.

So today’s line is nothing really special, but the scene as a whole is pretty darn good. It’s sort of broken into three parts: the two gravedigger’s conversing, Hamlet and Horatio conversing, and then a bit of a brouhaha as the burial party of Ophelia arrive on the scene. As a whole there’s quite a bit, but the first part, the two gravediggers’ part, is only about sixty lines. So I’m going to give you that assignment for today. Here’s the link. Read it. You’ll enjoy it. And picture Billy Crystal as the First Gravedigger. Good luck.

It's a picture of a fake headstone. Sorry, that's all I've got for tonight.

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?