Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

                                 [Enter Diomedes and Troilus]

Troilus

Fly not: for shouldst thou take the river Styx,
I would swim after.

Diomedes

Thou dost miscall retire:
I do not fly; but advantageous care
Withdrew me from the odds of multitude:
Have at thee.

            [Exeunt Diomedes and Troilus, fighting]

Troilus/Diomedes

Troilus and Cressida         Act V, Scene iv, Line 32                                   

This brief exchange takes place on the battlefield.

I’m pretty sure that when Diomedes says that Troilus miscalled retire he was referring to the latter’s word fly. It seems odd that he wouldn’t have said Thou dost miscall fly. I mean, he’s talking about the other guy using the wrong word, but then he uses a different word to refer to the word that he thinks Diomedes is misusing. Do you follow?

No wonder people think Shakespeare is hard to read.

Frankly, I don’t follow, and nor do I care. I just wish you'd get me out of this little black bag. This big guy keeps getting his beard in my face and it’s itchy as heck!

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

                                               [Music plays]

Duke

Come hither, boy: if ever thou shalt love,

In the sweet pangs of it remember me;

For such as I am all true lovers are,

Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,

Save in the constant image of the creature

That is beloved.

—How dost thou like this tune?

 

Viola/Cesario

It gives a very echo to the seat

Where love is throned.

 

Twelfth Night                Act II, Scene iv, Line 18                                 

 

This is a scene with the Duke of Illyria and Viola. Remember, if you will, that Viola is disguised as the young man Cessario. She has come to the Duke’s court, and has fallen madly in love with him. Unfortunately, she faces two problems: the Duke is in love with another woman (who wants nothing to do with him), and the Duke thinks that Viola is a young man named Cessario.

In any event, in Today’s Lines the Duke is giving Cessario advice about love. I included Viola’s two-line response to the Duke because they are such a beautiful two lines that I didn’t want you to miss them.

The modern meaning of the word unstaid, in the third line above, is uncontrolled or unrestrained, but the obsolete meaning, per MW online, is unsteady or vacillating. You can decide for yourself which meaning works better.

Now that I’ve given you a little context, and the history of unstaid, I think the lines stand pretty much on their own. I like them a lot, but I’m not sure I really have anything else to say about them. Perhaps we should just read them once more and enjoy them.

 

As you may have noticed, we’ve been away for a few weeks. In fact, we were quite far away, in beautiful Japan for nephew John’s wedding (and some sightseeing). In our stead, Walker Peter has been holding down the fort and minding Mojo. As you can see, WP has been keeping the little fellow safe and sound, and as you can also see, the little fellow has been keeping a pretty low profile. He was a bit more outgoing upon our arrival home last night. One might even say he was unstaid, in the modern meaning of the word, when he saw us.

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

                                       

Draw nearer, honest Flaminius. Thy lord’s a bountiful gentleman: but thou art wise; and thou know’st well enough, although thou comest to me, that this is no time to lend money; especially upon bare friendship, without security. Here’s three solidares for thee: good boy, wink at me, and say thou saw’st me not. Fare thee well.

 

Lucullus    

Timon of Athens             Act III, Scene i, Line 42                             

For those of you who know nothing at all about this lesser-known play, I’ll give you a very brief catchup: just a few sentences. 

Timon is a fellow in Athens who likes to throw outlandish parties. Everyone loves his parties. Eventually, however, he realizes that he’s gotten himself into serious debt with his lavish lifestyle. Timon naively thinks that all these people who’ve been attending his parties are his friends and that they will help him out (silly boy). He sends his servant Flamius to go visit some of these “friends” to ask for some financial support. Lucullus’s response above is typical of what he gets.

Timon gets over his naivete pretty quickly after this, but instead of just growing up and accepting humanity for the flawed entity that it is, he concludes that he hates people. No, he really hates people. So he decides to go live in the woods away from all humans. I guess you’ll have to read or see the play to see how that turns out.

This is another of Will’s plays that’s really good, but very rarely gets produced. In fact, I’ve never heard tell of this one being produced as a play or movie at all. That doesn’t mean it’s not still being done, but I never hear about it. Anyway, what else is there to say?

 

 

Well that's all quite interesting, Mr. B, however, more importantly, I believe that the Mrs. just bought a brand new bag of treats for me to try out today.  So if you see her, there's no need to tell her about that treat you gave me a few minutes ago; just be a good boy, wink at me, and say thou saw’st me not. Okay?

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

                                        

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

That it do singe yourself: we may outrun

By violent swiftness, that which we run at,

And lose by over-running.

 

Duke of Norfolk      

King Henry the Eighth     Act I, Scene i, Line 142

 

We’re at the very beginning of the play. The Duke of Buckingham has been railing to the Duke of Norfolk about Cardinal Wolsey, going on and on about what a lowlife the cardinal is and that he, Buckingham, is going to go to the king and take down the cardinal. In Today’s Lines Norfolk is warning Buckingham to be careful, because the cardinal is devious and powerful.

It turns out that Norfolk’s warning is prescient. By the end of the scene the king, based on Wolsey’s doing, is having Buckingham sent to the Tower. Nobody wants to be sent to the Tower.

