I know not how,

But I do find it cowardly and vile,

For fear of what might fall, so to prevent

The time of life:

-Marcus Brutus

Julius Caesar                     Act IV, Scene i, Line 103

Well this is an interesting line. I guess I say that a lot, don’t I? But it is. Brutus and Cassius are discussing suicide, of all things. Here they are standing on the plains of Philippi and they are about to go into battle. Cassius asks Brutus what he’ll do if they lose the battle, is he gonna fall on his sword. Here’s Brutus’s whole answer-

Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself, I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,
For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The time of life: arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.

That pretty much sounds like a ‘no way’ to me. How about you? And yet, Cassius follows up by saying, ‘Okay, then if we lose you’re gonna let them take you prisoner and drag you through the streets of Rome?’ And Brutus replies with an even stronger ‘No way, man!’ So which is it? Is he gonna commit hari kari if they lose the battle, or isn’t he? Well I think I’ve mentioned before that the last time I saw this play was in 1972. And I haven’t read it since then. So you tell me.

There you go. That's my high school diploma and you can see the date. We saw Julius Caesar at the Stratford Shakespeare theater in my freshman year with Father Diaz. He was a feisty little guy. I mean Father Diaz, not Julius Caesar. Julius was dead in the beginning of the third act; not very feisty at all.

If after every tempest come such calms,

May the winds blow till they have waken’d death!

-Othello

Othello                                Act II, Scene i, Line 187

It’s interesting. We’ve had quite a few lines from Othello, and many of them have been lines, or words, that I’ve been able to point out can be used today in many different situations. There was ‘Good Michael’ and ‘Aye, sooth’ ‘What villain hath done this?’  And now we have another.

For context’s sake, this is Othello talking to Desdemona on the docks. She’s been waiting for him and he’s just gotten in, his ship just having sailed through a tempest at sea that sank a bunch of the Turkish ships. Well he’s probably happy just to get on terra firma, but he’s doubly happy to see her there. And so he comes up with this line. And it’s a good line. 

 If after every tempest come such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death!

So that will be a pretty significant wind if it blows enough to waken death. 

Now to be fair, there’s a lot of bad stuff coming down the pike for Othello and Desdemona, and this may be a bit of Will foreshadowing here. But for now things are still good. So these newlyweds may as well enjoy the calm while they can.

Is it possible that the winds blew here till they have waken'd the dead? No, this probably got knocked over by some delinquent.

Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state:--

-Friar Laurence

Romeo And Julit               Act III, Scene iii, Line 166

So here’s what the friar is saying-

Get going, good night, and here’s what your situation is:

And then he goes on to tell Romeo what his situation is: Either be gone before the break of day or else leave here disguised; get yourself to Mantua and stay there, and I’ll send your servant with messages from time to time with any good news.

Now, what’s happened in this scene before the good friar says this? Romeo just spent the first part of the scene moaning and crying like a baby because he’s killed Juliet’s cousin Tybalt and that by doing so he’s hurt Juliet. But mostly he’s whining because he’s going to be banished from Verona and from Juliet. (and by the way, today the word is banished, not banist). Interestingly enough, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of remorse about killing good old Tybalt. And after this good bunch of moaning the friar tells Romeo to stop acting like a little girl and put on his big boy pants and go and see Juliet. And then he can take his banishment until they find a way to straighten the whole mess out. And that’s when he says Go hence, Good night, etc, etc.

So what do we think? Well this is Romeo and Juliet, certainly one of Will’s most known plays. I mean if you asked 100 random people (especially if it was 100 people who really knew little to nothing about Will) to name one play by Shakespeare, you’d probably hear this play named more than any other. Surprisingly and inexplicably, I’ve only come across this play three times before in my random picks, and two of those picks didn’t make it to post time. That’s right, there’s only been one post before this on Romeo And Juliet. And that was way back on 8/20/16. And what does that all mean. I don't really know. I guess not much. Now I'm just rambling. But at least I'm not whining. Not that I'm above whining. I can whine with the best of them. I can also see when it's time to end a post. And that time was clearly several lines ago. So dear readers, go hence and good night.

