Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

                                 Tend me to-night;

May be it is the period of your duty:

Haply you shall not see me more; or if,

A mangled shadow: perchance to-morrow

You'll serve another master. I look on you

As one that takes his leave.

 

Antony

Antony and Cleopatra                    Act IV, Scene ii, Line 28

 

Two vocabulary notes:

Period = End

Haply = Perhaps (NOT Happily)

Antony is convinced that he’s going to be defeated tomorrow in battle, so he’s saying goodbye to his servants.

If you’re as old as me, or if you have a good sense of American 1970’s history, this scene might make you think of Richard Nixon saying goodbye to the White House staff. This latter scene was immortalized in song.

Both Antony’s and Nixon’s scene are pretty sad. It’s a rainy day today, haply reflecting the mood of today’s line.

Line 'Em Up - Bing video

The aforementioned song

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?

 

Costard

Love’s Labour’s Lost   Act III, Scene i, Line 143

 

It’s a comedy, isn’t it. 

Costard here is a bit of a buffoon. So it’s a rather silly part of the scene where he doesn’t know what remuneration actually means. Armado says he’ll give him remuneration for delivering a letter, and so gives him three farthings. Now Costard, unfamiliar with the word remuneration, thinks it means three farthings, and he’s asking Berowne how much carnation ribbon he can buy with a remuneration, meaning how much can he buy with three farthings. It makes sense to Costard of course, but not to Berowne.

Again, it’s comedy.  

Three farthings? Eh, probably not. 

Three Farthing Stone? Yes indeed!

See, I told you Will's works and JRR's works were related. 

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

If the great gods be just, they shall assist

The deeds of justest men.

 

Pompey

Antony and Cleopatra    Act II, Scene i, Line 1

 

Well that’s a big if, isn’t it. This also kind of flies right in the face of life’s not fair, kid (one of my favorite, non-Will lines).

 And, justest? C’mon now, that’s not even a word. I know that Will likes to make up words, but justest. He couldn’t just go with most just? Arguably that works even a little better with the iambic pentameter flow than justest.

Well now there I go again, trying to improve on Will. Silly me. Silly me.

 

Silly me.

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

  

The senators of Rome are this good belly,

And you the mutinous members: for examine

Their counsels and their cares; digest things rightly

Touching the weal o’the common; you shall find,

No public benefit which you receive

But it proceeds or comes from them to you,

And no way from yourselves. – What do you think,-

You, the great toe of this assembly?

 

Menenius Agrippa

Coriolanus      Act I, Scene i, Line 147

 

Another long, you might say run-on, sentence. Well, what’s happening here? 

The peasants are revolting because they say that the government is sitting on a storehouse of wheat whilst they, the peasants, starve. Menenius, a friend of Coriolanus and a part of the ruling class, comes out to calm them down. He talks about the body’s parts rebelling against the belly, accusing it of getting all the food. But, of course, the belly answered that, yes, he was the storehouse and processor of the food, but that it was then his job to distribute the proteins to all the parts of the body. And that’s where Menenius segues into today’s lines. When he mentions the weal o’the common, he is, more or less, talking about the welfare of the state. And he finishes by addressing the citizen who he’s talking to as the great toe, because he is out in front of the body of the crowd. 

A lot of body references.  

Well, I took a picture of my belly, and I was gonna post it. 

But it's too discouraging,

too embarrassing, 

TOO BIG!

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

Have I not tarried?

 

Troilus

Troilus and Cressida      Act I, Scene i, Line 17

 

Yes, the very beginning of the play, seventeen lines in. Troilus is taking off his armor and telling Pandarus that he doesn’t have the heart for fighting. Pandarus knows that Troilus’s distraction is his unrequited love for Cressida and tells him,

He that will have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.

Tarry, if you didn’t know, means to wait for.

Have I not tarried? he replies.

Has he waited? And if so what has he done whilst waiting? I suppose if I wanted to know that, I’d have to read or listen to the whole play. But it’s Monday morning and I’m not retired yet, so I have to get to work, and I don’t have time for that right now.

And you could reply, 'yes, you can’t do that right now. He that will have a cake out of the wheat (or the time to listen to the whole play on a Monday morning) must needs tarry the grinding.'

I’ve been working for most of the last forty-five years.
Have I not tarried?

Here's a guy who looks like he's waiting, or tarrying, for something. 

What's he waiting for? I think he's waiting to see where I'm gonna stick him.

(Great sticker book, eh?)

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

         But in short space

It rained down fortune on your head;

And such a flood of greatness fell on you,-

What with our help, what with the absent king,

What with the injuries of a wanton time,

The seeming sufferances that you had borne,

And the contrarious winds that held the king

So long in his unlucky Irish wars

That all in England did repute him dead,-

And from this swarm of fair advantages

You took occasion to be quickly woo’d

To gripe the general sway into your hand;

Forgot your oath to us at Doncaster;

And being fed by us, you used us so

As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo bird,

Useth the sparrow,- did oppress our nest;

Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk,

That even our love durst not come near your sight

For fear of swallowing: but with nimble wing

We were enforced, for safety sake, to fly

Out of your sight, and raise this present head:

Whereby we stand opposed by such means

As you yourself have forged against yourself,

By unkind usage, dangerous countenance,

And violation of all faith and troth

Sworn to us in your younger enterprise.

 

Earl of Worcester

King Henry the Fourth Part I       Act V, Scene i, Line 50

 

Well that sentence just goes on forever! I decided to type the whole sentence that Today’s Totally Random Line was in, but I didn’t look closely enough to realize just how long that sentence was! Oooof!

Anyway, this is Worcester explaining to Henry why they are rebelling. In short, he says, they agreed to help Henry to get his father’s lands and title back, and Henry swore an oath to them at Doncaster that was all he wanted. But in short space….

I went back to the play King Richard the Second to see if I could find the oath that Henry IV made at Doncaster, mentioned by Worcester above. I couldn’t find it. I do remember from somewhere that Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV) did say that he (Bolingbroke) was only out to regain his father’s (John of Lancaster) legacy, not planning to go after the crown as he ultimately did. So that’s the cause of all this ruckus.

But again, long sentence! Could you just give us long-story-short, Worcester?

This is what I'm thinking Worcester looks like with this song and dance that he's giving us today. 

Flood of greatness...contrarious...ungentle gull...forged against yourself...

Blah, blah-blah, blah-blah. 

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

  

At this request, with noble disposition

Each present lord began to promise aid,

As bound in knighthood to her imposition,

Longing to hear the hateful foe bewray’d.

But she, that yet her sad task hath not said,

The protestation stops. ‘O, speak,’ quoth she,

‘How may this forced stain be wiped from me?

 

 

Narrator/Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece                     Line 1696

 

Lucrece’s husband has arrived home, and he’s got a bunch of his guys with him. The request mentioned in the first line is Lucrece’s request to all of them to revenge the wrong done her. The word bewray, in the fourth line above, means revealed. She has not yet told them the name of the person who raped her.

I’m not sure how well this tale does here in the twenty-first century. Lucrece is taking most of the blame for this rape upon herself. And as we saw on Tuesday, a few lines down from here she takes her own life because of it. Of course, nothing has changed from 1600 to 2023, the rapist was as guilty then as he is now; the woman as innocent. Public perception (are those even the right words?) on the other hand is vastly different, and even that is still (always?) evolving: exhibit one - the recent ‘me too’ movement.

So, what to say about all of this? Honestly, I just don’t know.

Perhaps we can think of this as a picture of Lucrece in happier times. 

Perhaps.