What! look upon my brother:--both your pardons,

That e’er I put between your holy looks

My ill suspicions.

-Leontes

The Winter’s Tale                        Act V, scene iii, line 148

Just for perspective, the last line of this play is 155 in this very scene; in other words, there’s 7 more lines in this play after today’s Totally Random line. So, what does that mean to us? I’m not sure. I don’t know the whole play and who’s who here. But I do know that the speaker, Leontes, started the whole mess of this play by falsely accusing his wife of having an affair with his friend. And then he tried to have his friend murdered, and he had his wife put in jail. In the beginning of this play he was a Gaddafi-level nut-job. And now he’s all ‘oh let’s just put this behind us.’ And that makes it a happy ending! What the…!?!?

 Okay, I couldn't find a relevant picture, so I put in a picture of a really cool tree. What can I say; I'm a tree nut.

Canst not read?

-Apemantus

Timon Of Athens                      Act II, scene ii, line 80  

Canst not read?

Oh hateful, vaporous, and foggy night!

Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,

Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,

Make war against proportion’d course of time;

Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb

His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,

Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head. 

-Lucrece

Lucrece                            line 775 

We’ve got Lucrece today, ruminating about how the night can hide her from the world in the light of day since she has been raped. This is just the beginning of her immersion into the depths of her pathos which will ultimately lead to her suicide. It’s a fairly graphic poem, but it does not paint a pretty picture.

Just a few thoughts about some of the language used in this painting.

Guilty of my cureless crime. The night is guilty, and yet she’s taking ownership of the crime which is cureless. What about the rapist? He’s not given any of the blame. It’s the night’s and Lucrece’s fault?

Proportion’d course of time. What’s a simpler way of putting that? The day? Make war against the day? That would seem to be what she’s saying, but it’s certainly an odd way of putting it.

Poisonous clouds. Have you ever seen a poisonous cloud?

Interesting language.

 How about these? Are they poisonous clouds? That little island doesn't look too healthy. It looks like something may have poisoned it. Maybe it was those clouds. Who knows?

Thy mother’s of my generation: what’s she, if I be a dog?



-Apemantus



Timon Of Athens                          Act I, scene i, line 204 



Well we’ve got something here. Our last blog post on Monday was from the latter part of this same play. In that part of the play Timon had undergone the transformation to people-hating cynic and he's telling Apemantus (the people-hating cynic of act I, above) that he's no better than a dog. Now here we see where we started with Apemantus, being the people-hating cynic in Act I, calling someone a dog. Actually, today’s Totally Random line is Apemantus’s response when the Painter says to him Y’are a dog (kind of sounds like the Painter should be the Pirate, doesn't it?). In any case, we can see where Timon got the dog idea. I’d say that’s pretty darn, Totally Random. 


I suppose this dog eat dog thing would be pretty obvious to anyone studying, or perhaps just seeing, Timon Of Athens. But nonetheless, I think it’s kind of neat that we came up with it in Total Random fashion.


Comments?

That's right, I took the easy way out and went with another dog picture. Actually, these are prairie dogs, and those two on the left, well I'm not sure they qualify as dogs at all. However, one of them does qualify as a mother, so that works.