Good night.

Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates,

Let in that amity which you have made;

-King Philip

King John            Act II, Scene i, Line 537

Okay, couple of things here. One is grammar, and two, we’ve been here before  and I still don’t understand  what the heck is going on here.

First, a little bit of commentary re grammar. It seems that Will was really fond of the semi-colon. He really seems to favor it over the period, and I’m not sure why. Oh sure, he uses the period. But it seems that just as much, if not more, he uses the semi-colon to end his sentences. At least it seems like they’re ended in a lot of places where he uses it. Strictly speaking the semi-colon is not the same as a period (the latter of which definitely ends the sentence). The semi-colon is some sort of connecting punctuation. So maybe I’m just missing something here and he’s not really wanting to end sentences. Or maybe they worked with punctuation a little differently back then. I just don’t know.

And secondly, we’ve been here before and I still don’t quite get it. The French and the English are outside a French town that doesn’t want to let either of them in and therefore the French and the English are going to gang up and sack the town? Well, actually at this point they’ve decided not to sack it because the town has come up with a better idea. But that’s still pretty confusing, don’t you think?

It’s a fairly long scene (you can see that we’re on line 537), and stuff has gone back and forth here. In the interest of clarity Itried to read as much of the scene as I could today, but again, 537 lines. Well… 

And by the way, wasn’t Amity the name of the beach town in the original Jaws movie? I’m just saying.

Now this is that same gate from the 2/15 post. Remember? That's the other post about this same scene where I said this gate reminded me of this scene at the gate of Angiers. Except now the girls are on the top of the gate and I climbed a really tall tree nearby and I started to recite some of this scene. I think this is the part where I was saying 'Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates, Let in that amity which you have made;' And the girls shouted back 'Amity Schmamity Dad! We're not getting off this gate until you stop with the Shakespeare stuff!'

Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.

Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA

-Costard

Love’s Labour’s Lost           Act IV, Scene iii, Line 210

This same shall go.---

-Longaville

Love’s Labour’s Lost            Act IV, scene iii, Line 57

Well, sorry folks, but I’ve been having a bit of a tough time keeping up with my blogging lately. I’d say it’s partly due to a busy schedule, partly due to being under the weather, and partly due to who knows what. But I’m gonna see if I cant’ get back on track here today, so bear with me.

So we’re going with two lines today. The first one is actually today’s Totally Random line and the second one is from back in January from a day that I didn’t post (for whatever reason). And honestly, I don’t have much on the second line (which is probably why it didn’t get posted on). Here’s what I wrote back then on the second line:

We are back at Love’s Labour’s Lost for only the second time and Randomness has us with this same guy, Longaville. It’s a crazy scene where we keep adding guys watching other guys in the scene without being seen. Sound confusing? It sort of is.

I’m not sure today’s line is worth much of spending a lot of time on. I think he’s just talking about some lines of poetry that need to go?

Maybe today’s line needs to go?

Now you see why I didn’t post it. But I included it today because today’s line, which isn’t bad, is from the same scene. At this point in the scene we have Costard talking and, depending on which version you look at, Costard is described as listed in the cast of characters as either a clown, or a country bumpkin, or something of the sort. But in today’s Totally Random line he’s referring to himself and Jaqueneta (a country wench) as the ‘true folk’. I really like the way he does it, refering to himself and her in the third person that way, and with that title 'the true folk'. It's classic! Also, I gave you the stage direction that follows the line. There’s that ‘exeunt’, plural of exit, but more importantly the stage direction makes clear who Costard is referring to as ‘the true folk.’ There might be confusion as to what or who he's talking about when he says 'walk aside the true folk',  but the confusion is gone when right after saying it he and Jaquenetta walk aside.

Okay, I’m about done for today. I guess I’ll put my keyboard down and, you guessed it, walk aside the true folk. Stage direction: Exit Pete.

