Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

He professes to have received no sinister measure from his judge, but most willingly humbles himself to the determination of justice: yet had he framed to himself, by the instruction of his frailty, many deceiving promises of life; which I, by my good leisure, have discredited to him, and now is he resolved to die.

Duke/Friar
Measure For Measure                   Act III, Scene ii, Line 251

The duke, disguised as a friar, is talking to Escalus and Provost about Claudio. The latter is a prisoner of the state and has been sentenced to death. I’ll give you the straight up Pete’s Version of today’s paragraph.

He (Claudio) believes he got a fair judgment and wants only what is just. However, being the weak man that he his, he’s convinced himself that there must be a way out. I (duke/friar), in my good time, have convinced him otherwise, and now he is ready to accept his fate.

Pretty straightforward, eh?

Now, since we’ve landed, today, only a dozen or so lines up from one of my favorite lines, I’ll end with it. It’s the Duke, now alone, speaking indirectly about Angelo, the guy he left in charge and the guy who sentenced Claudio to death.

How may likeness wade in crimes,

Making practice on the times,

To draw with idle spiders' strings

Most ponderous and substantial things.

To draw with idle spiders' strings

Most ponderous and substantial things.

 

Hear me speak:--

As I do know the counsel’s worthiness,

So can I name his faults,-

 

Menenius Agrippa

Coriolanus                      Act III, Scene i, Line 276

But Menenius doesn’t get to finish his sentence, as he gets interrupted by one of the congressmen (I think it might be Matt Goetz) yelling,

Consul!- what consul?

Menenius wants to try to mediate, but they don’t even want to recognize the fact that Coriolanus was properly appointed as consul/leader even though he was (sound familiar?)

Again, this is a great play, but it’s a complicated one. The congressmen (the tribunes) are painted by Will as pretty weaselly (yes, that’s a word, and it means suggestive of a weasel – not the animal, the person). On the other hand, Coriolanus, albeit a great warrior, is not necessarily cut out for politics.

Shall I say it for the umpteenth time? Why don’t they teach this play in school? It’s fabulous, and relevant, and it’s got the fairly recent Ralph Fiennes version to watch. It’s a shame. Then again, I suppose the twenty-first century tribunes would have none of it.  

No pic needed today.

 

Why looks your grace so heavily to-day?

 

Sir Robert Brakenbury

Richard the Third          Act I, Scene iv, Line 1

 

Well, let’s see, his grace is imprisoned in the Tower of London, and he’s going to be dead by the end of the scene: not a lot to be happy about, is there?

 

 

I am near to the place where they should meet; if Pisanio have mapt it truly.

  

Colten

Cymbeline              Act IV, Scene i, Line 1

This is the first line of a twenty-seven line paragraph that is the totality of this scene. It is Colten talking to himself about how he’s going to kill Posthumus and get Imogen. Though this first line, Today’s Totally Random Line, is pretty easily understood, the rest of the paragraph…eh, not so much. This is the kind of stuff that people who don’t know or care about Will’s works would look at and say “What the heck is this!?” Myself, on the other hand, looks at this and says, “Hmmm, this looks interesting. Let’s see what I can do with it.”

So there’s a few ways I go about understanding a challenging piece of Will's text. First, of course, I read it over a few times. That’s what I would do with any text, Shakespeare or otherwise; and read it out loud. Second, I use the Shakespeare online glossary or M-W to get the meaning of any words I don’t know. Some of those words are archaic, and some of them mean something different in 1600 than they do now. Some of them, though, are simply words I don't know the proper meaning of. It's surprising how many words I run into that I can find the proper contextual meaning of in the Merrian Webster online dictionary. Next, if I’m down at the pc in my home office (I’m not right now) and have the time, I might listen to the Arkangel recording of the scene. That’s usually really helpful. And lastly (sometimes firstly) I’ll read the scene summary in my online Shakespeare app. Oh, and one other option that I might go to is to look at the footnotes that some of my other compilations might have. The compilation that I use on a daily basis to pick my lines has no footnotes. That’s about it, I think.

So if that sounds like a lot, well, the thing is – I want to figure it out. I guess it would be safe to say that most people wouldn’t. And that makes all the difference, doesn’t it.

