Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

Sonnet 18                Third Quatrain

Well how about that. I’ll bet you have no idea what Sonnet 18 is. Let me give you the first few lines of it.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes to see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


Okay, I couldn’t help myself and I gave you all fourteen lines of it. Surely you’ve heard this one before. It’s probably the most famous of Will’s 154 sonnets.

I can’t help but wonder where Will came up with the idea of saying that words would give eternal life to someone, anyone. It’s an interesting concept. I wonder if it’s his, or one that he picked up somewhere. I would guess the latter, but who knows.

Yes, Will is definitely number one on my list of people, living or dead, that I’d like to have dinner with. Though I’m not sure I’d remember to ask him that question. I guess I’d better start making a list of questions so that I don’t forget.

You're going to start making a list of questions to ask William Shakespeare when you have dinner with him? 

Shall I compare thee to a nut job?

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Do, then, dear heart; for heaven shall hear our prayers

Or with our sighs we’ll breathe the welkin dim,

And stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds

When they do hug him in their melting bosoms.

 

Titus

Titus Andronicus           Act III, Scene i, Line 112

Absolutely beautiful lines. The welkin is the sky, or the heavens. I think that other than that one word you should need no help understanding what Titus is saying. Remember, he’s just had his hand cut off, and with today’s line he’s talking to his daughter who’s been raped and had her tongue cut out. The two of them have good reason to be sighing.

Shakespeare seems to have a fondness for writing about the father-daughter relationship. He had two girls of his own. It’s at the heart of King Lear and The Tempest, and he dwells on it a bit here. I was tempted to compare these lines to Lear’s We two alone will sing like birds in a cage speech that he speaks to Cordelia, but I took a look, and those lines are from a very different situation. Even though it is father and daughter suffering together, the birds in a cage line is the only part of it that has any relevance to Titus’s line.

So let’s just end by taking another look at today’s line. No, I’m not going to write it out again. I mean that you should go back up to the top and read today’s line one more time.

Go ahead.

A cage, birds in cage! That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? 

I can catch 'em and put 'em in a cage!

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

-Here’s flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;

The marigold, that goes to bed wi’the sun,

And with him rises weeping: these are flowers

Of middle summer, and , I think, they are given

To men of middle age.

 

Perdita

The Winter’s Tale          Act IV, Scene iii, Line 103

Today’s line is all about flowers and herbs, isn’t it?

Gardener Mojo tending to his basil.

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

I had forgot, --three months, you told me so.

Well, then, your bond; and let me see,--but hear you;

Methought you said you neither lend nor borrow upon advantage

 

Shylock

The Merchant of Venice                Act I, Scene iii, Line 68

Today we have the scene where Bassanio has gone to Shylock seeking a loan with Antonio’s credit. And now Antonio has shown up, and he and Shylock are negotiating the terms of the loan (the bond). Shylock is pointing out that Antonio just said that he makes it a habit to neither lend nor borrow upon advantage (with interest), and this leads to further talk.

They get into a fairly complicated discussion about the interest, and if interest will be charged or not. It’s an important part of the play, because it lends insight into both Antonio’s and Shylock’s true motives. Unfortunately though, it would take years and cost millions of lives to do a proper analysis of the next hundred or so lines, and I’m not willing to pay that price this morning. Perhaps another time.

If you’re truly interested, here’s a link. The whole scene’s only about 175 lines, so it won’t kill you to read it. Let me know what you think.

Shakespeare's Comedy The Merchant of Venice - Shylock's Pound of Flesh from Antonio (shakespeare-online.com)

 

Millions of lives?!?

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Love’s counselor should fill the bores of hearing,

To the smothering of the sense -

 

Imogen

Cymbeline              Act III, Scene ii, Line 58

This short bit is part of a really long sentence, but it sort of stands on its own, so we’ll take it that way. It’s a pretty understandable line, isn’t it? Okay then, what’s it mean?

When loves counselor is talking, you shouldn’t be able to hear anything else? But who or what is love’s counselor? Well, Imogen is talking to Pisanio and asking for his input. So, I guess Pisanio is love’s counselor, at least in this case.

Irrespective of what she’s trying to say, it’s some pretty nice phraseology. Fill the bores of hearing, to the smothering of the sense. 

Now that I think about it, you could use this anytime you want to tell someone to listen to you. For example,

"Marty, Marty…I’m gonna take it slow and easy, and I’m going to make this just as simple as I can. If you’re smart, you’ll let my words fill the bores of your hearing to the smothering of the sense!"

The first part of that example is something the plant controller used to say to one of his minions on an audit job I did many years ago. The controller was a caustic old guy, but adding the bores of hearing part would have really added a little je ne sais quois to what is otherwise a really demeaning little rant. 

See - a little Shakespeare can make just about anything better.

Who's Marty?

 Today’s Totally Random Lines

Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,

Disclaiming here the kindred of the king;

And lay aside my high blood's royalty,

Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.

 

Henry Bolingbroke

King Richard the Second               Act I, Scene i, Line 12

Okay - first scene of the play: The speaker is Henry Bolingbroke (later to become Henry IV - he’s first cousin to Richard II). The guy he’s talking to is Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk (I think he’s got some royal blood too, but nothing nearly as close to the king as Henry). They’ve come before King Richard so that he can settle a dispute between themselves, and they end up challenging each other to a duel. A gage is an old-fashioned word for glove, and throwing down your glove was a way of challenging and/or accepting a duel.

So Henry, here, has some words for Thomas as he challenges him to a duel, in the process telling Mowbray not to let Henry’s royal blood stand in the way of accepting.

And there’s your context. Was it worth reading that paragraph to know what’s happening in Today's Line?

I know what this guy's answer to that question would be. 

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Not know my voice! O time’s extremity,

Hast thou so crack’d and splitted my poor tongue

In seven short years, that here my only son,

Knows not my feeble key of untuned cares?

 

Aegeon

The Comedy of Errors                   Act V, Scene i, Line 308

There is only one scene in Act Five of this play, so we’re at the end of it where all the confusion and mistaken identity stuff gets resolved. This line is pretty easy but for the last part. Here’s GB Harrison’s take on the fourth line above:

Knows not my voice made feeble by my sorrows.

Better? So if you read the first three lines and use that for the fourth it should make sense. At least I hope so.

Aegeon is speaking to Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus who are claiming not to know him. Aegeon, of course, thinks they’re the guys from Syracuse whom he raised from infants up until seven years ago when they went off in search of their brothers. These guys from Ephesus, that Aegeon is talking to, last saw him when they were infants and getting separated in the shipwreck. So of course they don’t recognize him. Don’t worry though; this is all going to be resolved in the next hundred or so lines.

One thing about the comedies is that they do usually have a pretty happy ending, albeit contrived and often unbelievable; not just a bunch of dead bodies like the tragedies.  

Dead bodies? What dead bodies?

Ugghh.