How now! Where’s your master?

-First Lord

All’s Well That Ends Well     Act IV, Scene iii, Line 73

 

Since today’s line really doesn’t have too much going for it, I’ve decided to give you the line immediately previous to it. I think you’ll enjoy it more, and it really needs no context.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherisht by our virtues.

There, that’s much better. And if you’d like to quote it, you can get away with using the first part – The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. And this can be used infinitely.

It sounds almost Zenish, doesn’t it; sort of has that yin and yang thing going for it. Honestly, there’s nothing that can come off Will’s pen that surprises me with its breadth of wisdom and knowledge. Really, nothing.

Naturally, I decided that we needed a good web picture. The first is an interesting banana spider web found in Tennessee. The second is a rather conventional web found here in Connecticut. The first one seems to be of more mingled yarn than the second, but they're both nice webs.

 

O lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount: for mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompey the Great, sir.

-Costard

Love’s Labour’s Lost             Act V, Scene ii, Line 500

 

Costard is listed in the Dramatis Personae as ‘a clown’, and his lines certainly portray him as a bit of a clown. Not necessarily a circus clown, but a fairly dimwitted person type of clown. As such, there’s only so much sense that we’re going to be able to make out of today’s Totally Random line, and whatever sense there is to be gained would rely in large part on putting this in some context. I’m afraid I have neither the time nor inclination to do that this morning, so I’m leaving you on your own. After 609 posts, one would hope that you’d be able to work this one line out on your own.

Oh never mind, I guess I do have some thoughts. I suppose I just can’t help myself.

Since we’re talking about actors and Costard portraying Pompey, it has occurred to me that some folks nowadays have a tendency to find it problematic for some people to take on certain roles, for one reason or another. It has also occurred to me that every actor since the beginning of acting has taken the stage in an effort to pretend to be, and convince us that they are, someone whom they are not. So the question arises, when are certain roles, undertaken by certain actors, unacceptable, and why? Again, if virtually every role is an attempt to pretend to be someone else, who’s to say when a particular someone else is unacceptable? 

Now I’m not pretending to be stupid, and I understand the history of making fun of entire races or ethnicities on the stage. But somehow, I think we need to be able to put that in perspective. For instance (uh oh, here we go), the fact that white men painted their faces black in order to make fun of blacks in old minstrel shows (which I’m not defending here), should not preclude the acceptability of Laurence Olivier darkening his face to portray Othello. Sir Laurance was pretending to be someone he was not, a profession for which he received accolade upon accolade.  He was not darkening his skin in an attempt to malign a race or ethnicity. He was doing it to portray a character who happened to be a black man. Are we saying that he should  not have been allowed to portray Othello, or that he should not have darkened his skin to do it, or both? And, if either, please tell me why. If your answer is that he can’t do it because over one hundred years ago white men blackened their faces to belittle black men, well, I’m afraid I just can’t see how that makes sense.

There, I’ve waded into some murky, and potentially very hazardous, waters. And Lord knows, I am a very poor swimmer. C’est la vie.

And here is a pic of the fabled Sir Laurence portraying Othello, taken from my A.L. Rowse Annotated Shakespeare volumes.  As you can see, this was in 1964 when this was acceptable. Today? Not so much. 

 

 

You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

-Don Pedro

Much Ado About Nothing             Act II, Scene i, Line 271

 

The lady to whom Don Pedro is speaking is Beatrice. The him, that Don Pedro is talking about is Benedick. These two, Beatrice and Benedick, are sparring again. From what I understand, and from the little bit that I’ve read of lines from this play, these two sparring seems to be the main event of this play. And then they get together in the end.

A little earlier in the scene there are a few really good lines of Benedick’s. He is talking to Don Pedro and telling the Don that he’s willing to do pretty much anything other than spend time with Beatrice. Check this out.

Will your grace command me any service to the world’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John’s foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s beard; do you any embassage to the pigmies;-- rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me?

