All blest secrets,
All you unpublish'd virtues of the earth,
Spring with my tears! be aidant and remediate
In the good man's distress! Seek, seek for him;
Lest his ungovern'd rage dissolve the life
That wants the means to lead it.

-Cordelia

King Lear                               Act IV, Scene iv, Line 17

Yes, I know, it’s not just one line. But it’s Cordelia! This is a scene in the latter part of the play, not quite near the end yet. She’s talking about her father, Lear, of course. She knows that he’s been seen nearby and that he appears to be quite mad (crazy, not angry). And this is her form of a prayer for her father’s safekeeping.  And that’s all you need to know. Sweet Cordelia. Read the prayer again and let it sink in. Then maybe you’ll say to yourself, ‘sweet Cordelia’.

This is a prayer for a child that my sister-in-law has in her house. I've always loved this prayer. Sweet Betsy.

You are my father, for methinks in you

I see old Gaunt alive; O, then, my father,

Will you permit that I shall stand condemn'd

A wandering vagabond; my rights and royalties

Pluck'd from my arms perforce and given away

To upstart unthrifts?

  

-Henry Bolingbroke

King Richard The Second               Act II, Scene iii, Line 118

Well, I'll admit that today's line is a little long, but it’s not a tough line, so I don’t feel bad springing it on you.

This is Henry Bolingbroke talking to his uncle. Henry’s father was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster who died earlier in the play. Henry is talking to Edmund of Langley, who is the Duke of York and also John of Gaunt’s brother. And just to be clear (or perhaps to muddy it up a bit), the father of Richard the Second (the current King that Henry Bolingbroke will shortly be overthrowing) was another brother of John and Edmund. His name was Edward the Black Prince (no, he was a white guy; not sure where the name came from) and he died before he ever got to be king. But since The Black Prince was the first born of King Edward III, his son Richard the Second got to be king. And now we’ll be having Richard’s first cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, having something to say about the royal succession.  But back to the line.

Right now Henry is back in England after being banished by King Richard II, and he’s being confronted by Uncle York (Edmund), who was left in charge by Richard whilst the latter went to Ireland on business. Now Henry is calling Uncle Edmund ‘father’ because he says he reminds him of his dad ‘old Gaunt’. Henry tried calling his uncle ‘uncle’ a few lines earlier. In fact he called him ‘gracious uncle’, and the response he got to that was

Tut, tut! Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle: I am not a traitor’s uncle.

In other words, Uncle, schmuncle, buddy! So I can see why Henry’s going for the surrogate dad angle now. But don't worry, by the end of the play, Uncle York will come around to Henry’s side. For now he’s going to at least play neutral. After all, Henry’s got a good point. Right after he was banished, his father, old Gaunt, died. And before that body was cold Richard was claiming all of Old Gaunt's assets. Of course we’re talking about assets that should have rightfully passed to John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. So now Henry is back, out of banishment, and ready to claim those assets that were ‘ pluck’d from my arms perforce and given away to upstart unthrifts!’  Can you imagine? Upstart unthrifts! Well them’s fightin’ words!

And spoiler alert: Henry’s going to decide that he wants a bit more than his dad’s assets; he’s going to decide he also wants Richard’s crown.

This is a limited edition, signed print of a painting by J.F. Lansdowne. Relevance? It was my dad's asset. But I didn't have to raise an army, or argue with my uncle to get it. Actually, after dad passed away no one else wanted it. So I just ended up with it.

I’ll bring her to the Grecian presently:

-Troilus

Troilus And Cressida                                       Act IV, Scene iii, Line 6

Just to re-set: Troilus and Cressida is about the two titular lovers, but it’s also about the Trojan war. It encompasses a lot of the action of the Iliad, but I’m not sure whether or not Troilus and Cressida are part of the Iliad or if they are Will’s add-on to that story. But we’re not going to find that out today.

Anyway, this is a very short scene. Here’s the entirety of Act IV, Scene iii.

 SCENE III. The same. Street before Pandarus' house.

