Proportionable to the enemy

-Bushy

King Richard II                       Act II, Scene ii, Line 124

Proportionable gets the red underline from Word, but if you look it up, it’s there. It’s the archaic term for proportional, which doesn’t get the red underline.

Now, today’s line is part of a longer sentence, but I thought it an odd little line, so I wanted to present it alone. And note, it’s perfect iambic pentameter:

pro POR, tion A, ble TO, the EN, e MY.

Perfect.

Anyway, here’s the full thought from Bushy.

        The wind rains fair for news to go to Ireland,

But none returns. For us to levy power

Proportionable to the enemy

Is all unpossible.

Bushy, Bagot, and Green are Richard’s boys. He left them in London whilst he went to Ireland to quell the rebellion. Now Bolingbroke – the future Henry IV – has returned from exile and it looks like mostly everyone is going over to his side. Consequently, these three fellows are trying to decide what to do. Bushy’s observations are quite accurate: they have no news from Richard in Ireland, and there’s no way they’re going to be able to raise a power to hold back Bolingbroke.

What to do? What to do?   

Bushy, Bagot, and Green: sounds like names you'd find being used by another English writer, eh? 

Perhaps one who claimed to not care much for Shakespeare.

 

 

                                                     At this time
We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his

 friend;

And the best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed

By those that feel their sharpness:--

 

-Edmund

King Lear                        Act V, Scene iii, Line 56

 

Edmund is talking about the situation that exists after a battle is done, and a battle has indeed just been fought. It really is a very fine couple of lines, and it is an apt description, except for the fact that Edmund has no friends and is probably not experiencing any of this sharpness that he speaks of. He’s just saying this to put off Albany when the latter tells Edmund to present the prisoners, Lear and Cordelia. Edmund doesn’t want to present them, because he’s just sent them off to be surreptitiously murdered. 

 

Look you now, he’s out of his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged.

 

-Malvolio

Twelfth Night                  Act I, Scene v, Line 85

 

Okay, this is a hard one, I’ll give you that. Here’s Malvolio’s whole reply: three sentences. Wait – ‘reply to what’, you ask? Well, Olivia and Feste the fool are talking. Then the fool says to Malvolio that whilst Sir Toby (a character in the play who’s not present in this scene) knows that he, the fool, is no genius, neither would Sir Toby bet that you, Malvolio, are not a fool. Olivia asks Malvolio what he thinks about that, and that is what Malvolio is replying to. 

Now, here’s his full reply.

 

I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal: I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone.

Look you now, he’s out of his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged.

I protest, I take these wise men, that crow so at these set kind of fools, no better than the fools’ zanies.

 

Well the first sentence is easy. Malvolio is just saying that he’s surprised that Oliva gets so much enjoyment out of the fool, a fellow who’s not as bright as a real fool.

The second sentence, today’s Totally Random Line, is a little tougher. Malvolio is saying ‘Look at him, he’s caught off his guard already; if you don’t pay attention to him and laugh at him, he’ll have nothing at all to say.’

Malvolio concludes with the thought that those people who enjoy and speak highly of fools are no better than fools themselves. This would seem to be a bit insulting to Olivia, who is Malvolio’s boss. But who am I to say.

No more brain than a stone.

Well, this stone is obviously quite smart; it's reading Shakespeare.

 

I pray thee, give it to me.

 

-Oberon

A Midsummer Night’s Dream         Act II, Scene i, Line 248

 

Oberon talking to Puck, asking him to give him the flower that he sent him to find. It’s the flower that can make people fall in love with the first person they see. Oberon’s going to have Puck use it on Demetrius, but Puck uses it on Lysander in error (or do I have that backwards?), and Oberon’s going to use it himself on Titania.

There’s some really nice verse following this line where Oberon describes how he will find Titania. I know I always dis this play, but I like the twenty or so lines that Oberon and Puck finish this scene with.

Today is Walker P.'s birthday. I almost forgot.  He is twenty years old today. The last time that I was not parenting a child in the teens or younger was March 25, 1982. And yet today I feel the strains of parenting as sharply as any day. Isn’t that…something. March, 1982. It was a different world then, inside of me and outside of me. When I dwell on it it’s overwhelming.

I pray thee, give it me. Give me what? Strength. Peace? Of course, I have both of these; I just need to find them within, not in some magic flower. Or perhaps remember that all flowers, and so much more in the world, are magic - and dwell on that. 

And hence, Calvin. 

Be Calvin.

  

When there is nothing living but thee, thou shalt be welcome. I had rather be a beggar’s dog than Apemantus.

 

-Timon

Timon of Athens                      Act IV, Scene iii, Line 355

 

Not a particularly welcoming statement, is it? FYI, Timon is speaking to Apemantus, addressing him as the third person.

This is a good conversation. It’s a pretty long scene (as you see, we’re on line 355) and in it Timon talks to several different people who show up at his cave. Right now it’s Apemantus. Will comes up with interesting ideas to play with. This is a guy that went from loving everyone to realizing that most of his friends were not friends at all. Now he hates all mankind, and Will is exploring the different facets of this state, mostly through Timon’s interactions with different types of people. This line is part of a fairly long conversation with Apemantus, a guy who’s been pretty much fed up with mankind from the start.

I wanted to listen to/read this scene, or if not the whole scene, at least this part where he’s talking to Apemantus. I think I would need to listen to/read this whole conversation to appreciate this line. But I’m afraid I just don’t have time for that this morning.

Ah, I’m no better than a beggar’s dog.

I think today's line would make an interesting Welcome mat. What do you think?

 

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear, your true love’s coming,

That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know.

 

What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter,

Present mirth hath present laughter,

      What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty,

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

      Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

-Feste

Twelfth Night          Act II, Scene i, Line 78

I saw this play live in Nashville last year, and Feste was played by a guy in a cowboy hat with a guitar. So he sang this song in a very country western way, and that seemed very appropriately Nashvillian.

This is the guest house at my son-in-law's house in Nashville. Well, actually it's not the guest house. It's a little building in the backyard they call a hoos (rhymes with moose). It's sort of like a pool house, except without the pool. I stayed in the main house, not in the hoos.

I was looking for a pic of my trip to Nashville when I saw Twelfth Night, and I'm afraid this is the best I could do.

But fret not, here's a bonus for you. Enjoy!

Cantari - 1. O Mistress Mine Where are You Roaming (Three Madrigals) - Emma Lou Diemer - Bing video

 

 

‘Tis but the boldness of his hand, haply, which his heart was not consenting to.

 

-First Gentleman

All’s Well That Ends Well      Act III, Scene ii, Line 79

 

Haply means perhaps. Can you see the hap in both words?
The First Gentleman is talking about a letter, the contents of which the reader is unhappy with. Context beyond that? Nah!

The boldness of his hand.
His heart was not going along with his hand.
He doesn’t mean what he wrote.

Well then, I’ve often heard people claim that they didn’t mean what they said, or in some cases, wrote. But is that really so? Do they really not mean it? If it’s something that they’re apologizing for, then they probably said it whilst in some emotional state. So, then didn’t it come from the heart?
The Servant qualifies his statement with haply/perhaps: perhaps his heart was not consenting. Okay, perhaps his heart was not consenting; but perhaps it was.

That's right, perhaps he didn't mean what he wrote with his Blackwing Volume 7. Or perhaps he did. The good thing about writing it with his Blackwing is that he can erase it if need be. Whilst I know that they didn't have Blackwings in Will's day, I don't know whether or not they had pencils at all, in any form. 

Haply they did?