This is great. The Antipodes is the other side of the world, Prester John, according to Wikipedia, is some legendary Christian patriarch and king (but I don’t know what the deal is with his foot), and Cham is an old word for Kahn (which could refer to any number of Mongol leaders). But my favorite part of that needs no explaining. I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia. That’s fabulous. It sounds like something out of Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran The Zoo where the kid goes to the far ends of the earth to get the rare animals. I love that. I’ve gotta memorize that, or better yet the whole thing, so that I can quote it the next time someone asks me to do something that I don’t want to do.

What’s that? You want me to turn my socks right side in and make sure I put them in the clothes hamper? Well, I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John’s foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham’s beard; do you any embassage to the pigmies;-- rather than do that!

Now I know that I've used this pic before, but it's the perfect one for this post. This Spiderman wearing a ski cap would never have happened if I had taken off my socks, turned them right side in, and put them in the clothes hamper.  He could only have happened by haphazardly tossing my socks and letting them lie where they fall. And we wouldn't have wanted to miss out on this Spiderman, would we?

 

The fairest hand I ever touched! O beauty,

Till now I never knew thee!       Music. Dance.

-King Henry

King Henry the Eighth          Act I, Scene iv, Line 74

 

This doesn’t seem to say much for Queen Katherine, does it? Frankly, I don’t think it says much for Henry either, but that’s just me.

And here's the original beauty: Belle, the beauty in Beauty and the Beast.

 

These deeds must not be thought

After those ways; so, it will make us mad.

-Lady Macbeth

Macbeth                          Act II, Scene ii, Line 45

 

Let’s see, Macbeth has just murdered Duncan, and he is clearly quite upset over what he’s just done. Lady Macbeth, not the least bit upset about the murder of Duncan, is trying to settle her husband down. She is the one of this couple who appears to be most resolved to the course they have chosen, and the least troubled by it. But remember, she’s also the one who’s going to be sleepwalking later on in the play, expressing her guilt. So she’s more troubled than she’s willing to admit. Interesting.

And here's today's pic. These are my associate's new sneakers. There's absolutely no relevance whatsoever to this picture, but I really like those shoes.  

 

Avaunt! Be gone! Thou hast set me on the rack:-

I swear ‘tis better to be much abused

Than but to know’t a little.

-Othello

Othello                    Act III, Scene iii, Line 335

 

Othello is talking to Iago. The latter had planted the seed with the Moor of Desdemona having an affair with Cassio, and now Othello has had time to be thinking about that. The seed has germinated and, based on what he says here, Othello’s been thinking about Desdemona and Cassio quite a bit.

Oh honest Iago!

Oh poor Othello.

I think I might agree with Othello; ignorance can, at times, be a blessing.

Here we have a perfectly topical example from my pencil collection. This guy here, from the New York Botanical Garden, contains basil seeds in the black tip. The pencil is meant to be planted once it is used up. So it's not seeds of jealousy, it's seeds of basil; but seeds nonetheless. 

 

 

Now he will be swinged for reading my letter,- an unmannerly slave, that will thrust himself into secrets! I’ll after, to rejoice in the boy’s correction.  

-Launce

The Two Gentlemen of Verona             Act III, Scene i, Line 380

 

One definition should help here. Swinged means beaten, thrashed, or flogged. Now it should make pretty good sense. Well, that is to say, the lines will make sense. Exactly who ‘he’ is and what letter he read, that’s a separate issue. Since these are the last lines of a fairly long scene which I have not read, and since I have very little familiarity with this play on the whole, I don’t know the answers to those questions. I only know that ‘he’, whoever he is, is a boy without manners who is facing a beating for reading Launce’s letter, and that Launce is going to be happy to see this beating take place.

I suppose we’d have to dig into at least this scene, if not the whole play, in order to get a full understanding of today’s lines. I don’t really have time for that this morning. Perhaps you do?  

I don't have time to go digging for a pic today either. Perhaps when I retire in a few years...