Now must your conscience my acquaintance seal,
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursued my life.

-Claudius

Hamlet                                    Act IV, Scene vii, Line 3

‘So get on my side, buddy, ‘cause you know that this guy Hamlet who killed your dad is also after me.’ I’m pretty sure that’s what King Claudius is telling Laertes here right now, or something like that. There’s only two scenes left in this play after this, the graveyard scene which we covered back in February, and the final scene where just about everyone dies. And in this scene Laertes and Claudius are plotting what they’re gonna do in that final scene to kill Hamlet.

I’d forgotten, but Laertes is the father of Odysseus in The Odyssey. Is that significant? Yeah, probably. We’d have to ask one of those Shakespeare experts, Bloom, or Garber, or whatever what that significance is, but I’m sure there’s something. After all, would Will just pick a name at random? No, Pete would pick a name at random; perhaps on a daily basis, but not Will. Or would he? It’s a good question.

Speaking of random, take a look at this kooky blog. This guy is picking a completely random line on a daily basis from all of Shakespeare’s works. And then he’s trying to write something  about that line, on a daily basis (though lately it looks like lately it’s a bit less than daily). What a kook!

Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones: I can compare our rich misers to
nothing so fitly as to a whale; a' plays and
tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful: such whales have I heard on o' the land, who never leave gaping till they've swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all.

-First Fisherman

Pericles, Prince Of Tyre                      Act II, Scene i, Line 34

Hoo boy, that’s not even a bunch of lines. It’s just a big old paragraph! But it’s a good one. What do we call the lines (or a paragraph) that are trying to say something meaningful about life in general, and can be taken fully on their own and apart from the story of the play. This is as opposed to lines that are just dialogue of what’s going on in the play? Well there must be a word for it, and certainly most of our Totally Random lines are the latter. I guess I’ll have to pass on what that word is for now and just tell you that we’ve got one of those lines (or paragraphs) today.

So what's it trying to say? Well, the first fisherman is comparing the way that whales eat up everything in their path to the way that some of the mighty and powerful men devour everything, and I suppose everyone, in their paths. And I believe this speaks to income disparity and the one per centers. The fisherman is probably talking about the rich guys or maybe the royalty. Or is he talking about the clergy. I don’t know. We’d have to do a lot more work with this particular play to figure out more specifics on this.

But no matter, because we can see the relevance of the line to today’s world. At least I can. Isn’t it funny how we tend to look at today’s problems and somehow think that they are unique to our times. The fact is that usually they’re not. And certainly this issue is not. Here’s an idea: why don’t we go back to Will’s time, or for that matter any past time, and find some of our current day problems to see how it turned out. Maybe that way we'd get some ideas about some smart things to do. But we won’t do that. Why? Because that’s how history manages to repeat itself. It’s the old maxim (hey, is maxim the word I was looking for earlier?): History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time. Or the second, or the third…

Bob pulled up outside my window at work today and I thought it was a funny picture. I wonder is Bob is a one per center? What do you think?

 There let his head and lifeless body lie,

Until the queen his mistress bury it.

-Walter Whitmore

King Henry The Sixth Part III             Act IV, Scene i, Line 143

Well we took a few days off, didn't we? And now that we're back we're at a scene that we’ve been to before. But it was way back in September. At that time I commented on what a bad-ass Suffolk was based on what he was saying then. But now, well that head and lifeless body being referred to, that's Suffolk. And based on the fact that Whitmore is referring  separately to his head and lifeless body, I believe we’re looking at yet another in Will’s long list of severed heads. Remember, was it last August or September, when we were getting a severed head every other day. Well, it’s been a while.

