Compare our faces, and be judge yourself.                 

 -Bastard

                                   

King John                                                      Act I, Scene i, Line 79

An interesting name for today’s speaker: Bastard. He’s a fairly main character in this play and throughout his speaking parts are simply attributed to Bastard. 

If you’re interested in context, this is the beginning of the play and Bastard and his brother have come before the King to ask him to mediate a dispute. The one brother is claiming that the other brother, Bastard, is only a half brother and therefore illegitimate, and therefore not due for any inheritance. And Bastard isn’t really arguing. He’s saying that his half brother resembles his father, both of them pretty puny, and further that he, Bastard, resembles his true father, Richard the Lion Hearted who was King John’s brother. King John and the Queen Mother who both obviously knew what Richard looked like are going to agree with Bastard. 

Okay, here's two closeups taken at about the same age. One is me, one is my dad. 

Compare our faces, and be judge yourself. 

See the resemblance? No, me neither.

                   Alas, alas!

-Iago

                                   

Othello                                 Act IV, Scene i, Line 275

Not much to today’s line, is there? Just for the heck of it, I looked up ‘alas’. It’s not in the Shakespeare glossary at all. I guess we’re supposed to know what it means. In the online MW it’s listed as an expression of grief, pity, or concern. So it’s pretty much a catch all response to something that’s kind of bad.

            ‘My dog died.’

            ‘Alas!’

            ‘I lost my job.’

            ‘Alas.’

So basically it’s got thousands of uses. And if you tend to talk about what’s going on in the country these days you can pretty much use this word non-stop.

Alas.

Alas? Yeah, I'm not sure if this is really an 'alas' moment. More like, 'Oh crap!'

My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneel down before you;--but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

-Dancer

                                   

King Henry The Fourth Part II                          Epilogue

Here are the very last words of the play. In fact, one could argue that they’re beyond that since it’s an epilogue. By a dancer. Who’s not really part of the play.

A little odd, wouldn’t you say?

This looks like a leaf, but it's actually an insect. It's a little odd too, wouldn't you say?

I will return again into the house, and desire some conduct of the lady. I am no fighter. I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposefully on others, to taste their valour; belike this is a man of that quirk.

-Viola

                                   

Twelfth Night                                         Act III, Scene iv, Line 241

Okay, no idea what’s going on here. But when did that ever stop me? Lets just take a crack at the paragraph, and context be damned for today.

First off – long scene! It keeps going and is almost 400 lines before it’s done. Again, this is not a play that I know. I only know bits and bobs from doing this screwy random line thing. another observation is that this scene flips back and forth between prose and verse. We’re in prose right here. 

Secondly – For those of you who are always complaining about how hard Shakespeare is to read, and that's it's written in middle English or something (it's not), this is pretty understandable. The only particularly odd word is ‘belike’. But given the context within this paragraph, I think we can assume it just mean’s ‘it looks like’ (I looked it up on Google and on my Shakespeare lexicon and it’s in both as ‘perhaps’). We may not be quite sure what conduct she’s referring to in ‘some conduct’, but that’s okay.

And finally, it’s got the word ‘quirk’. Now I’m a big fan of the adjective form of that word, ‘quirky’. I’ve been referred to as quirky, and generally I take that as a compliment. I’m not sure why. But I guess just the fact that I take being described as quirky as a compliment is self-evident of the truth of the statement. N’est pas? Just to be clear though, I do not find myself to be a person of the quirk described above; that is, to pick a fight with someone just to see if I can get them to fight. In fact, I’m much more like the speaker today’s lines: I am no fighter.

And just to prove that I'm no fighter, here's the last guy I got in a fight with. Well, almost. That's Kevin Collins on the left and me on the right. This is fifth grade, Sister Mary Paul's class (that's her in blue).  The truth is that I ended up walking away from this fight, but at least I almost got in a fight with him. So, yeah, I am no fighter. Quirky, but no fighter.

