If I know you well,

You were the duke’s surveyor, and lost your office

On the complaint o’the tenants: take good heed

You charge not in your spleen a noble person,

And spoil you noble soul: I say, take heed;

Yes, heartily beseech you.



-Queen Katherine



King Henry The Eighth                        Act I, scene ii, line 176



Let’s start with a little context, and I’ll keep it as short as possible.



Cardinal Wolsey doesn’t like the Duke of Buckingham, so he’s told the king that the duke is plotting against him. The cardinal has gotten the duke’s former surveyor to come to the king’s court to testify against the duke. Queen Katherine (that’s Katherine of Aragon, Henry’s first wife) is listening to this testimony. She has a pretty good idea that the surveyor is lying and that the cardinal has put him up to it. So today’s totally random lines is what she says to the surveyor. She’s saying that the duke fired him for good cause so don’t be lying about the duke because you’re mad at him for that. Charge not in your spleen: don’t talk out of anger.


Actually, charge not in your spleen is pretty good universal advice. It’s never good to speak with your spleen. You should be speaking with your head. Not that I’ve always adhered to this advice. I’ve charged in my spleen plenty of times. I’d like to think I do it less as I get older. But still…

Well, I couldn't think of any picture to go with today's line, so I decided to just go with a fun pic. This is me and my buddy trying to move this humungous chain that is sitting in a waterfront park we visited in Oslo. But after posting it, I realized that it's actually relevant. You see, we didn't really think this through. It's not like we were going to accomplish anything by moving the chain (and by the way, we barely budged it). We were just charging in our spleen, not our heads. To be clear, I'm not sure if charging in your spleen means acting out of anger or just acting out of emotion. In the case of this picture I'm assuming the latter, because we weren't mad at the chain. In any event, luckily I didn't hurt my back, and no Norwegian park rangers came and arrested us. And I got this pic. So it actually worked out okay.

There’s but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins tackt together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Albans, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry.



-Sir John Falstaff



King Henry The Fourth Part I      Act IV, scene ii, line 47

This is part of about forty lines of prose that is Falstaff talking to himself about the tattered group of men he is going to be leading into battle. We’ve visited this soliloquy before, but it was about three years ago and at the time we had picked a line earlier in the speech. Looks like I posted about that line on April 6, 2017. How about that? In that previous post he’s talking about the ages of the men in his group. In this post he’s talking about the lack of clothing on his men. Here’s the link to that previous post if you’re interested. https://totallyrandomdailyshakespeare.blogspot.com/2017/04/younger-sons-to-younger-brothers.html

This is the same pic I used in that 2017 post. I couldn't pass up using it again. That time I used it to exemplify the 'younger son', but today I'll key in on the shirt, since shirts are today's topic. I had mentioned Will's stylin' plaid pants in 2017, but I think you'll have to admit that my striped shirt has its own bit of style. No, it can't compare to the pants, but what could? 

I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,

But this folly douts it.



-Laertes



Hamlet                                    Act IV, scene vii, line 190



This folly that Laertes is talking about is the drowning of his sister Ophelia. Douts, in case you didn't know, means to douse. The speech of fire, that's getting doused? Well I’m not so sure what that would have been, but I can tell you that right before the Queen came in to tell them about Ophelia's drowning, Laertes and Claudius were talking about how they were going to kill Hamlet. And Laertes was all in on this because he’d found out that Hamlet had killed Polonius, Laertes’s father. So, yeah, murdered father, drowned sister; Laertes has got a lot of emotions going right now. Too many emotions. He is definitely ablaze. 

The sky is ablaze in this picture that I took from my office window in New Haven, Not quite the same thing as Laertes being ablaze, but ablaze nonetheless.

First, kiss me, Kate, and we will.



-Petruchio



The Taming Of The Shrew               Act V, scene ii, line 24





Fabulous line! It’s a Broadway musical! Kiss Me, Kate. Wow, one of our better lines. I’m not sure what to say. I’m flabbergasted. 


