Monster, come, put some lime on your fingers, and away with the rest.

-Trinculo

The Tempest                Act IV, Scene i, Line 265

I’m not sure what ‘put some lime on your fingers’ refers to. I would guess that it’s something that was done by thieves and murderers to throw the hound dogs off their trail. But I do know that this is the scene where Prospero and Ariel put some fancy clothes out on the clothesline to trap Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban. While Prospero and Ariel hide out of sight the three knuckleheads come on stage, see the clothes and decide to steal them. Caliban however is more interested in killing Prospero, and he knows the clothes are a trap. With today’s line Trinculo is trying to get Caliban (Monster) to join them in trying on the clothes. But Caliban will have none of it. And momentarily Prospero and Ariel will jump out at them with a bunch of hunting dogs and chase the three would be thieves/murderers off. Ah, I just realized: the lime and the hunting dogs! It goes together.

Now here’s the thing, I know this play almost by heart because I wrote a retelling, that is to say, a modernized version of it. In fact, this blog (not today’s post, the blog as a whole) is an offshoot of that retelling. You see, once we (I say ‘we’ because my brother Will worked on it with me as the illustrator) were pretty much done with the book I found out that if we wanted to publish and market a book we needed a platform, preferably in social media. And so I started this blog. And that’s the short version of why I know The Tempest so well.

Anyway, I’ve finally decided to move forward with that book so I’m hoping to have that out sometime in the latter part of this year. And so this blog may be turning toward our retelling of The Tempest sometime soon. And there’s something for you to look forward to!

 

  Now this is a fancy little piece of clothing that I almost purchased. And to be clear, I had no lime on my fingers at the time. Nor did I get chased by any dogs.

 Well gentlemen,

I am thus resolved: on Sunday next you know

My daughter Katharina is to be married:

Now, on the Sunday following, shall Bianca

Be bride to you, if you this assurance;

If not, Signior Gromio:

And so, I take my leave, and thank you both.

Adieu, good neighbor.

 -Baptista

The Taming Of The Shrew                  Act II, Scene i, Line 406

 

Well, we have a perfectly appropriate line for the day. This is Baptista talking about the marriages of his two daughters. And I am in Tennessee for the weekend with my two married daughters and we will be celebrating the recent marriage of the younger one tomorrow. Now, how random is that?

Now my situation is certainly different than Signior Baptista’s. He is dealing with figuring out how to get his two daughters married. My two took care of their own marriages. He has got one daughter who is a bit of a handful and has to get her married first and I…um,…

Well the one who used to be a bit of a handful one did get married first, but she took care of it on her own. And she’s not a handful anymore. Come to think of it, Katharina didn’t end up being a handful in the end either, did she? And I also wasn’t wheeling and dealing on the second younger one. She took care of it on her own too.

But I think the random thing still is pretty uncanny. Don’t you?

 This is the house where both my daughters live. But as I've told you before, neither one is a Katharina or a Bianca. They're both Cordelias.

 I think it lacks of twelve.

-Horatio

Hamlet                                              Act I, Scene iv, Line 3

Horatio’s talking about the time of day. He’s saying ‘I think it’s a little before midnight.’ This is the scene where the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears and has a chat with his son. But this is the very beginning of the scene and neither the ghost nor the son is here yet. So I guess Horatio is just doing the job of helping to set the scene for the audience. Now they know it’s around midnight. And so do you. Will that help you in your appreciation of the scene that you’re about to see or to read? Well I guess you’d have to see or read the scene to find out. Here it is. Well, did it help?

I think that it is not lacking of twelve. In fact, I know without looking at my watch that it's not lacking of twelve because my lunch is long gone.

 Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.

-King Henry IV

King Henry The Fourth Part I              Act V, Scene v, Line 1

Translation: We kicked their butts!

This is a close-up of a Viking ship. Now there were some guys who kicked a lot of butt!

If thou deny'st it twenty times, thou liest;
And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,
Where it was forged, with my rapier's point.

-Lord Fitzwater

King Richard The Second                 Act IV, Scene i, Line 40

First of all, I’ve got to say that I love the name Lord Fitzwater. It almost sounds like seltzer water. Or fizz water. It’s just got a great sound. Don’t you agree? And ‘Lord’. It’s just fabulous. And of course anyone with the name of Fitzwater has got to be going by the name ‘Fitz’ to his friends, right? One of my cardiologist’s (yes, two cardiologists, an electrician and a plumber) is named Blitzer, but of course I call him Blitz. Well, not actually, I refer to him as Blitz, but when I talk to him I call him Doc. But his friends must call him Blitz, no? And second, how about the word ‘forged’. That’s a word near and dear to us Tolkieners’ hearts. The forging of the one ring. The sword that was re-forged.

Having said that about some of the words, you should note that we covered this scene, if not this specific line, back in November. It’s the scene where everyone starts throwing their gloves down, to the point where somebody runs out of gloves. So I’m not going to get into this scene too much.

But hey, here’s something interesting. If you read yesterday’s line (which is Claudius talking to Laertes in Hamlet), and directly afterwards read today’s line (which is Fitz talking to someone in King Richard The Second), it seems to fit. The two lines seem to go together as if they were in the same conversation, either a continuation of yesterday’s line, or a reply to yesterday’s line.

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.

If thou deny'st it twenty times, thou liest;
And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,
Where it was forged, with my rapier's point.

Isn’t that funny! Maybe we should take a look at that on an ongoing basis to see how completely unrelated lines go, or don’t go, together. Hmm. Or maybe not.

This is my view from my hospital bed looking down at the foot of the bed. It's from back in December. And yes, today's pic is perfectly relevant. Why was I in the hospital? Because Blitz put me there for some tests.  If you zoom in on that white chart you can see 'EP Study'. Don't ask me what EP stands for. But whatever it is, Blitz decided I just had to have one. That wacky Blitz!

 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?