-therefore, good mother,

To whom am I beholding for these limbs?

-Bastard

King John                            Act I, Scene i, Line 239

Yes folks, this is Bastard talking. No, not the Bastard of Orleans, and not even the bastard; this one’s one of the Brits and he’s simply Bastard. Apparently he is the bastard son of Richard the Lionhearted, who was the brother and predecessor of King John. And this is the scene where Bastard is confronting his mother and asking who his true father is. He’s going to get his answer a few lines down. The question has arisen for Bastard because It seems that he is a fine physical specimen while his brother and his supposed father are, well, not so much fine physical specimens. King Richard, on the other hand, was as well endowed with an impressive body as Bastard is. In fact, earlier in the scene both King John and his mother Elizabeth (who’s also the mother of Richard) remark on how much Bastard reminds them of late, great Richard the Lionhearted. And yes, Richard is exactly who his mother will confess to being Bastard's true father.

Now from what I can understand from my readings, Bastard is a pure concoction of Will’s imagination, a character needed for the play, not a true historical figure. Richard had no children, legitimate or otherwise. In fact, according to Isaac Asimov in Asimov's Guide To Shakespeare, Richard may have had a lion's heart, but it was a heart much more interested in men than women, so he wasn't having any kids, legitimate or otherwise. Hey, don't look at me, I'm just telling you what Isaac said.

Here's a pair that could beat a full house, and I can tell you that these two aren't wondering one little bit who they're beholding to for their limbs. They're much more interested in who's gonna get them more cake, especially that guy on the right.

How heavy do I journey on the way,

When what I seek—my weary travels end—

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,

‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’

Sonnet 50

Yes folks, we’ve got a sonnet today. And since it’s only fourteen lines (you knew that, right?), let’s see what the whole thing looks like.

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide;
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

That’s not so bad, is it? In fact, this one’s pretty straight forward. But just in case, I’m going to pull out my sonnet book to see what it says. No wait, let’s take a shot at having a few words about it first.

Um, he’s saying that he doesn’t like traveling away from his love. Duh. Okay, now let’s see what the book says.

                ‘The speaker goes miserably on a journey which takes him away from the young man, and his slow horse seems to sympathize with his reluctance. The sonnet may allude ironically to Sidney, AS, 49, in which Astrophil rides his horse and is in turn ridden by love.’

That’s from The Arden Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones.

Okay, I like my explanation better. It’s much simpler. And simpler is usually a good thing. I think Will would agree with that sentiment. No, really. I do.

Now I was thinking of going another direction with this post. It has to do with a Robert Frost poem. I'll bet you can guess what I'm thinking of. But I'm kind of beat, so I'm going to end it here.

This is my friend taking horse riding lessons last summer. I don't feel very inspired about this picture, but it's the only one I could find that has a horse in it, so I'm going to go with it.

O, what a world is this, when what is comely

Envenoms him that bears it.  

-Adam

As You Like It                                     Act II, Scene iii, Line 14

All right then, we’ve broken our three day streak of the Margaret and Richard show. ‘Bout time!

And now that we’re back to As You Like It, maybe you remember the post where Orlando was complaining about the ill treatment at thehands of his older brother? Now things have gotten much worse as the brother has plans to kill Orlando. I believe that’s called fratricide. And if his brother were to carry through with it, it certainly wouldn’t be an isolated incident in Will’s works.  But the old and faithful family servant Adam, today’s speaker, is warning Orlando what’s going on and telling him to hightail it out of there. And in today's Totally Random line he’s lamenting that fact that Orlando’s goodness is what’s got his brother wanting to kill him. 

And Orlando certainly is not short on goodness. He is indeed,  comely. He had both Rosalind and Celia all gaga over him. And then he took on the professional wrestler and beat him without breaking a sweat. Yes, Orlando’s got a lot to be jealous of. And that's a pretty interesting way to phrase it. ‘…what is comely envenoms him that bears it.’