Here's the whole paragraph/scene, if you want to take a crack at it. A couple of other things that I didn't mention above: It helps to have a decent understanding of what's going on in the play, and in some cases (especially the history plays) it helps to have an understanding of what was going on in England at the time. But you can't really pick that knowledge up too easily in just a few minutes. Finally, it helps to see the play performed, as opposed to just hearing it, but you can't do that in a few minutes either.

Good luck!

 

Put up your sword. If this young gentleman

Have done offence, I take the fault on me:

If you offend him, I for him defy you.

 

 

Antonio

Twelfth Night                 Act III, Scene iv, Line 315

 

Here we go again. The young gentleman being referred to in the line above is actually a woman, Viola, pretending to be a man (again, the actor is a man- so that we have a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man). At this point I’m not sure if Antonio has mistaken Viola for her twin brother Sebastian who, presumably she looks like when she’s dressed as a man. Sebastian is Antonio’s friend so it would make sense that he would be trying to defend him.

In any event, there are people all over the place here with their swords drawn, but none of them is actually interested in fighting. They’re all bluffing. But Antonio doesn’t know that.

Does any of this matter and does any of what I’ve written so far make any sense to anyone reading this? Good question.

The thing is, there’s a lot going on here. We’re well into the play, and there are a lot of players. There’s Viola, who’s shipwrecked in a strange land, pretending to be a man because she’s afraid of being taken advantage of as a woman. There’s Antonio who was separately shipwrecked with Viola’s brother Sebastian. There’s Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch. These two are living on the estate of Olivia, who is Sir Toby’s niece and with whom Sir Andrew is infatuated. Olivia, in the meantime, is infatuated with Viola because she’s thinks he/she is a young man. Viola is infatuated with the Duke of Illyria, who in turn wants to get his arms around Olivia.

Essentially, by this time in the play we realize that almost everyone wants someone who has no interest in them, and that half the people aren’t who/what the other people think they are.

Confused? I guess you should be but, on the other hand, this sort of sounds like the real world. Sort of. 

Well now, I've been aching to use this sticker, and it seems perfect for today:

 a sticker of I'm not sure who or what it is!

 

 

Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,

To put the finger in the eye and weep,

Whilst man and master laugh my woes to scorn.

Adriana
The Comedy of Errors. 2,  2. 202

This is the first meeting of Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse with the wife and sister-in-law of Antipholus of Ephesus. As to be expected, it is meeting full of confusion since the two women think they are talking to Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus. Today’s line is Adriana expressing her frustration with the confusion that’s going on.

Since I know the story here, and what’s going on, it’s not confusing to me. However, there is something here that is confusing to me. The first half of the scene is just Antipholus and Dromio, and there is no rhyming whatsoever in the lines. When Adriana and Luciana show up the non-rhyming continues for about eighty more lines and then suddenly, hey presto, they’re all talking in rhyme. Mostly. Even then, though they finish the scene (another half page) talking in rhyme, even then, they still manage to slip in and out of rhyme. As you can see, today’s three lines are not written in rhyme.

So, why the inconsistency? I find that confusing. It’s not stick my finger in my eye and weep confusing, but it is confusing nonetheless.

 

I thought a picture of an eye might be appropriate, so naturally I turned to my sticker book. Well, I found three stickers of eyes: one really big, one really weird, and this one. Perhaps you'll get to see the other two on another day, or days.

Confused? I hope not. 

 

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

                       

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delightful spirit

To battle in fiery floods, or to reside

In the thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice:

 

Claudio

Measure For Measure          Act III, Scene i, Line 118

 

Claudio, who’s going to be executed tomorrow unless his sister sleeps with the magistrate, is talking about the finality of death. He goes on here talking about death, and ends with

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

This is spoken by a guy who doesn’t want to die and is trying to talk his sister into sleeping with someone to save his life. So it probably seems like a good argument to Claudio.

Is it true. I don’t know. I do know that Will does spend a fair amount of time throughout his works on the subject of death. From the lines above, to Hamlet’s undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns to many others, Will gives us different ideas about death. 

Today’s idea, delivered from Claudio, doesn’t really leave much doubt. No matter how bad your life is, it’s a paradise compared to death. At least that’s the way it appears to someone about to die.

So it seems like we’ve spent the week talking about old age and impending death. Interesting.

Enough of this death and old age talk. 

Here's a picture of a life well spent.