So I suppose we should give ol’ Walt the bad-ass title now. Not only has he killed and decapitated Suffolk, but he’s calling out the queen (that’s Henry the Sixth’s wife) as Suffolk’s mistress. And this from a guy named Walter Whitmore. Not Sir Walter, or Duke of Whitmore, or King Walter. Just plain Walter. Now don’t get me wrong all you Walters out there. I’m not dissing the name. I’m simply saying that it doesn’t really  have the cache of a lot of the other titles we’ve run into have. Then again, what's in a name? Mr. Whitmore is still standing, and what did the name Duke of Suffolk get this other fellow? It got him his head lopped off, that's what it got him.

  

Now here's a fairly blasé name, nothing special about it at all. But we can dress it up a bit with a fancy name plaque. But at the end of the day, it's just a name.

Tell Bolingbroke--for yond methinks he stands--
That every stride he makes upon my land
Is dangerous treason: he is come to open
The purple testament of bleeding war;
But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,
Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons
Shall ill become the flower of England's face,
Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace
To scarlet indignation and bedew
Her pastures' grass with faithful English blood.

-Richard

King Richard The Second                   Act III, Scene iii, Line 96

Be patient, princes; you do know, these fits
Are with his highness very ordinary.
Stand from him. Give him air; he'll straight be well.

-Warwick

King Henry The Fourth Part II           Act IV, Scene iv, Line 115

And since, on two successive days we have skipped, from the end of Richard’s reign to the end of his successor Henry’s reign, I’ve decided to bless you with two Totally Random lines today.

The first selection is King Richard talking about Bolingbroke (Henry IV) and the trouble that’s going to come of Bolingbroke’s actions to take Richard’s crown. And of course, Richard is right. Then, skipping forward, 'his highness' being referred to in today’s line is Bolingbroke again, but better known in today’s play as King Henry the Fourth. Do you suppose that tomorrow’s Totally Random line will be from the end of Henry the Fifth’s reign, and then Henry the Sixth? Given that there are 1,320 pages in the book that I’m picking from randomly, I’d have to say the odds are no.

Which leads me to another discussion: should we be changing the format so as to add some sort of continuity to Totally Random (almost) Daily Shakespeare? Don’t think that I haven’t considered it, because I have. Oh there’s several ways I could go. One that I’ve thought of is to take one play and stick to it for a month. Pick a random line from each successive page, or pick the pages randomly? There is a strong argument for maintaining some element or other of randomness. Hmmm. Well we’ll let that one go for now and perhaps we’ll get back to it at a later date.

Back to today's lines; now sometimes I have to agree with the teacher who said that it’s worth teaching kids Shakespeare just so that they get to hear his words, irrespective of whether they understand or appreciate them. Certainly, I’d like to see them understand and appreciate, but Will’s language is just so incomparable that it’s worthwhile just having these words heard.

…and bedew her pastures’ grass with faithful English blood.

And yet, there are so many people, most of us in fact, who just have no idea…

Then again, what of today’s line, about the ordinary fits of his highness. Well, in my humble opinion it does not stand with many other more notable lines. In fact, I don’t think it quite stands with yesterday’s line. But that’s okay, isn’t it? And if you want another one as striking as the Richard II line? Well…

Be patient, princes (and princesses).

Here's one of my favorite pastures. I've seen it bedewed in dew (redundant?), but I pray it never gets bedewed in blood, English, American, Lithuanian, or otherwise.

Your answer, sir, is enigmatical:

-Benedick

Much Ado About Nothing                   Act V, Scene iv, Line 27

Your answer, sir, is mysterious? It’s puzzling?

Is it puzzling how the pieces in the top picture can be put together to form the bottom figure. It should be because it's a puzzle.

O good Iago,

What shall I do to win my lord again?

-Desdemona   

Othello                         Act IV, Scene ii, Line 170

Okay, this is almost too much to deal with. Hold on, I’ve gotta go take a count.

Well I took a count and it seems that I was mistaken. I was going to tell you how many times already we had had reference to ‘good Iago’ or ‘honest Iago’ so far in our Totally Random lines. But wanna know how many? Zero. I don’t know what I was thinking. We’ve had lots of references, direct and indirect, of Iago’s rottenness, but nary a one line where he got referred to as good or honest. But we do now!

