If, in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help,

Do thou but call my resolution wise,

And with this knife I’ll help it presently.

-Juliet

Romeo And Juliet                     Act IV, scene i, line 54

Pronouns. In the case of today’s line, ‘it’. There are a lot of times in Will’s works (and certainly elsewhere, not just in Will’s works) where a line can be made a little more confusing by the fact that it’s unclear as to what or whom a pronoun is referring. In this case it’s not all that tough, just a little murky. I believe she’s referring to her resolution. She’s going to use the knife to help her resolution. And I believe her resolution is to kill herself. Good Friar Laurence, in his infinite wisdom, is going to give help in the way of a sleeping potion. And we all know how well that’s going to work out.

Now here’s something interesting. I ran into an article about Stephen Booth yesterday. Booth is a Shakespearean scholar and the article was about Booth’s writings about, and theories on, Will’s syntax. More specifically, and forgive me for trying to explain a fairly complex idea in one or two sentences, Booth talks about the way that many of Will’s sentences are structured in such a way as to increase the theater going experience. I know, that doesn’t explain it much, but the reason I bring it up at all is because one of the techniques that Will uses to do this, according to Booth, is the so called ‘garden-path phenomena’. In a nutshell, that’s where the words appear to lead us in the direction of one understanding or conclusion but in the end get us somewhere else. Now there’s a whole thing about how this affects us as readers or theater-goers and adds to the experience. I’m not going to pretend to be able to adequately explain this. But suffice it to say that today’s Totally Random line might fall into this category. What I mean is that Juliet seems to be telling the friar is that if he can’t help get her out of her predicament then at least just go along with her resolution (the predicament, by the way, is having to marry Paris). But she doesn’t end there. She adds the part about using a knife to help her resolution. That is to say, she’s going to kill herself. But the knife part is at the end and in a way unexpected. It’s in the syntax. Take my word for it. Here’s the article if you want to read it for yourself. Spoiler alert: it’s not very easy reading.

http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/shakespeares-genius-is-nonsense

I was going for the unexpected. How'd I do?

You have not been inquired after: I have sat here all day.



-Mariana



Measure for Measure                          Act IV, scene i, line 19





A pretty simple and straight-forward answer to an equally simple question. You might be intent on finding out what’s going on in the scene, but you certainly won’t need to spend any time figuring out what has been said here. No tough words. No out of date meanings. Oh sure, perhaps a few too many words. The Duke, the guy who asked the question, said, hath anybody inquired for me here today? You or I might have said, nope. And if we wanted to add a little emphasis or detail, and I’ve been sittin’ here all day. But just the same, no need to spend any time explaining what’s being said. 

And so, class dismissed.

I figured I needed a good sittin' picture for today. This is me and Tom sittin' in the back of the boat cruising around a back bay somewhere in Delaware. Yeah, we could have sat there all day.

And knowing this kingdom is without a head,-

Like goodly buildings left without a roof,

Soon fall to ruin,- your noble self,

That best know how to rule and how to reign,

We thus submit unto, our sovereign.


-Second Lord


Pericles                                   Act II, scene iv, line 38



Once again we have a Totally Random line spoken by an anonymous henchman. He’s asking Helicanus to be the leader of the country. A few lines earlier we learned that King Antiochus and his daughter have been struck by lightning – A fire from heaven came, and shrivell’d up/Their bodies, even to loathing. Apparently the king and his daughter had been having an incestuous relationship, and the gods weren’t too happy about that. But you knew this because that’s the basis of this whole story.

One little tidbit related to that which I find interesting: It seems that Antiochus’s daughter has no name. She’s simply referred to as his daughter. I suppose because of the incest thing? I don’t know.

Anyway, Helicanus gets everyone to agree that they need to search for Pericles, and if they don’t find him in one year then he, Helicanus, will become the leader. So the goodly buildings are going to have to last a year without a roof; unless they can find Pericles sooner.

When we saw this I recited the 'goodly buildings left without a roof' line for WP. If you zoom in you can see the look of approval on his face.

For much imaginary work was there;

Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,

That for Achille’s image stood his spear,

Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind,

Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:

   A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,

   Stood for the whole to be imagined.



-Narrator

                                   

Lucrece                                                     Line 1423





This is the part of the poem Lucrece where Will goes into a really long description of a painting on the wall that Lucrece is looking at. It’s a painting of the Greek siege of the city of Troy. It’s hard enough to try to make sense of one stanza in this long poem, let alone one line of the stanza. So I gave you the whole stanza. No need to thank me.



Just to summarize, this is the day after Lucrece has been raped by her husband’s associate, and she’s wandering alone around the house in a desperate funk when she stops to look at this painting. Will goes on for a page describing this painting of a battle scene. Today’s Totally Random line is just one piece of this long description.



I guess you’d have to look at each piece of the description, each stanza, to figure out the significance of what Will is describing in each. I can tell you that the stanza above is near the end of the battle scene description, and that after these many descriptions of people in this battle scene, the page leads up to Lucrece finding Hecuba in the picture, and the latter is shown as looking half dead herself as she stares down at her dead husband Priam.



So we’re talking about a dead-in-spirit woman, Lucrece, looking at another dead-in-spirit woman, Hecuba, who in turn is looking at her literally dead husband, Priam. Pretty grim.



And one more thing: Earlier on in the battle Achilles killed Priam's son, Hector, and Priam had to go a beg Achilles for Hector’s body just to be able to bury it. Further, it is later on in the siege that Priam is killed by Achilles’s son Pyrrhus.



Okay, I think that’s all the relevant background facts. Lucrece has been raped, she’s looking at a picture of slaughtering, there’s a stanza about Achilles, but Lucrece wants to see Hecuba grieving over her dead husband who’s just been killed by Achilles’s son. Got it?



So, what does this bit about Achilles, and his spear, and the rest of his body hidden from sight add to the whole thing? Well it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, isn’t it? Darned if I know how this piece fits in. You got anything? 

So what's this? It's the puzzle shelves of course.

The spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

-Titania          

                       

A Midsummer Night’s Dream         Act II, Scene i, Line 112

Before we get started let me say one thing that occurred to me this morning whilst reading today’s Totally Random line. Isn’t it amazing that Will never once repeated a line of description verbatim throughout all of his pages of works? Or maybe he did? But I haven’t seen it yet. Let me know if you find one.

Now, on to the lines. Here’s how I read it:

The spring, the summer, the cool autumn and angry winter are changing their appearances and the confused world doesn’t know which season is which.

Okay, let’s look up a few words:

Childing- fertile, fruitful, teeming

Wonted- usual

Liveries- uniform (as in clothing)

Mazed- bewildered, confused, perplexed

Those are the four words that I wasn’t sure of, and in each case the modern definition is the same as the one out of my Shakespeare glossary. And it changes my interpretation, but only a little bit. Childing has nothing to do with chilly, it has to do with fruitful. The rest I got right. He’s talking about the autumn being fruitful, as in harvest time, not chilly. Actually, she’s talking. It’s Titania, Oberon’s wife. I’m not quite sure what the total, contextual gist of this is. As I’ve oft mentioned, Midsummer is not one of my favourite works.

Holy cow; it just occurred to me how prescient these lines are with today’s unpredictable weather what with climate change. To be clear, the context of these lines has nothing to do with today’s weather, but all the same, it’s a great quote to use in talking about climate change. Wow.

 This picture is outside the train station in Paris a few years ago on March 19. So I think it qualifies for an example of slightly unusual weather.