So, Kiss Me, Kate is a Cole Porter musical. It’s the story of a stage production of The Taming Of The Shrew. The record album of the songs of this musical is one of the many musicals that I was brought up on. To be honest, I don’t remember the songs from this album that well, but I can still picture the album in my mind.  

Well, I guess I don’t have to picture it in my mind. Thanks, Wikipedia. 

This silent war of lilies and of roses,

Which Tarquin view’d in her fair face’s field,

In their pure ranks his traitor eye encloses;

Where, lest between them both it should be kill’d,

The coward captive vanquished doth yield

To those two armies that would let him go,

Rather than triumph in so false a foe.

-Narrator



Lucrece                                   line 73





We’re near the beginning of this poem, line 73 out of 1,855, and we’re talking about the first meeting of Tarquin (the rapist) and Lucrece (the victim). The previous three stanzas are about the beauty and virtue that can be seen in Lucrece’s face. The lilies and the roses in the first line above are representations of this beauty and virtue. So you can take it from there. It would appear that Lucrece wins the first round. 

It occurred to me that I just happen to have a lily and a rose in the other room. What're the odds? I  believe the rose in Will's lines is red, but oh well. At least it's a lily and a rose.

Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay’;

And I will take thy word: yet, if thou swear’st,

Thou mayst prove false; at lovers’ perjuries,

They say, Jove laughs.



-Juliet



Romeo And Juliet                    Act II, scene i, line 133



Okay, not only are we in the play Romeo and Juliet, we are in the balcony scene, the Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo scene. And not only that, but we’ve picked a line which, though a bit obscure, is perfectly understandable. So we’ve got a play, a scene, and a line that, no matter how little your Shakespeare knowledge is, you should be pretty good with. Right? Well I hope so.



Jove laughs. Just to be clear, Jove is Jupiter, and Jupiter is the chief of the gods in Roman mythology. I expect Jove laughs at a lot of things. Now, I could easily get back into the endemic thing again, since we are going to bed with it and waking up to it. And it would be easy to talk about Jove’s perspective on it. But let’s try to go somewhere else with today's Totally Random line. Let’s go back to the rest of Juliet’s words for today.



She wants Romeo to promise her that he loves her, and she’s going to believe him. But she’s also being realistic and saying that he wouldn’t be the first to go back on his word about loving someone. Well that’s for sure. But we do know that in this case Romeo will be true to his word. Though that doesn’t end up doing either of them much good, does it? No, it doesn’t. 

This is a page from our Tempest retelling. I'm using this pic because in this scene it's Miranda asking the question of Ferdinand, 'Do you love me?' He answers yes and she doesn't question his answer one bit. And they end up living happily ever after. So maybe Juliet shouldn't have doubted? I'm just sayin'.

For this description of thine honesty? A pox upon him for me, he’s more and more a cat.

-Bertram

All’s Well That Ends Well                 Act IV, scene iii, line 263

This is a pretty obscure bit of a line. I guess we don’t really need to know what the description of thine honesty was. Suffice it to say that the description was not flattering. Today’s Totally Random line is Betram’s comment about Parolles, the fellow who gave this unflattering description. A pox upon him, whilst a bit of an antiquated expression is pretty easy to understand.

But now wait a tic, let’s think about this for a minute. It's an old saying, A pox upon him, and yet how topical! We are in the middle of a pandemic. Not that I would ever use this line, but it would certainly be topical. A pox indeed!

Now consider how bad it would be to say to someone, I hope you catch Corona Virus! They'd probably arrest you just for saying it. So this old a pox upon you line is maybe worse than we had ever realized. 

Good ol' relevant Will. 

 

Well, believe it or not, these are the instructions for a board game called Pandemic. It's true: we have a game called Pandemic. The object of the game is to work together to stop a Pandemic. We're going to be playing this in the next day or so. I'll let you know how we make out.