I'm afraid I'm going to have to do a repeat pic (for the first time). If you remember the post where Orlando was complaining about the treatment he was receiving from his brother (I referenced it above), you'll remember this pic. Yes, that's me on the left, and my older brother. I'm showing the pic again to remark on how uncanny it is that I seem to embody the qualities of Orlando and how amazing that I didn't envenom myself. Don't you agree?

Why, what, I pray, is Margaret more than that?

Her father is no better than an earl,

Although in glorious titles he excel.

-Queen Margaret

King Henry The Sixth Part I                          Act V, Scene V, Line 37

It seems like just about every day we’re ending up with a line about Margaret, or by Margaret. Yikes, so who exactly is this Margaret again?

Margaret of Anjou was born in France, the daughter of French nobility (note the reference to that by Gloucester above: her father is an earl, not a king or prince). She married Henry the sixth, and she was the driving force for a lot of the Lancasterian action in the War of the Roses (Lancasterians vs Yorkists).

With today’s line we are near the beginning of the Henry The Sixth, and at this point Gloucester/Richard is just getting warmed up on Margaret. She’s not actually in this scene. It’s the scene where they’re all talking about Henry marrying Margaret. Henry’s all in on the idea, but Richard, not so much. So he’s pointing out that Margaret’s not exactly royalty. He’s sort of saying that she’s from the wrong side of the tracks, to use an old expression. By the end of the Henry plays Richard is way more than warmed up, and she becomes the ‘false Frenchwoman’ (see post of two days ago). And then in Richard III Margaret is going right back at Richard with the ‘Hie thee to hell’ line (yesterday’s post). No, these two were not friends at all, as our last three Totally Random lines show. And whichever side of the tracks these two came from, they definitely ended up on way different sides, if you know what I mean.

This is me at Paddington Train Station in London. Those are the tracks behind me, and behind that you can see a train. So, am I on the right side of the tracks, or not? Well, I've got my super big coffee in hand, so I probably don't care. Would you?

Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the world,

Thou Cacodemon! There thy kingdom is.

-Queen Margaret

King Richard The Third                  Act I, Scene iii, Line 143

Well isn’t that a fine ‘how do you do?’ Yes, Queen Margaret (actually the former Queen Margaret; she was Henry the Sixth’s wife and mother to Edward Prince of Wales who would have been King Edward the Fourth.) has no need to hide her hatred for Gloucester (the future Richard III) and she has nothing to lose. And her hate is well founded since Gloucester (again, future Richard III) took part in the downfall of her husband and the death of her son. What’s not to hate?

This scene is just one big slugfest. There’s this whole group of n’er do wells fighting amongst themselves when Margaret shows up. For several minutes she stays hidden to the side of the scene making remarks to herself and the audience (asides), until she finally steps forward and engages, mostly with Richard. Today’s totally random line is one of her asides and it’s in response to Richard (Gloucester) saying that he’s ‘too childish-foolish for this world’. And for the record, ‘hie’ is hasten, and ‘cacodemon’ is some kind of evil spirit. Hurry up and get yourself to hell you devil; that’s where you belong, not here! 

And really, Richard is pretty much deserving of this. If you don’t believe me you can read the end of the scene, the part where he sends the two murderers off to kill his own brother Clarence. Yeah, not a very nice guy, and a perfectly suitable comment by Margaret. And really folks, even though we may feel like doing it from time to time, let’s try not to use this line in our everyday life.

Okay, I tried to explain to these guys what this scene is about, but they refused to take it seriously. I told them that it was supposed to be a group of people having a big argument, but they insisted that they could be arguing while they’re dancing. And what’s up with that skinny guy with the goatee thinking he could pull of the role of Queen Margaret. It’s just really hard to get people to work with you.