Apparently Wolsey has paid off one of Buckingham’s people to bear false witness against Buckingham and his goose is cooked. Here’s Buckingham with the last words of the scene.

My surveyor is false; the o’er-great cardinal

Hath show’d him gold; my life is spanned already:

I am the shadow of poor Buckingham,

Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on,

By darkening my clear sun. – My lord, farewell.

It sucks to be Buckingham. 

 

Yes, Mojo, that’s politics. It was politics back in 1630 and it’s politics in 2025. Some things never change.

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

                                       

England hath long been mad and scarr’d herself;

The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood,

The father rashly slaughter’d his own son,

The son, compell’d, been butcher to the sire:

All this divided York and Lancaster,

Divided in their dire division,

O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth,

The true succeeders of each royal house,

By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together!

 

Earl of Richmond (later Henry VII)

       

King Richard the Third        Act V, Scene v, Line 27

 

This is the last speech of the play, which is the last play in the series that covered the Wars of the Roses. The Earl of Richmond has just won the battle of Bosworth Field in which Richard the Third was killed. So the wars, which started with the overthrow of Richard II, end with the Death of Richard III. In between the two Richards, a bunch of other Henry’s and a few Edwards get to oversee the turmoil that the Earl is talking about in Today’s Lines: fathers slaughtering sons and sons butchering sires.

Boy, I can’t help it but this stuff, like so much else of Will’s material, keeps reminding me of today’s world: more specifically our divided country. And don’t try to tell me it’s not divided. Where is our Earl of Richmond. I’m not really seeing him/her anywhere. 

Do you want to know where we can find him/her? We can find them in someone who’s willing to embrace a member of the other party as their running mate. Mitt Romney and Pete Buttigieg. Gavin Newsom and Liz Cheney. It’s going to take something bold like that to make it work. Otherwise it’s going to continue to be more of the same.

What’s that? It’s time to pull up? Okay, you’re right. I’ll pull up.

 

Ahhh, to be as carefree as my little friend here. 

‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. 

Wait, that’s Hamlet, not Richard the Third. Sorry.

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines 

                                       

Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most,

I will advise you where to plant yourselves;

Acquaint you with the perfect spy o’th’time,

The moment on’t; for’t must be done to-night,

And something from the palace; always thought 

That I require a clearness: and with him-

To leave no rubs or botches in the work-

Fleance his son, that keeps him company,

Whose absence is no less material to me

Than is his father’s, must embrace the fate

Of that dark hour.

 

Macbeth    

Macbeth                           Act III, Scene i, Line 129                                   

This is Macbeth giving instructions to the two murderers that he is sending to kill Banquo and Banquo’s son Fleance.

I listened to this scene this morning. Today’s Lines come at the end of the scene. Before this Macbeth spends some time getting the murderers pumped up with a desire to kill Banquo. He does this with lie after lie about Banquo. I’m sorry (and no, I’m not going to immediately pull up) but the comparison to 2025 is screaming at me. I just finished reading the email I get from Kareem regarding his substack post and today a lot of it was about freedom of speech and the abuse of that freedom taking place today. It all brings to mind the words of Toni Morrison from her Nobel acceptance speech,

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

Yeah, what she said. And Macbeth’s language in this scene, and yes, Trump’s language every day (there, I said it), is doing what Ms. Morrison talked about.

Is there an answer to this?

Pull up? That's it?

Yes, Mojo, you're right: that bell pepper that your mother grew is almost as big as you. And yes, you're also right: I should be concentrating on you and bell peppers, not on he-who-shall-not-be-named. Sometimes I just can't help it.

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

                                       

I would they were, that I might die at once;

For now they kill me with a living death.

Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,

Shamed their aspects with store of childish drops:

These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear,

No, when my father York and Edward wept

To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made

When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him;

Nor when thy warlike father, like a child,

Told the sad story of my father’s death,

And twenty times made pause to sob and weep,

That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks,

Like trees bedasht with rain; in that sad time

My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;

And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,

The beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.

 

Duke of Gloster (later to become Richard III)      

King Richard the Third      Act I, Scene ii, Line 151

 

I should probably have first given you the set up, and then had you read Today’s Lines; but you are certainly free to go back and re-read them after I give it to you, so here goes. 

Henry VI has died and Lady Anne (who is the widow of Henry VI’s son, Edward) is mourning over his body. Gloster (soon to become Richard III) shows up and begins wooing Lady Anne. The catch: Richard killed both Henry VI and his son Edward, and Lady Anne knows this.

As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a testy exchange, at least at the start. Then the subject turns to eyes and Richard complements Anne on her beautiful eyes, whereupon Anne says,

Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead!

And that gets us to Today’s Lines.

So you can see that the subject of these lines, they in the first two lines and them in the last line, and much in between, is eyes. It’s all about the eyes.

So, now knowing the context, and armed with the knowledge of the eyes, you should give Today’s Lines another look. There is some really marvelous stuff in there; some of Will’s finest work, so take another look. Yes, you heard me, lay your eyes on them again: your eyes. You won’t regret it.

Eyes.