Come,-- what’s Agamemnon?

-Achilles

Troilus and Cressida              Act II, scene iii, line 43

 

Achilles, his buddy Patroclus, and Thersites are talking. I’m not familiar with Thersites (I’ve never read this play completely through), but he’s listed in the cast of characters as a deform’d and scurrilous Grecian. In fact, he appears to be another one of Will’s characters best described as Fool. Anyway, in this part of this scene the three of them are talking, going back and forth with questions about each other. Thersites’s answer to Achilles’s question about Agamemnon is Thy commander, Achilles. Then they go back and forth with then what’s this one, and what’s that one, before Thersites sums it up,

Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles; Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool; and Patroclus is a fool positive.

In other words, Patroclus is just a plain fool, period. Fools, all of them. And all of us, I suppose.

This is the sort of Random Line that gets me waxing philosophical. As I may have told you, I’ve been certified as a philosopher by Dr. Andrew Davis who is an actual Doctor of Philosophy. In fact, Dr. Davis told me that there really is no qualification needed to be considered a philosopher. One merely needs to philosophize to be considered a philosopher, and pretty much anyone is capable of philosophizing. I spend way too much time philosophizing. But that's a story for another day.

I thought this was a pretty good philosophizing pic. This is the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway. It's full of statues of naked people. This particular statue, and the young lady in front of it, look like they're doing a bit of philosophizing, don't they?

 

What beast was’t, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

-Lady Macbeth

Macbeth                  Act I, scene vii, line 47

 

I think that if you were going to read, or hear, just one scene of this play, this would be the one you’d want. The whole play sort of pivots on this one scene, and it’s got some really good stuff in it. And, it’s relatively short.

Macbeth begins this scene with a soliloquy where he’s thinking about the murder of King Duncan that he and his wife have planned: If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well/It were done quickly; However, by the end of thirty lines of talking to himself, he’s talked himself out of it; I have no spur/To prick the sides of my intent, but only/Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself/And falls on th’other.

Then his wife shows up, and he tells her that they’re not going to do it. Lady Macbeth will have none of that, and she starts in on him,

                            Lady Macbeth

        Was the hope drunk

        Where in you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since?

        And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

        At what it did so freely? From this time

        Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

        To be the same in thine own act and valour  

        As thou are in desire? Wouldst thou have that

        Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

        And live a coward in thine own esteem,

        Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’

        Like the poor cat in the adage?

 

                                Macbeth

        Prithee, peace:

        I dare do all that may become a man;

        Who dare do more is none

       

                                Lady Macbeth

                                        What beast was’t, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And, to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:

They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know

How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluckt my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dasht the brains out, Had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

Oh my. This woman is, um…well.. I’m not sure what the words are. Suffice it to say that without her this play ends here with Macbeth deciding that it’s not a good idea to kill the king. And, of course, he’s right, it’s not. But after listening to his wife, he nonetheless ends the scene deciding otherwise,

         I am settled, and bend up

        Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

        Away, and mock the time with fairest show:

        False face must hide what the false heart doth know. 

So we end up getting a rhyming couplet, and four more acts.

I'm afraid I've come up empty today in terms of a pic. That line about dashing the baby's brains out, well that sort of made me feel that we don't want a pic for today's lines. Hopefully we'll have one tomorrow.

 

It is a damned and a bloody work;

The graceless action of a heavy hand,--

If that it be the work of any hand.

-Bastard

King John                       Act IV, scene iii, line 57

Well you certainly must be interested in knowing what this bloody work is, so I’ll tell you. Bastard, Bigot, Salisbury, and Pembroke (that sounds like an interesting group, doesn't it?) have just come upon the dead body of Arthur. This is the son of King John’s older brother. Arthur, therefore, had a right to the throne, and Bastard and the rest of these guys believe that John has had the boy killed because of that. In fact, though, this scene begins with the boy falling from the wall trying to escape. So, whilst John did have him imprisoned, and probably intended to have him killed, no one actually killed the boy, and it was, in fact, not the work of any hand. So, what do you think of that?

This is the type of wall I picture Arthur falling to his death from. Though in the play he appears to have fallen on rocks, not a nice, soft lawn like you see here. Perhaps he would have survived a fall from this wall. Then again, this wall is in France, not England. I suppose England's walls don't have nice lawns around them?

 

 

 

Why, how now, captain! What do you in this wise company?—How dost thou, Apemantus?

-Page

Timon of Athens                    Act II, scene ii, line 74

Interestingly enough, we’ve been in scene six times before. It would seem that we should be quite familiar with it, and in truth, we are. It’s the scene where the servants of several of Timon’s debtors come looking for money, and where Timon finds out for the first time, from his servant Flavius, just how poor his financial situation is.