And every drop cries vengeance for his death,

‘Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

-Duke of York

King Henry The Sixth Part III                       Act I, Scene iv, Line 149

Today I’m going to try to spend the whole post on one word. We’ve done a lot of talking about all of the characters and politics that make up Will’s history plays. And it’s obvious that the Duke of York is a little ticked off here, but we’re not going to get into that. Instead, we’re going to talk about the word ‘fell’, as in ‘fell Clifford.’

Now for those of you who are knowledgeable of this particular piece of vocabulary beyond its use as the past tense of fall, or as the verb meaning to cause something to fall, this may not be interesting. But I’m going to go for it anyway. There is a third usage of fell (apparently there’s even a fourth and fifth, but I’m not going there) and it’s as an adjective. Will used it pretty famously (I think we might have even covered it in an earlier post) in Macbeth when Malcom was referring to his whole family having been slaughtered:

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

 One fell swoop. And this is the meaning that we’re dealing with today. ‘Fell’ as an adjective is applied to something bad; very, very bad. Usually it’s referring to bad as in deadly. If you’re a Tolkien fan, like me, you’ll be well versed in the use of ‘fell’. The professor used it quite a bit in his writing. It’s a pretty archaic word now. Perhaps it’s less archaic in Britain? I really don’t know. But in this country, aside from Tolkieners and Shakespeareans, you’ll not find too many people who know this meaning, let alone any who use it.

A quick look at oxforddictionaries.com tells me that this adjective has its origins in Middle English from Old French felon meaning wicked (person). And this, presumably is where we get the word ‘felon’. So ‘fell’, an adjective meaning very, very bad is related to the words ‘felon’ and ‘felon’ which refer to bad people and bad acts. So see, it’s not really that far a stretch to find a form of ‘fell’ in our modern usage.

Now I just went and polled the only other person in the house right now, and she had no idea what the adjectival meaning of fell is. And she is an extremely well educated and well-read lady. And indeed, she brought up the one fell swoop thing and pointed out that in modern usage we employ that phrase whenever we talk about getting a bunch of stuff done, with no bad implications involved:

I stopped by work and picked up some papers, met with some students, and dropped off my expense report. I got that all done in one fell swoop.

And of course she’s right. Nothing bad done there, and yet that’s exactly the type of usage you’ll find in 2017 America. We’ve come to think of the ‘fell swoop’ as something to do with how the swoop was accomplished, not the nature of the swoop being bad. I guess that’s a little example of changing language, and I guess that’s all I’ve got for today.

Speaking of Professor Tolkien, here's an illustration from his Children Of Hurin. This is the very end of the tale where Hurin finally meets up with Morwen, and then she dies. I'm not sure if this scene qualifies as being fell, but it's certainly no bed of roses either.

             I know not how,

But I do find it cowardly and vile,

For fear of what might fall, so to prevent

The time of life:

-Marcus Brutus

Julius Caesar                     Act IV, Scene i, Line 103

Well this is an interesting line. I guess I say that a lot, don’t I? But it is. Brutus and Cassius are discussing suicide, of all things. Here they are standing on the plains of Philippi and they are about to go into battle. Cassius asks Brutus what he’ll do if they lose the battle, is he gonna fall on his sword. Here’s Brutus’s whole answer-

Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself, I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,
For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The time of life: arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.

That pretty much sounds like a ‘no way’ to me. How about you? And yet, Cassius follows up by saying, ‘Okay, then if we lose you’re gonna let them take you prisoner and drag you through the streets of Rome?’ And Brutus replies with an even stronger ‘No way, man!’ So which is it? Is he gonna commit hari kari if they lose the battle, or isn’t he? Well I think I’ve mentioned before that the last time I saw this play was in 1972. And I haven’t read it since then. So you tell me.

There you go. That's my high school diploma and you can see the date. We saw Julius Caesar at the Stratford Shakespeare theater in my freshman year with Father Diaz. He was a feisty little guy. I mean Father Diaz, not Julius Caesar. Julius was dead in the beginning of the third act; not very feisty at all.