Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the world,

Thou Cacodemon! There thy kingdom is.

-Queen Margaret

King Richard The Third                  Act I, Scene iii, Line 143

Well isn’t that a fine ‘how do you do?’ Yes, Queen Margaret (actually the former Queen Margaret; she was Henry the Sixth’s wife and mother to Edward Prince of Wales who would have been King Edward the Fourth.) has no need to hide her hatred for Gloucester (the future Richard III) and she has nothing to lose. And her hate is well founded since Gloucester (again, future Richard III) took part in the downfall of her husband and the death of her son. What’s not to hate?

This scene is just one big slugfest. There’s this whole group of n’er do wells fighting amongst themselves when Margaret shows up. For several minutes she stays hidden to the side of the scene making remarks to herself and the audience (asides), until she finally steps forward and engages, mostly with Richard. Today’s totally random line is one of her asides and it’s in response to Richard (Gloucester) saying that he’s ‘too childish-foolish for this world’. And for the record, ‘hie’ is hasten, and ‘cacodemon’ is some kind of evil spirit. Hurry up and get yourself to hell you devil; that’s where you belong, not here! 

And really, Richard is pretty much deserving of this. If you don’t believe me you can read the end of the scene, the part where he sends the two murderers off to kill his own brother Clarence. Yeah, not a very nice guy, and a perfectly suitable comment by Margaret. And really folks, even though we may feel like doing it from time to time, let’s try not to use this line in our everyday life.

Okay, I tried to explain to these guys what this scene is about, but they refused to take it seriously. I told them that it was supposed to be a group of people having a big argument, but they insisted that they could be arguing while they’re dancing. And what’s up with that skinny guy with the goatee thinking he could pull of the role of Queen Margaret. It’s just really hard to get people to work with you.

And every drop cries vengeance for his death,

‘Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

-Duke of York

King Henry The Sixth Part III                       Act I, Scene iv, Line 149

Today I’m going to try to spend the whole post on one word. We’ve done a lot of talking about all of the characters and politics that make up Will’s history plays. And it’s obvious that the Duke of York is a little ticked off here, but we’re not going to get into that. Instead, we’re going to talk about the word ‘fell’, as in ‘fell Clifford.’

Now for those of you who are knowledgeable of this particular piece of vocabulary beyond its use as the past tense of fall, or as the verb meaning to cause something to fall, this may not be interesting. But I’m going to go for it anyway. There is a third usage of fell (apparently there’s even a fourth and fifth, but I’m not going there) and it’s as an adjective. Will used it pretty famously (I think we might have even covered it in an earlier post) in Macbeth when Malcom was referring to his whole family having been slaughtered:

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

 One fell swoop. And this is the meaning that we’re dealing with today. ‘Fell’ as an adjective is applied to something bad; very, very bad. Usually it’s referring to bad as in deadly. If you’re a Tolkien fan, like me, you’ll be well versed in the use of ‘fell’. The professor used it quite a bit in his writing. It’s a pretty archaic word now. Perhaps it’s less archaic in Britain? I really don’t know. But in this country, aside from Tolkieners and Shakespeareans, you’ll not find too many people who know this meaning, let alone any who use it.

A quick look at oxforddictionaries.com tells me that this adjective has its origins in Middle English from Old French felon meaning wicked (person). And this, presumably is where we get the word ‘felon’. So ‘fell’, an adjective meaning very, very bad is related to the words ‘felon’ and ‘felon’ which refer to bad people and bad acts. So see, it’s not really that far a stretch to find a form of ‘fell’ in our modern usage.

Now I just went and polled the only other person in the house right now, and she had no idea what the adjectival meaning of fell is. And she is an extremely well educated and well-read lady. And indeed, she brought up the one fell swoop thing and pointed out that in modern usage we employ that phrase whenever we talk about getting a bunch of stuff done, with no bad implications involved:

I stopped by work and picked up some papers, met with some students, and dropped off my expense report. I got that all done in one fell swoop.

And of course she’s right. Nothing bad done there, and yet that’s exactly the type of usage you’ll find in 2017 America. We’ve come to think of the ‘fell swoop’ as something to do with how the swoop was accomplished, not the nature of the swoop being bad. I guess that’s a little example of changing language, and I guess that’s all I’ve got for today.

Speaking of Professor Tolkien, here's an illustration from his Children Of Hurin. This is the very end of the tale where Hurin finally meets up with Morwen, and then she dies. I'm not sure if this scene qualifies as being fell, but it's certainly no bed of roses either.

             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?).