A lot of true folk walk aside here, some going south, and some going north (can you read the fine print on the metal band on the cement post?).

Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.

Orlando

As You Like It                                                      Act I, Scene i      Line 33

As you can see, this is the 33^rd line of the play. So if you want context, you can pretty easily read all of the play up to this point and have as much context as anyone. Here’s the link. But since you’re probably not gonna read it, I’ll tell you a little. And by the way, you’re missing another one of Will’s beginning of the play intros that I was talking about the other day, this one by the main character Orlando himself.

Orlando’s talking to his older brother, Oliver, about the fact that older bro is mistreating him. Apparently Oliver, being the oldest, has inherited the farm, and everything else. And Oliver is sending another brother, Jaques, to school but he’s keeping Orlando on the farm and he’s not doing anything to benefit Orlando. He’s just treating him like a farmhand. And of course Orlando’s fed up with it. I guess I can say I can’t blame him.

And by the way, for any of you newcomers to Will’s world (hey, maybe that’s what I should call this: Will’s World), the word ‘marry’ has nothing to do with marriage. It’s just an exclamation. I think it’s ‘By Mary’, but you can insert ‘For goodness sakes’ or any number of meaningless or explicit expressions.

So this conversation starts with Oliver asking Orlando what he’s making (what’s he up to), and when Orlando says he’s making nothing Oliver asks him what he’s marring (if he’s not making something he must be marring something). And that’s why Orlandos’ talking about marring himself. The line makes pretty good sense if you spend a few minutes with it. Honestly, if you spent the amount of time with this line that you spent with that youtube video of the guy pouring tomato juice in the other guy’s pants you’d understand it full well. And what’s so funny/exciting/engaging/important about that guy pouring tomato juice down that guy’s pants?

Well anyway, this whole dissatisfaction of Orlando with life at home theme leads us into the main part of the play which is Orlando running away and ending of in the forest of Arden with all the other runaways. It’s a little like a Gilligan’s Island episode with a few more people.

This isn't Gilligan's Island, it's me and my big brother Dave. Unlike Oliver, Dave was (actually, still is) a really good big brother. Of course, he didn’t inherit the farm from my dad or anything like that. So I’d never had occasion to say anything to him about him helping to mar me. No, he's just a good guy.

                                            --I do wonder,

Thou naughty gaoler, that thou are so fond

To come abroad with him at his request.

Shylock

The Merchant Of Venice                               Act III, Scene iii  Line 9

We're back, today, to The Merchant Of Venice and this short, somewhat odd little scene. At this point in the play Antonio’s been jailed (gaoler is jailer) and we’re sort of awaiting the courtroom scene. But here is Antonio out of jail, albeit accompanied by his jailer, and come to try to speak with Shylock. The old jew is adamant about getting his pound of flesh and will hear nothing from Antonio. And that’s that. And after Shylock leaves, Antonio, who it would seem came to speak with Shylock (about letting him out of the contract?), is completely resigned to giving up his pound of flesh, and his life with it.

But if we find the scene a little odd, isn’t it funny that Shylock finds the scene odd too. That’s what today’s Totally Random line is all about: Shylock finding it odd that jailed Antonio is wandering about when he's supposed to be jailed. Apparently the word ‘naughty’ has the meaning of ‘wicked’ or ‘corrupt’ and the word ‘fond’ has the meaning of ‘foolish’ in this context. To be sure, Shylock spends most of his time in this scene harping about his bond. In sixteen lines he repeats 'I'll have my bond' five times. It's almost comical (in fact, this is a comedy and Will may be going for the comic effect here) the way Shylock pauses from this bond stuff in the middle to take note of the situation, and speak to the jailer- 'By the way jailer, you crooked so and so, why are you being so foolish as to let this bum Antonio roam about wherever he wants to?' And then right back into 'I'll have my bond!' It's just possible that this could be hilarious depending on how you staged it. Or maybe that's just me.

                                                          My buddy and I were going for a comic effect here, but, well...