So then, you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?

-Duke

                                   

Measure for Measure                              Act II, Scene i, Line 1

Without getting into a lot of context, Duke is talking to Claudio who is, if I'm not mistaken, sentenced to death. And while today's Totally Random line is not that amazing, the Dukes next lines, after Claudio's response, really are pretty amazing. I was talking to my friend Donald recently, and he brought up the subject of spending time thinking about death. He was talking about a holy day that was set aside for that, and I can't remember if it was Jewish or Buddhist, or something else. In any event, I will give him this passage. 

I meditated on it this morning. I'm can't seem to find the right word to describe this passage, let's just settle for really, really good. And it requires some meditation to appreciate it. So be prepared for that. To start you off, when Duke says 'Be absolute' he means 'be resolved, or settled in mind.' So here is the entirety of Duke's response when Claudio says 'I have hope to live, and am prepared to die.'

Be absolute for death; either death or life

Shall thereby be the sweeter, Reason thus with life:--

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences

That do this habitation, where thou keep'st,

Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;

For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;

For all th'accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nursed by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st

Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;

For thou exists on many a thousand grains

that issue out of dust.  Happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,

And what thou hast, forgett'st. Thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange affects,

After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,

And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,

The mere effusions of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,

Thou has neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life

Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,

That makes these odds all even.  

Like I said, you're going to have to spend a little time with it. But if you do, I believe you will find it worthwhile. Good luck!

 

This seems like a pretty good picture to get you in a meditative mood. Plus, it's got the sunset thing going for it; that whole sunrise, sunset - life and death motif.

                                 So merrily,

-Silence

King Henry The Fourth Part II        Act V, Scene iii, Line 21

When I was a kid reading Tolkien I would often skim, if not entirely skip, the parts where he went into song (especially when they got long) in his stories. I really enjoyed his storytelling and I found his verse more or less an unwanted interruption from the story. And besides, I reckoned, JRR was not poet.

Will is a poet, and this is a short song that he's added. It's a scene with Falstaff and the crew in an orchard. Here's the whole song. 

         Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer,
         And praise God for the merry year;
         When flesh is cheap and females dear,
         And lusty lads roam here and there
                           So merrily,
         And ever among so merrily.

And that's it; nice and short. Now when I read, or skimmed, or totally skipped Tolkien's songs (and a lot of them were really long; he often referred to them as 'lays') I assumed that he had written them. This was based on the fact that he was working in a purely fictional world and most of what was going on, including some of the language, was totally made up by him. It wouldn't have made sense for him to be using songs from the real world.

However, when I read/hear/see Will's songs, especially short little ditties like this, I can't help but wonder if Will wrote them or if they are something that was out there already and popular in his day. After all, Will's stories take place in the real world and he incorporates of lot of real stuff in his plays, especially his history plays like this one.

So what do you think? Is Will making up a song, or is this a popular little ditty of the day? I guess we could find a historian who might know the answer, but I sure don't.

Now clearly this guy was either making up the songs, or perhaps getting them from that guy with the beard, but either way they were not from our world!

You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;

-Cressida

                                   

Troilus And Cressida                          Act V, Scene ii, Line 86

Cressida is talking here about a sleeve. As far as I can tell, a sleeve is just a sleeve. But in this case it’s a token. It’s a token she received from Troilus (who just happens to be in the bushes spying on her, apparently with one arm a little more exposed than the other) that she in turn gave to Diomedes (don’t ask me why) and now she realizes that’s a mistake so she’s taken it back and is telling Diomedes he can’t have it. Or, more specifically, “You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;

Well I’m not going to get into that whole thing to try to explain exactly what’s going on here. I’ve got something more important to point out. It occurs to me that the play Troilus And Cressida is Will’s take on the story of the Iliad. And as such, it seems to me that rather than just call it Troilus And Cressida, perhaps he should have had a subtitle. Troilus And Cressida, Homer’s Iliad Retold. 

Now I can’t imagine where I got that idea. 

 

Available at www.pursuingwillbooks.com

Save sometime too much wonder of his eye, 

-Narrator
                               

Lucrece                                    Stanza 14, Line 4

Okay, recall that Lucrece is a long poem written by Will. It's not a play, nor a sonnet. It's seventeen pages long in my compilation, and it's written in seven line stanzas. It's going to be a little easier to understand this line if you can look at the whole stanza, so here is stanza fourteen in its entirety.

For that he colour'd with his high estate,
Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty;
That nothing in him seem'd inordinate,
Save sometime too much wonder of his eye,
Which having all, all could not satisfy;
    But, poorly rich, so wanteth in his store,
    That, cloy'd with much, he pineth still for more.

This is stanza fourteen, out of 270, so we're near the beginning of the poem. As I've noted in previous posts, this poem is sometimes titled The Rape of Lucrece. In the stanza above Will is describing the rapist, Tarquin. He's arrived at Lucrece's house and he's going to be staying the night. Thus far Tarquin appears pretty ordinary except for the fact that he's already infatuated with the beauty of Lucrece. To paraphrase, nothing seems out of the ordinary, so far, except perhaps there's too much wonder in his eye.

Well that's going to be a problem, isn't it.

Okay, let's get away from the whole rape thing, because that's just a little bit unsettling. Here's a picture that brings wonder to my eye. In a good way.