Hail, many-colour’d messenger, that ne’er

Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;

Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers

Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers;

And with each end of the blue bow dost crown

My bosky acres and my unshrubb’d down,

Rich scarf to my proud earth;-why hath thy queen

Summon’d me hither , to this short-grassed green?

 

-Ceres

The Tempest                      Act III, Scene i, Line 83

 

Somehow, the word here that jumps out at me the most is ‘bosky’. What’s bosky? Okay, MW online says it’s ‘having abundant trees or shrubs.’ Wow, that sounds right. I mean, the word sounds like that’s what it should be. Bosky! And that makes sense seeing that Ceres is the goddess of agriculture. She’s talking to Iris who’s the goddess of rainbows and the messenger of the gods (which you might have picked up from the first line).

I gave you this whole passage instead of just the one line because I thought it was full of language that was worth reading. Did you think so? I hope so. Hey, I just read it again and realized that she’s talking a lot about rainbows: ‘thy blue bow’ and ‘Rich scarf to my proud earth’ and ‘many colour’d messenger’. Well this is the scene where Prospero has conjures up a show for the kids, so what’s better than rainbows?  

 A Tennessee Rainbow

 

 

        But that slander, sir,

Is found a truth now.

 

-Second Gentleman

King Henry the Eighth              Act III, Scene i, Line 152

 

I’m not going to bother with context at all in this one. I’m going to go straight to current applicability. Oh wait, day three in a row with truth! And for a sec I didn’t even realize that. I was all set to launch into a tirade about the fragility of truth and the current need for, and lack of, it more than ever. Perhaps I won’t bother.

Oh boy, truth. Truth. 

 

 My associate and I were in a shop across from La Mezquita in Cordoba, and we had just toured the mosque/cathedral. The juxtaposition of the two places of worship in one and the inherent contradictions that exemplified brought us into a discussion of truth. I had just quoted this line from Henry VIII to see what he thought of it, and he responded with the Keats Beauty is truth, truth beauty line. Well, as you can see that caught me a little off guard. So I just took another bite of my pastry.

 

Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.

Hamlet

Hamlet            Act II, Scene ii, Line 240

 This is Hamlet’s response to Rosencrantz’s comment that the world’s grown honest. I think my response would be similar. But hey, look at that: two days in a row we have the word true. Yesterday it was the first word of the line and today it’s the last. And of course we could go to great lengths talking about truth (or in many cases, lack of it) in the news today, but I don’t think it’s worth going off on that tangent, is it?  

Keats has some line about beauty is truth, and truth beauty. So here's some truth for you: The cliffs of Svalbard.

 

True or false, it hath made thee Earl of

 Gloster. 

Duke of Cornwall

King Lear               Act III, Scene V, Line 17

 

“It” in the line above is a letter that Edmund just showed to Cornwall. The letter proves that Edmund’s father, Gloster, has knowledge of France’s army that is invading, and that he has kept this knowledge from Cornwall. So that’s not going to work out very well for Gloster, not very well at all. Edmund is a real ratfink in this play, surpassed in ratfinkiness only by Regan and Goneril. I think I did a blog about ‘ratfinkiness’ before, so I won’t get into it here. We’ll just settle for the fact that Edmund is a ratfink and leave it at that.

Can you guess who that ratfink is in this picture? That's right, it's that guy on the right photobombing us with his butt sticking out of his little black speedo. Puh-leeze!

 

No question of that; for I have seen him whipt three market-days together.

Dick [aside]

King Henry the Sixth Part II         Act IV, Scene ii, Line 54

 

No question of what? Jack Cade, talking to the crowd and convincing them of his strength and ability to lead them, has said ‘I am able to endure much.’ And Dick the butcher, speaking in an aside, says no question of that; for I have seen him whipt three market-days together. In other words, Cade can endure much but he has not proved it in battle; he has proved it by being whipped for being caught stealing stuff at market. 

Remember, that an aside means that the speaker is saying his lines sort of on the sly. The theater audience can hear what he’s saying, but the other actors on stage, particularly Jack Cade, are not hearing the aside. So this is tongue in cheek. Cade is going on and on about his royal heritage and stellar attributes whilst Dick the butcher and Smith the weaver have something to say about each of Cade’s lines. A bit of humor in this history play.

This is a pic of three cousins right after I told them we were going to act out this scene. You can see that Laura and Nina were pretty excited because I told them that they would be Smith the weaver and Dick the butcher, the two characters making the funny comments in this scene. Michael, on the other hand, realized that this would leave him playing Jack Cade, the guy the other two would be making fun of. He was, understandably, a little upset about this prospect. But being the trooper that he is, he came around and, knowing that the show must go on, he bucked up and did a darn good job as Cade. It was, in fact, one of the better Cades I've ever seen.   

 

Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five-fadom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts, and wakes;

And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,

And sleeps again.

 

Mercutio

Romeo and Juliet                  Act I, Scene iv, Line 85

 

It may seem as though I’ve given you quite a bit this morning, but in fact this is only a small part of Mercutio’s speech. And the thing is that this is the third time I’ve come across this speech in my travels, and I’ve yet to do a post on it. So here we go.

Romeo, Mercutio, and a bunch of buddies are on their way to a masquerade dance where Romeo’s going to meet Juliet for the first time (though he’s not aware of this now). Romeo’s hesitant about going to this dance because of a dream he had last night. He’s just about to tell them about the dream when Mercutio interrupts and goes into this long ramble about dreams. He talks about Queen Mab, the midwife of fairies who is no bigger than an agate-stone and she goes riding in her carriage made of an empty hazel nut. He tells about all the different types of people she rides over and what she makes them dream of: courtiers, lawyers, ladies, and sometimes soldiers. Today’s Totally Random lines tell of what she makes the soldier dream of. Mercutio keeps droning on further until Romeo interrupts him to shut him up. And the thing is, after this distraction of Mercutio we never get to hear what Romeo’s dream was about. We just know that apparently it was not good. And, of course, the whole deal for Romeo, and Juliet, will not turn out good in the end. So maybe he should have listened to his own dream instead of Mercutio’s treatise on dreams. Could’a, should’a, would’a.  

 

I can't remember is this was supposed to be the soldier or not, but that's definitely Queen Mab that he's holding in his right hand. You have to look close. I had just finished reading Mercutio's speech to my young associate and he whipped this up for me. Pretty good, eh?