Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers,

A pair of bleeding-hearts; thereon engrave

Edward and York; then haply she will weep:

Therefore present to her--as sometime Margaret

Did to thy father, steep'd in Rutland's blood,--

A handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain

The purple sap from her sweet brother's body

And bid her dry her weeping eyes therewith.

If this inducement force her not to love,

Send her a story of thy noble acts;

Tell her thou madest away her uncle Clarence, Her uncle Rivers; yea, and, for her sake, Madest quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.

Queen Elizabeth

King Richard The Third                            Act IV, scene iv Line 280

Okay, I know I really did it to you this time. Yup, that’s right, I gave you a big old honker of a read here. The actual Totally Random line of the day is just the very last part of this, but I just couldn’t help myself. I couldn't break this little speech apart.

This is Elizabeth’s answer to Richard III when he asks her how to go about winning her daughter's heart. She’s talking about all sorts of stuff about that Richard’s done: killed her sons, killed his brother. Of course she’s being facetious and sarcastic. His reply: you mock me ma’am . to which she answers, there is no other way, ‘unless thou couldst put on some other shape And not be Richard that hath done all this.’

And not be Richard. So the answer to his question of how to woo her daughter is either for him to be completely honest with the daughter as to what he is, or for him not to be Richard III. Kind of hard to do that. He is who he is. Right? Which way will he go? Probably neither. Probably a dastardly Richard III way.

 Send her the bleeding-hearts engraved with the names Edward and York; ‘then haply she will weep.’

Give her a handkerchief purple with her brother's blood; ‘And bid her dry her weeping eyes therewith’.

If you stop and think about it, Will really comes up with some pretty twisted stuff. I mean, sometimes I really question the sanity of this guy. Not that he wasn’t genius, because very obviously he was. But the stuff this guy thinks of, while it is genius, is just so far removed from normal. And this is one case. Richard’s asking the mother what he needs to do to woo the daughter, and the answer he gets is… Wow.

So I was reading the line 'madest away her Uncle Clarence' and it reminded me of the time this crew here madest away our Uncle Harry. Yeah, the poor guy drove up from Philly to visit his sister (my mom) and the six of us ganged up on him and straight out drove him out of the house. He couldn't take it. Well little Richard the Thirds we weren't, but I guess we weren't all that pleasant to be around either. I guess we've all got just a little bit of Richard the Third in us, no matter how innocent we look.

Famed be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature

Thrice-famed, beyond all erudition:

Ulysses

Troilus and Cressida                                       Act II, scene iii   Line 169

Bottom line: I have no idea what this line is about. And I don’t know what to do with it. I know a little about The Iliad, upon which this part of the story is based, but I do not know this play.

So I tried listening to this scene just now and I fell asleep before I got to today’s Totally Random line. OH boy, now what do I do. Well, I can tell you that erudition refers to intelligence. Does that help? Probably not.

Famed be your teacher, and your parts of nature should be triple framed, beyond all intelligence. Okay, but what’s his parts of nature? What’s that mean? Wow, I’m lost on this one.

Okay, so this is a section of one shelf of my bookcases. You can see the Iliad there (which I haven't worked my way through yet, though I have read The Odyssey next to it), and that black book eleven books over to the right is Latin and Greek Etymology, which is the textbook from the course of that name that I took in 1976. The shelf right above this shelf is my Will shelf. But none of this is helping me today. Of today's Totally Random line I can say: I haven't enough erudition, and I'm stuck.

I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

Ophelia

 

Hamlet                                 Act I, scene iii     Line 104

Here we have Ophelia. Another tragic figure in Will’s long, long list of tragic figures. She’s talking to her father, Polonius. It’s early on in the play, and she’s explaining to him that she’s not sure what to make of Hamlet’s ‘tenders of affection’ that he has made to her. Of course Polonius tells her what any good father would tell her, to stay the heck away from Hamlet, he’s nuts. And from what we’ve seen of Hamlet so far I think it might be good advice.

Irrespective of her father’s advice though, I think it’s easy to see that Ophelia’s comment is indicative of the major theme of Hamlet, and that is indecision. At least I think that’s what the major theme is. But I can’t say that I’m absolutely sure about that.

Now that I think about it, I have to admit that without the ‘my lord’ part in the middle of today’s Totally Random line a person like me could use this line constantly. ‘I do not know what I should think.’ In fact, this is my response to about half of what I see, hear, and experience on a daily basis. Or maybe it’s more than half, maybe it’s eighty percent. Or maybe it’s ten percent. Maybe it’s ninety percent. I surely don’t know. In fact, I do not know what I should think.

Confusion. Or is it indecision?

Till Noon! Till night, my lord; and all night too.

Regan

 King Lear                                     Act II, scene ii    Line 136

Well I've been having a bit of a hard time keeping up with the daily posts. I'm going to try to make a point of doing better going forward. In the meantime...