Your wondrous rare description, noble earl,

Of beauteous Margaret hath astonisht me:

-King Henry

                                   

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

These are the first two lines of the final short scene of this play. In this scene the Earl of Suffolk has talked King Henry into taking Margaret for his bride. Two of the other guys in the scene are questioning this idea since Henry has already been set up to marry someone else. But apparently Suffolk is quite the salesman because Henry is all worked up about Margaret, sight unseen. This Suffolk fellow has got to be quite the silver-tongued smoothie to pull this off. And we find out in the final lines of this scene, and the play, what’s on his mind.

Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the king;

But I will rule both her, the king, and the realm.

Well that makes you just ache for the start of King Henry The Sixth Part II, doesn’t it? What's this Suffolk guy got planned? 

Just so you know, there's three King Henry the Sixth plays; part I, part II, and part III.

Last scene in The Fellowship of the Ring

No pic today. Instead a clip. This is a twentieth century example of leaving you wanting to see the next installment. Get the idea? Do you think that the sixteenth century theater goers of King Henry The Sixth Part I felt like you might feel after watching this clip?

If you seek

For further satisfying, under her breast—

Worthy the pressing—lies a mole, right proud 

Of that most delicate lodging: by my life,

I kist it; and it gave me present hunger

To feed again, though full. You do remember This stain upon her?

-Iachimo

                                   

Cymbeline                                           Act II, Scene iv, Line 135

Well this is provocative. Iachimo is proving to Posthumus Leonatus that he slept with the latter’s wife by describing her naked body. The language in this act is pretty interesting and pretty steamy. In the line right before today's Totally Random lines Posthumus says She hath been colted by him. Well I’ve never heard that term before, but it’s pretty easy to figure out what he’s saying, and it leaves a pretty strong mental image. And then in the lines above Iachimo talks about the mole below her breast being proud of that most delicate lodging, giving the mole a somewhat exalted status as well as personifying it as a living, feeling entity. The mole is proud! And then, conversely, a few lines later the mole is just a stain. What’s Will up to here? He can work the steamy side of things into his language as well as that best of them, and then turn around in the next breath and unsteam them. But of course, in regards to the English language he is the best of them.

Well, I was thinking of what picture I should put here today. I couldn't find a mole, or a horse that I could use. But I found a breast, and a PG rated one at that. This is the Venus de Milo in the Louvre Museum in Paris. I don't think she has a mole (but I don't really know), and I'm certainly not going to get into whether or not she's been colted. In fact, I think it best if I just leave it at that and say no more.

This is the strangers’ case,                                   

And this your mountainish inhumanity.

-Thomas More

                               

Sir Thomas More                                          Act II

Today, for the first time, we are not going to be looking at a random line. And it’s for a few reasons. First, Sir Thomas More is a play that is not included in the compilation that I pick my Totally Random lines from, and so it would be impossible to pick this line. But more importantly, it’s a great line that I’ve been meaning to blog on, and further, it’s a line that has an incredible amount of relevance to what’s going on today.

Sir Thomas More is a play that is believed to be written by several playwrights, William Shakespeare included. The scene that this line is take from is the scene believed to be written by Will. It’s a scene where Thomas More is brought in to speak to the town folk of London who are on the verge of a riot. They are rioting because they’re mad at the foreigners who they believe are stealing their jobs. Thomas More goes into a long speech, but instead of explaining it further to you, I’ll give you this link and Sir Ian will explain and then give you the speech.  I hope you will take the time to look at it and I hope you will appreciate the relevance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjEAeOshUGQ

This is a picture, circa 1940, of my great-grandparents and their five grandchildren. The big kid sitting between his grandparents is my dad. This old couple here came over from Lithuania when they were young, sometime around 1900. My great-grandparents came to America in search of a better life. We’ve been told that if he had stayed in Lithuania great-granddad would have stood a good chance of being conscripted into the Russian army. So he fled to what he hoped would be a better place. John and Theodora came through Ellis Island separately, legally, and eventually became citizens.

So that all of us in my family are children, removed by one or more generations, of immigrants. Yes, the two pictured above came legally, but only because they could. If they had to do it illegally there is no doubt in my mind that they would have. After all, they were looking for a chance to have a better life for themselves and their children. This is a universal goal that’s as old as mankind, and This is the strangers’ case.