Enter PARIS, TROILUS, AENEAS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR, and DIOMEDES

PARIS

It is great morning, and the hour prefix'd
Of her delivery to this valiant Greek
Comes fast upon. Good my brother Troilus,
Tell you the lady what she is to do, And haste her to the purpose.

TROILUS

Walk into her house;
I'll bring her to the Grecian presently:
And to his hand when I deliver her,
Think it an altar, and thy brother Troilus
A priest there offering to it his own heart.

Exit

PARIS

I know what 'tis to love;
And would, as I shall pity, I could help!
Please you walk in, my lords.

Exeunt

And that’s it. Thirteen lines. Without getting into the whole story too much, what’s happening here is that the Trojans and Greeks have agreed to a prisoner swap. Well, not actually prisoners, at least not both of them. But the deal is that the Trojans sent Cressida (a Trojan) to the Greeks and the Greeks send a Trojan prisoner back to Troy. I think that’s all you need to know for now. I know, you’re asking why do the Greeks want Cressida? Well her father, a Trojan, is now in the Greek camp. Not sure what’s up with that.

So this is the scene where Troilus is being told that it’s time to surrender his babe for the swap. He seems to be taking it pretty well, don’t you think. I mean, he makes the little statement about offering up his heart to an altar, but other than that he doesn’t seem to be fighting the deal. It’s a pretty mild mannered statement. I’ll bring her to the Grecian presently (yawn). And then what? Oh yeah, I think I was gonna go get a haircut. Yeah, that’s what it was. Well this is sort of a comedy anyway, so…

All right then. This is my copy of The Iliad, and this is the pronouncing glossary in the back of the book. If you zoom in you can see Troilus's name there. But if you go to the 'C' page there is on Cressida (that's why Cressida here, holding the book open, looks so pissed off). So it looks like maybe Will invented Cressida, but not Troilus? And if Cressida never really existed then that would explain why Troilus was so cavalier about giving  her up to the Greeks. It's all a bit confusing, isn't it?

For you, mistress,

Save you your labor.

-Gratiano

Othello                                 Act V, Scene i, Line 100

I believe Gratiano is telling Bianca, Cassio’s girlfriend, to not bother with the injured Cassio because they’re going to get the surgeon to look at him. So here’s what’s going on: This is the scene where Iago orchestrates an attack on Cassio by Rodrigo. Naturally Iago isn’t there when the attack takes place but only shows up after Cassio has defended himself against Rodrigo. Then Iago sneaks up behind Cassio and slices his leg and runs away before he’s seen. A few minutes later he sneaks in again and kills the wounded Rodrigo, and again runs away before he’s seen. Then he shows up again and starts spreading the blame on different people for the stuff he’s done. He really couldn’t get much rattier. Yeah, that’s probably not a word, but then again there’s probably never been a villain quite like Iago, so he needs his own word. Rattier. Or perhaps rattiest.

There, Will is obviously a much better wordsmith than I, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come up with a gem now and then. Rattiest. But keep in mind how evil Iago is, and he's the inspiration for the word. So don’t be telling your sister she’s the rattiest just because she left a mess in the living room. She’d have to burn down the living room and steal your boyfriend to even get started on the road to rattiesthood. No, you’ll have to save this word for an extra-special occasion. It’s basically a once in a lifetime word.  

This is a monster that I helped my little buddy make a few years ago. I'm not using him for tonight's picture because of his rattiness. No, I couldn't find anything to illustrate true rattiness. But since I came up empty on tonight's picture I thought I'd use a picture of the monster because I think he's interesting. Do you think he's interesting?

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

-First Witch

Macbeth                              Act IV, Scene i, Line 1

That’s right, First Witch. There’s three witches in this play, and they show up time and again. In fact, the play opens with them and of course they are integral to the plot since they pretty much get Macbeth going down his path of mayhem. And what are they doing in this scene. Not sure. But they’re obviously up to something. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d. What’s a brinded cat?

So check this out. I thought when I read this line that it must certainly be a line that had since been borrowed and re-used for something. Even though nobody these days knows what a brinded cat is, the line itself just sounds cool. And I’m right. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d, is a book by Alan Bradley. Look at me, now I’m giving a plug for Alan Bradley, whoever that is. Apparently he’s either a pretty well known author or he’s just got a good web presence because if you google today’s line (which, as you can see, was written by William Shakespeare) you’ll get pages of references to Alan’s new book. Poor Will. Poor us. No offense, Alan.