This is a line from lovely Regan, one of the two horrible daughters of Lear. It just occurred to me that there’s the two evil daughters and the one good daughter, just like in Cinderella with the two evil step-sisters. But I guess that’s just coincidence.

Anyway, yes, this is Regan and she's talking about Lear’s man, Kent. Lord Cornwall (who, if I’m not mistaken, is Regan’s husband) has just put Kent in the stocks and said that he’s going to stay there until noon. To which Regan replies, ‘Noon schmatz! Leave him there all night!’ This is the same woman who gouges out Gloucester's eyes later in the play and then says 'Let him smell his way to Dover!' No, honest, she actually says that. So today's line is just a little bit of a warm-up for this lady. She is such a sweetheart! Gloucester is in this scene too, and he tries to say something about showing some restraint, but that’s not gonna happen here. Poor Gloucester is constantly trying to do good, and all he gets for his troubles is to be blind and smelling his way to Dover. Well, it is a tragedy, isn’t it?

I had a drawing commissioned for this post. I really like it when someone else does a drawing for something you're writing about because it's always a bit different than anything that you would have pictured yourself, and it's neat to see a different perspective. I especially like the use of purple here. And Regan looks quite a bit younger than I would have pictured her.

Look, the world’s comforter, with weary gait,

His day’s hot task hath ended in the west;

Narrator

Venus and Adonis                                                           Line 530

This is a pretty cool line. He’s talking about the sun. The world’s comforter is the sun. The sun’s got a weary gait (well he travels a long way, doesn’t he?). And the sun’s hot task ends in the west. All he’s saying is that the day is over. But this sounds so much cooler than ‘the day is over,’ or ‘the sun has set’. Don’t you agree? ‘Look, the world’s comforter, with weary gait, his day’s hot task hath ended in the west.’ There’s really no need to go into context, or explain why Adonis is saying this in the poem. We can simply enjoy this line. And you can certainly use it next time you need to say to someone that the day is drawing to a close.

Imagine that you’re working out in the yard on a summer’s late day or early evening and you notice that the sun is going down. You turn to the person with you – friend, spouse, kid, whatever- and you say ‘Look, the world’s comforter, with weary gait, his day’s hot task hath ended in the west.’ And then point towards the setting sun as you say it. Oh my goodness wouldn’t that be great. The person with you will either look at you like you’re nuts, or they’ll look at you and appreciate the heck out of what you just said. Hopefully the latter.

Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait, his day's hot task hath ended in the west.

‘Tis positive ‘gainst all exceptions, lords,

That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants,--

Who in unnecessary action swarm

About our squares of battle,-- were enow

To purge this field of such a hilding foe.

The Constable of France              

 

King Henry The Fifth                     Act IV, scene ii  Line 28

Okay, first off; 'enow' means enough, and 'hilding' means good for nothing, worthless. So knowing that you can see that this is a pretty interesting couple of lines. This is the Frenchies looking down on the battlefield of the battle that is about to take place. They are commenting on what a sorry bunch the English are and how the French are going to so easily kick the English butts. Now of course this is the battle of Agincourt, a pretty famous battle. And in that battle the French are the ones who get their butts kicked. And not just a little. They get spanked very severely. This Agincourt thing is to the Brits what Bunker Hill, or Iwo Jima or one of those deals is to us; very famous. Even though it happened over 500 years ago.

So the Constable of France is saying that the French lackeys and peasants would be enough to beat the Brits. Actually, not just any old lackey or peasant, but the superfluous ones. Now, did any Frenchman in the lead up to Agincourt actually say anything like this? Well we don’t really know the answer to that. But we do know that Will loved to write drama and the he was marvelously gifted at it. And because of that he gets to make some stuff up occasionally.

I was looking high and low for a picture for today's line (and I have to tell you- finding a decent picture for these posts is really the most time consuming part of the task), and lo and behold, I was lucky enough to come across this re-enactment of the Battle of Agincourt! I think these are the Brits that the Constable was looking down on when he made his overconfident comment. I'm not sure what he was thinking because I think they look like a fairly formidable bunch, especially the guy leading the charge with the helmet and green visor. Although I have to wonder about that guy in the upper right hand corner with the monkey on his head. I'm not sure what's up with that.

What touches us ourself, shall be last served.

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar                     Act III, scene i    Line 8

So this is Act III, scene I, the famous scene where Caesar gets killed and utters his famous ‘Et tu, Brute?’ (followed much less famously by his last three words 'Then fall Caesar!' There, now you've got a great little bit of trivia.) But that’s about seventy lines down the road. At this point he’s talking to some people outside, in a few minutes he’ll be heading inside to get slain. Just the same, I can’t help but wonder if today's line is a reference, a little bit of foreshadowing if you will, to the bunch of knives that are very shortly going to be touching ‘ourself’.

What do you think?

This is what was last served to me tonight. Actually, it was served by me. Well, by me and to me. It's the last thing I ate this evening. But I think Julius was talking about something else when he talked about 'last served.'