You that have been so tenderly officious
With Lady Margery, your midwife there,
To save this bastard's life,—for 'tis a bastard,
So sure as thy beard's grey,—what will you
adventure
To save this brat's life?

-Leontes

                                   

The Winter's Tale          Act II, Scene iii, Line 160

'To save this bastard's life, -- for 'tis a bastard,' 
that's today's Totally Random line. I just gave you the lines before and after that in order to complete the full sentence. And by the way, obliging, attentive, or diligent are the ways to define 'officious' in the first line above. I looked that word up this morning, and believe it or not I had to look it up again now, only five hours later. Oof, gettin' old.

But what of the line? Bastard, bastard. It seems pretty apparent that King Leontes is convinced that the baby his wife had is not his. And, of course, he's wrong. It's his kid all right. I think it all gets straightened out by the end of the play. But for now, this kid's a bastard. But not really.

Interesting word, isn't it? In another one of Will's plays he has a character named 'The Bastard'. I think it's one of the Henry VI plays. He's literally listed as that in the cast of characters and throughout the play when it notes who's speaking. 'The Bastard'. Or maybe it's just 'Bastard'. I forget. Then there's the bastard son of Richard the Lion Hearted in King John. And of course there's the bastard Edmund in King Lear who spends a bunch of time talking about his bastardness.  Yeah, old Will didn't shy away from bastards, even though in this instance the word is being misused. In fact, he seems to have a bit of a fascination with bastards, even though there is no actual bastard here in The Winter's Tale. A brat maybe, but no bastard.

This is a picture of a bustard, not a bastard, that I snapped from my Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. As far as I know it's not a bastard bustard, just a bustard.

I have said too much unto a heart of stone,

And laid my honour too unchary out.

-Olivia

                                   

Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will       Act III, Scene iv, Line 202

So now, how about that second to last word; unchary. That’s a bit of a puzzler, eh? Anybody? Okay, it means carelessly. Now here’s the funny thing: if I look it up in my online Shakespeare glossary it says ‘carelessly’. If I google it and take the online MW definition it says ‘carelessly’. So one would be speaking unchary if one were to say that Shakespeare was not written in modern English, because it is (even thought Microsoft Word is giving me a red underline spellcheck every time I type unchary). I had a long discussion with one of my co-workers last week about the difference between old English, and middle English, and modern English. It was actually more of a lecture than a discussion. I asked her if she was ready for the lecture, and she said she was. And it seemed like she was interested, but maybe she’s just a good actor. Hard to tell.

Now, what’s Olivia saying? Well, without context it doesn’t have a heck of a lot of meaning, but just the same, we can understand it. She’s said too much to someone who pretty much doesn’t care, and in the process she has carelessly put her honor out there, presumably to be trampled on. Well, okay, I pretty much added that presumption, but it seems reasonable.

Obviously I don’t know this play, and I’m not going to look into this scene right now, so you’re going to be stuck with simply learning a new word for carelessly. My friend Garrett told me that this play had something to do with Christmas season. Or at least the title does. But that’s about all I know about it.

Speaking of Christmas, this is my workshop. I put up some Christmas lights this year and decided to keep them up after the holiday season was over. I'm not doing it unchary. I just like the way it looks.

Thy back, I prithee.

-Timon

                                   

Timon of Athens                              Act IV, Scene iii, Line 397

I didn’t realize what this line meant at first, but it’s delightfully simple once you realize what it is. Timon has been arguing with this other fellow and now he just wants that guy to go away. ‘Please let me see the back of you while you’re leaving.’ ‘I Prithee’ is just slang for ‘I pray thee’, which is just a long, polite way to say ‘Please’. Another, somewhat less polite, way to say it is ‘Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.’ Or just simply ‘Get lost!’

This is one of those lines that you could use constantly and the person you’re talking to wouldn’t know what you’re saying. And sometimes that’s a good thing. Are you thinking you're kind of done with this post and that you’d like to be saying this to me right now. "Thy back, I prithee!"

Okay then, I'm leaving.

I saw him once; he was a goodly king.

-Horatio

                                   

Hamlet                                 Act I, Scene ii, Line 186

So this is Horatio, and we’re at the beginning of the play. He’s been discussing things (including Hamlet’s father) with Hamlet and he blurts out here that he saw his father once. He’s about to tell Hamlet that he’s also seen him recently, since the goodly king died. This of course means that he’s seen the ghost. Well I guess you’d have to read the first scene to know a little of what’s going on. But before he mentions the ghost he tells Hamlet that he saw his father once when his father was still alive. The subject of Hamlet’s father came up when Hamlet asked Horatio why he was back at Elsinore and not still away at college in Wittenberg. And that’s a bit interesting, isn’t it? This play is set in a dark, medieval, castle in Denmark in… in what century? I’m not sure. Will wrote it sometime around the year 1600, so the setting is at least that old though it’s based on a story from much earlier. But it’s kind of funny that this particular bit of dialogue is so relate-able. It's that of a young man being home from college.  Anyway, Horatio at first says that the reason he’s home from college is to attend the funeral of Hamlet’s father. And before he gets to the part about seeing the ghost, he mentions that he saw the guy once and then follows that with saying that he was a goodly king. Which is, of course also something that is very much what we still do: we say something nice about the recently departed. “Yeah, I only saw your Dad once, but he was a good guy.” I’m not sure why we feel a need to say something nice about the recently departed, but we do. Maybe we picked that up from this play? No, I don’t think so.

Map time! I took this close up pic of a piece of my globe. Elsinore, where the play Hamlet takes place, is in Denmark, right about where the 'n', the last letter in 'Copenhagen' is on the map. That big pink piece sticking down is Sweden. And of course England is that purple island on the left with London near the bottom. I like maps.

I do not think’t.

-Claudius

                                   

Hamlet                                    Act V, Scene ii, Line 293

Well, we’re at the last scene of Hamlet again. Been a while since we’ve been here. So far in this play we’ve killed off Polonius and Ophelia. Now in this scene we’re about to lose Hamlet, Laertes, Gertrude, and Claudius. Did I miss anyone? I do not think’t.

So before we leave for the day, just a few words about ‘think’t’. Old Will turned a five syllable line into a four syllable line by turning ‘think it’ into ‘think’t’. I can only assume that’s what he was doing. I don’t think that ‘think’t’ was standard usage back then. But I don’t really know. Anyway, there are multitudinous times throughout his writings that he does this with all sorts of words. And I picked up on this trick and used it in my own book (yes, this is a plug; here’s the website of the publisher of the book I wrote: www.pursuingwillbooks.com ). Did I use this particular contraction in my own book? I'm not sure, but I do not think’t. 

  

 Here's the cover of the book. What do you think?

Are not the speedy scouts return’d again,

That dogg’d the mighty army of the Dauphin?

 

-York

                                   

King Henry VI Part I                   Act IV, Scene iii, Line 1

 

 

Let’s shoot straight through to today’s pic.

This is our new dog, and she's quite speedy. And her name is Miss Jean Louise Finch, but we call her Scout. Get it? Speedy, Scout, dog(g'd). Pretty clever, eh?

                         Yet, forgive me, God,

That I do brag thus.

-Henry

                                   

King Henry V                            Act III, Scene vi, Line 157