O, what a world is this, when what is comely

Envenoms him that bears it.  

-Adam

As You Like It                                     Act II, Scene iii, Line 14

All right then, we’ve broken our three day streak of the Margaret and Richard show. ‘Bout time!

And now that we’re back to As You Like It, maybe you remember the post where Orlando was complaining about the ill treatment at thehands of his older brother? Now things have gotten much worse as the brother has plans to kill Orlando. I believe that’s called fratricide. And if his brother were to carry through with it, it certainly wouldn’t be an isolated incident in Will’s works.  But the old and faithful family servant Adam, today’s speaker, is warning Orlando what’s going on and telling him to hightail it out of there. And in today's Totally Random line he’s lamenting that fact that Orlando’s goodness is what’s got his brother wanting to kill him. 

And Orlando certainly is not short on goodness. He is indeed,  comely. He had both Rosalind and Celia all gaga over him. And then he took on the professional wrestler and beat him without breaking a sweat. Yes, Orlando’s got a lot to be jealous of. And that's a pretty interesting way to phrase it. ‘…what is comely envenoms him that bears it.’

I'm afraid I'm going to have to do a repeat pic (for the first time). If you remember the post where Orlando was complaining about the treatment he was receiving from his brother (I referenced it above), you'll remember this pic. Yes, that's me on the left, and my older brother. I'm showing the pic again to remark on how uncanny it is that I seem to embody the qualities of Orlando and how amazing that I didn't envenom myself. Don't you agree?

Why, what, I pray, is Margaret more than that?

Her father is no better than an earl,

Although in glorious titles he excel.

-Queen Margaret

King Henry The Sixth Part I                          Act V, Scene V, Line 37

It seems like just about every day we’re ending up with a line about Margaret, or by Margaret. Yikes, so who exactly is this Margaret again?

Margaret of Anjou was born in France, the daughter of French nobility (note the reference to that by Gloucester above: her father is an earl, not a king or prince). She married Henry the sixth, and she was the driving force for a lot of the Lancasterian action in the War of the Roses (Lancasterians vs Yorkists).

With today’s line we are near the beginning of the Henry The Sixth, and at this point Gloucester/Richard is just getting warmed up on Margaret. She’s not actually in this scene. It’s the scene where they’re all talking about Henry marrying Margaret. Henry’s all in on the idea, but Richard, not so much. So he’s pointing out that Margaret’s not exactly royalty. He’s sort of saying that she’s from the wrong side of the tracks, to use an old expression. By the end of the Henry plays Richard is way more than warmed up, and she becomes the ‘false Frenchwoman’ (see post of two days ago). And then in Richard III Margaret is going right back at Richard with the ‘Hie thee to hell’ line (yesterday’s post). No, these two were not friends at all, as our last three Totally Random lines show. And whichever side of the tracks these two came from, they definitely ended up on way different sides, if you know what I mean.

This is me at Paddington Train Station in London. Those are the tracks behind me, and behind that you can see a train. So, am I on the right side of the tracks, or not? Well, I've got my super big coffee in hand, so I probably don't care. Would you?

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.