If you prick us, do we not bleed?

-Shylock

The Merchant of Venice                Act III, Scene i, Line 60

 

Well here’s a treat. We’ve happened upon a really famous, really great, line. If you prick us do we not bleed? Now, as usual it’s part of a much longer speech, and I’m tempted to give you the whole thing. It’s about 25 lines long. Hmmmm. One reason I should is that it shows (at least in my opinion), that Will is seeing both sides of this story and not writing an anti-Semitic work. Another reason is that a lot (most) of Shakespeare’s oft quoted lines are part of a bigger speech and really need the context. That may not particularly be an issue here, but anyway, here goes.

Shylock’s speech is in response to Salarino’s question- Why, I am sure, if he (Antonio) forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh: what’s that good for?

And Shylock replies-

To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hinder’d me half a million; laught at my losses, mockt at my gains, scorn’d my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies: and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge: if a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

There, that’s the whole thing. Don’t you feel better for having read it? At the very least, the next time you hear if you prick us, do we not bleed ?  you’ll have a fuller understanding of what’s being said. In fact, you’ll probably have a better understanding than the person that’s saying it.

As far as what exactly is in those lines? Well there's just a ton to unpack there, and if I started we'd still be here days, and pages and pages, from now. So let's just say there's a lot there, and we can each read, and think about a bit. Okay? 

Here's a really old pic downloaded from Ancestry.com. Her name is Caroline Eichmann, and she is my great-grandmother on my mother's father's side. Is she related to Adolf Eichmann, infamous for his role in the holocaust? I've no idea. Caroline's people emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century, and Eichmann is a pretty common German surname. If I'm related to the nazi it would be a very distant relation. One further tragic irony is that Caroline Eichmann died from burns she received when she inadvertently set herself on fire.  

So why bring it up? Well, it seemed relevant in some respect when talking about Shylock. I'm not even sure exactly how, but it just seems like we're all tied up together in the big picture whether we realize it or not. I think Will realized that and I think today's speech by Shylock refers to that, amongst other things. Something to think about.

 

My royal lord,

You do not give the cheer. The feast is sold

That is not often vouched, while ‘tis a-making,

‘Tis given with welcome. To feed were best at home,

From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony,

Meeting were bare without it.

-Lady Macbeth

Macbeth                  Act III, Scene iv, Line 68

 

Here’s the deal: A bunch of people are gathered at Macbeth’s hall for dinner, and he’s been talking to one of Banquo’s murderers, and consequently has not welcomed the guests for dinner. Here’s the footnote from my Shakespeare book edited by G. B. Harrison that explains pretty well what Lady Macbeth is saying in today’s passage.

feast…ceremony: there is no hospitality at a feast where the guests are not made welcome; without welcome, it is a mere bought dinner – one can feed better at home; when one is away from home, ceremony should accompany the feast.

I know, it’s a little hard to get that from Will’s text. I’m not sure what to tell you. I would have to think that if you were seeing this performed, the context and staging, etc would help in understanding what Lady Macbeth is saying. But I can certainly see why passages like this might be what dismays people from getting into Shakespeare. Well, all I can say is, don’t be dismayed.

Okay, the first pic is the book I use on a daily basis to pick my Totally Random lines from. And the second book is the GB Harrison book that I pulled that footnote from. And there’s an interesting connection here. My guy Jon gave me the first book for Christmas (or was it my birthday?) several years back. I wonder if he even remembers that? And then this summer when we went to visit our new grandsons, August and Otto, I went out to buy a book of Will’s works that I could keep at Jon’s house (because my wife is always giving me a hard time about dragging that HUGE Shakespeare book with me when we travel). Well, I found the GB Harrison copy at a used bookstore near Jon’s house and bought it with the intention of leaving it in Cally. But then after spending a few days with it, I realized that it had a lot of really good content (specifically the footnotes) that my first book doesn’t have, and so I took it home. But no worries: we’re going back to visit Jon and Karen and the boys in a few weeks for Christmass, so I’ll be back at that bookstore looking again. So, no worries Jon, I’ll hopefully have that complete works of Will on your bookshelf by Christmas. And by the way, Jon and Karen are the best hosts ever. They always give the cheer and much, much more.

 

What is’t your highness’ pleasure I shall do at Salisbury?

-Sir Richard Ratcliff

King Richard the Third Act IV, Scene iv, Line 453

 

King Richard seems to be a little off kilter here. He’s telling Catesby to do one thing and Ratcliff another, and he doesn’t seem to be quite able to keep track of who he’s talking to and what he’s telling them to do. He tells Ratcliff to go to Salisbury and a minute later when the Ratcliff asks the king what he wants him to do at Salisbury, Richard asks him why he’s going to Salisbury. It reminds me a little of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene where the king is telling the guards to stay and keep an eye on the prince.

Monty Python - Dumb Guards - Bing video

 

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.