Today’s line is from a section of the scene where the debtors’ servants are talking to Apemantus whilst they wait for Timon to show up. Today’s Totally Random lines are the first words of a Page who shows up. He’s addressing the Fool as Captain. The Fool and he appear to be acquaintances. Apemantus’s reply in the next line is

Would I had a rod in my mouth, that I might answer thee profitably.

I couldn’t figure that out until I found a note that said answer thee profitably means chastise thee. So a rod is his mouth would be a stick to beat the page with?  I guess. It’s a little bit weird, but I’m guessing the vernacular made more sense to a sixteenth century group than it makes to us.

And here's the part where you jump in and say See! Shakepseare’s stuff is written in Old English (it’s not) and nobody in 2022 can be expected to understand this stuff (they can and do)!

But, okay. I’m not in a mood to argue with you. So, just okay.

Speaking of wise company, how about these two? This is my niece and my nephew. The former lives in Australia now, and the latter in Japan, but Laura is up visiting from down under, and I'm going to see her later today at a family picnic. So I'm looking forward to that. Truth be known, I don't know what her feelings about Will's works are, but I'm not sure it matters.

 

9/3/22

 

It is the devil.

-Antipholus of Syracuse

The Comedy of Errors                   Act IV, scene iii, line 49

This play is a little bit crazy; okay, maybe a lot crazy. I think the main problem, well, to be clear there are a lot of problems and a lot of common sense that must be suspended in order to deal with this play. But as I was saying, one of the biggest of these is that Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse are out in search of their twins, and they arrive in a town where they are constantly being mistaken for someone else. Why don’t they realize that their twins are in this town! Oy! I mean honestly, this one plot fault could have been overcome by having these two guys traveling without the express purpose of looking for their twins; or perhaps not even knowing they have twins. We, the audience, would have known about the twin situation from Aegeon’s story in the first scene of the play.

Okay, there I go questioning Will again. When will I learn? Perhap’s it’s the devil in me. Yes, that’s it. It is the devil.

How about this guy, the guy with the horns. Is he the devil? 

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what that guy is.

 

Welcome is peace, if he on peace consist;

If wars, we are unable to resist.

-Cleon

Pericles                           Act I, scene iv, line 84

Cleon is the king of Tarsus and he’s just spent the first part of this scene lamenting about how his kingdom is suffering through a famine. Now a messenger has come in to tell him that there’s a fleet of ships approaching. Cleon is afraid that they’ve come to conquer, but the messenger says they’re flying the white flag of peace. Today’s lines are Cleon’s conclusions, as he tells the messenger to bring the general of the ships to him. 

I guess this qualifies as a rhyming couplet because it’s two lines that rhyme. These are not, though, the last lines of the scene, and that’s where Will famously has his rhyming couplets. Also, this scene is full of rhyming lines, but inconsistently so. I’m not quite sure what’s up with that. But I’m pretty sure that any two lines that randomly rhyme can be considered a rhyming couplet. 

Now it just occurred to me that most people, perhaps the vast, vast majority of people, would look at my rhyming couplet comments with a resounding ‘Who gives a flying rat’s ass?’ Hmm. I guess there’s a grain of reasonableness to that response. But that’s not the point. The point is that we’re trying to spend a little quality time away from all the important questions of life. I suppose if you are like the people of Tarsus and in the throes of a famine, or worrying about being invaded (and Lord knows there are plenty of people in the world in such a situation today), then the topic of rhyming couplets is pretty stupid. But if you’re like another large swath of the population who are getting by okay, but spending an awful lot of time worrying about the business of living, then perhaps you could benefit by leaving that business alone for a few minutes and thinking about rhyming couplets. Why not? It can't hurt.

Apparently, there's some competition in New Haven amongst drain cleaners. There's Nate, and there's Jake. If you choose not to dwell on rhyming couplets, perhaps you'd care to consider this? On the other hand, if you are thinking about rhyming couplets, perhaps you'd care to consider this?

 

Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?,

-Moth

Love’s Labour’s Lost            Act III, scene i, line 61

No need to get into a whole lot of context here. Moth says as swift as lead, Armado says lead is slow, and Moth replies with today’s Totally Random Line.

Makes sense, n’est pas?

And why, you are asking yourself, are we being treated to a picture of your favorite blogger this morning. What could possibly be the relevance? He doesn't own a gun. He's not particularly swift. What could it be? 

Well, I'll tell you. A subject of today's line is lead, the chemical abbreviation for lead is Pb, and PB just happens to be the initials of whom? 

That's right: the guy in the picture. 

Ahhh, relevance.