Oh well.

I'm pretty sure this is not the first, second, or third witch. But it is a witch. I'm sure of that, because I made that witch costume myself.

4/12/17

I know that you can do very little alone;

-Menenius

Coriolanus                                    Act II, Scene i, Line 35

I know you can do very little alone; for your helps
are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous
single: your abilities are too infant-like for
doing much alone. You talk of pride: O that you
could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks,
and make but an interior survey of your good selves!
O that you could!

That’s the full quote there, those seven lines. I gave you a nice short piece of it for today’s Totally Random line, but I thought you could use the seven lines to give it better context. This is Menenius talking to two of the tribunes (representatives) of the people, Sicinius and Junius. It’s pretty obvious that Menenius has a low opinion of these two guys he’s talking to. And he’s right, because they are pretty sleazy. They are politicians and Will has embodied in them all the things that we don’t like in politicians. Not that all politicians are bad. But these guys are.

You know what is a little curious though, is this thing about turning their eyes toward the napes of your necks. What’s up with that? An interior survey of your good selves, I get that. But eyes toward the napes of your necks?

And this leads me to a little bit of an epistle. Get comfortable.

One of the things I remember from my MAT program (that’s masters of teaching program) was the idea that one of the best ways to go about teaching is to make the subject matter the center of the classroom. In a sense, to take the subject matter, whether it’s Shakespeare, or the area of a triangle, or the atomic weight of wheat (okay, not sure if that last one makes sense), and literally or figuratively put it in the middle of the class and gather round it. And then take turns talking about it, questioning it, or just poking at it. As a teacher you should be doing some poking too. And yes, helping out a bit if you know a little more about the subject matter than the rest. This is in stark opposition to making it a teacher centered classroom where you’re just lecturing and the students are supposed to be paying attention to you.

With that in mind, my point is that Menenius’s seven lines today are a perfect example of how poke-able Shakespeare is. Why would you turn your eyes toward the napes of your neck? Why does Menenius have such a low opinion of politicians. These lines, and the questions I’m raising about these two lines,  are the kind of things that you can toss out into the middle of the circle and start poking. If you stop and look at these little things in the play, in the text, you can find some really interesting stuff. Shakespeare is so incredibly full of interesting stuff. Some of it’s very obscure, like the nape of the neck thing. And some is incredibly relevant and relatable to our world, like the politician thing.  

So that’s my epistle. It’s too bad I don’t have any teachers reading this blog, huh?

Here's my guys going at it again. They are just crazy about this play. That's Jerry, on the left, playing Sicinius and staring at Junius's neck. I coached him a bit on this one because I told him I wanted to put extra emphasis on the neck staring thing. He just took it and ran with it. Beautiful!

Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?

-Ophelia

Hamlet                                         Act IV, Scene iv, Line 21

I think it’s pretty interesting that I was talking about TWLOHA in my last post and today we’re dealing with Ophelia, another in Will’s long list of tragic characters. Do you ever wonder if Will wasn’t perhaps a manic depressive?

In today’s scene Ophelia is losing her grip on reality. And no wonder! So far in the play her boyfriend (sort of) Hamlet has killed her father Polonius (by accident, sort of). And now Hamlet has been sent away to be killed himself, though Ophelia doesn’t yet know that. I’m not sure, but I think Ophelia’s referring to Hamlet as the ‘beauteous majesty of Denmark.’

Anyway, and more to the point, Ophelia, who dies or kills herself depending on who you ask, has become synonymous in our contemporary world with a name for troubled adolescent girls and particularly girls like the ones that TWLOHA tries to help. There is, in fact, a well known book on the subject of adolescent girls titled Reviving Ophelia: Saving The Selves Of Adolescent Girls.

So last post we talked about TWLOHA and today we run into Ophelia. And it’s all so Perfectly Random.

Yeah, I thought I'd throw TWLOHA another plug. I really don't know much about them, but I think they're legit, and I know this cause is legit.