This is our twelfth visit to Othello in 264 days of picking Totally Random lines. Only As You Like It and Coriolanus, with thirteen and fifteen visits respectively have more. We’ve had Desdemona talking before, a few lines from Iago and plenty of references to Iago and his rottenness (we even made up a new word for him – Rattiest), but this is the first time that we’ve got one of the ‘Good’ or ‘Honest’ Iago lines. ‘Bout damn time. It seems like this is all I ever remember from my old days of studying this play. It was ‘good Iago’ this, and ‘honest Iago’ that. In fact, I’ll bet if I go back to the play and start from the beginning we’ll get one of these lines in the first hundred lines of the play. Hold that thought.

Okay, skip that thought. I went back and started from the beginning and was up to Act III and still hadn’t seen any sign of a ‘good’ or ‘honest’ Iago. Perhaps I just have some twisted memory of this play. O well, memory can be quite the teaser, can’t it? Maybe Iago had something to do with my twisted memory?

O good Iago!

I was trying to find something rotten or evil for today's picture, in honor of Iago, but I'm going to have to settle for creepy. Yes, this is a spider and I was face-timing with Nina so I showed her this picture and she assures me that this spider is creepy. How big is he? Well I can't tell you exactly how big, but I can tell you that I took this picture from my car. The spider was big enough that I noticed it while I was driving down the road, so I pulled over and took a picture from the drivers seat. So that's a pretty big spider and a bit creepy, so a good picture for an Iago post.

O good spider!

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes.

-Macbeth           

Macbeth                                              Act II, Scene i, Line 48

This here is a line from Macbeth’s famous ‘Is this a dagger…’ soliloquy. If you’re not familiar with it, well all you have to Google is ‘is this a d’ and Macbeth’s line is the first thing that comes up. In fact, type in ‘it is the bl’ and you’ll get all of today’s Totally Random line. So, yeah, it’s a well known speech, and we’ve actually picked a famous line for once. But I’ll lay it out for you anyway.

You don’t really need to know all the backstory (though it wouldn’t hurt); just know that Macbeth is on his way to murder the sleeping king (with a dagger). He’s in the hallway of the castle on the way to the sleeping king when he starts hallucinating about seeing a dagger. The 'Thus' in the line is the dagger that he's seeing and the 'bloody business' is the murder he's about to commit. Here’s the whole speech.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

You really should read this a few times. It won’t hurt you. But, wow, there’s a tough sentence in here. Check it out, it’s the sentence right after today’s Totally Random line, and it starts ‘Now o’er the one halfworld’ and ends with ‘moves like a ghost.’ The section before this sentence is all about the knife, and the sentence after is about sneaking up and killing the king. But what’s this middle sentence about? It’s a half mile long. The first part is about it being nighttime.

Now there’s quite a bit on this whole passage, and these lines in particular, in Prof. Garber’s Shakespeare After All. You could read that too. But she gets into some pretty, um what’s the word I’m looking for, some pretty in-depth stuff. And in-depth’s not really the word I’m looking for. But anyway, she talks about this being only the second time Macbeth has used the word ‘murder’ and how there’s significance that Will has made murder an entity rather than Macbeth’s act, and that there’s three or four lines between ‘murder’ and what murder does. Pretty esoteric, but of course it’s Shakespeare so you know there’s more there than meets the eye. And though I’m not always crazy about diving quite this deep on Will, I am always pleased to point out this quality of Will. This quality being that you can appreciate Will on whatever level you want, and if you want to appreciate him on the level that Prof Garber is working on, well go at it. It’s there.

Here's my dagger. Not much of a dagger really, but I do carry it with me most of the time. I carry it more for the bottle opener, scissor, and corkscrew than for the blade, and no, I’ve never had any hallucinations about my swiss army knife. None that I can remember.