Today’s Totally Random
Lines
Methinks I am a prophet new-inspired
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out
themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms
are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast
betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the
feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
John of Gaunt
King Richard the Second Act II, Scene i, Line 31
Today's Totally Random Line is the beginning of a very well-known speech; at least to anyone who has spent any time
with Will’s works. Different parts of this speech have been quoted by everyone from me to Winston Churchill, so let’s talk about it for a minute.
First, context; and this is going to go on for a bit, so you might want to
consider bailing now.
Remember that
Edward III had a whole bunch of kids, many of them males. Yes, that’s right, I’m
really going back to Edward III. His oldest son, Edward the Black Prince,
predeceased his father, so that when Edward III died, the son of Edward the
Black Prince became king. That was Richard the Second. So now, you have a young
man becoming king, and a bunch of older, wiser uncles (the other sons of Edward
III) looking on. Eventually it is the son of one of these uncles, Richard's first cousin, who decides
that he is more suited to being king and dethrones Richard the second. But let’s
not get ahead of ourselves.
Richard, at
least according to Will, and certainly some historians, was not a very good
ruler. In today’s scene we have John of Gaunt, one of the uncles of Richard talking. John is on his deathbed speaking with one of the other
uncles about what a louse their nephew Richard is, what a rotten king he is,
and how he’s ruining England. He goes on for quite a few lines talking about beautiful,
sacred England before pronouncing that because of Richard it
Is now leased
out—I die pronouncing it—
Like to a
tenement or pelting farm (a paltry or petty homestead).
England, bound
in with the triumphant sea,
Whose
rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery
Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky
blots, and rotten parchment bonds;
That
England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made
a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would
the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy
then were my ensuing death!
I had to finish
that section of the speech, and I’m going to get political here, so heads up.
Now, I think that
if you changed just a very few lines in this speech (mainly transpose America
for England), you would get a semblance of how so many of us feel right now.
Richard the Second surrounded himself with sycophants and did a very poor job
of running the country, as John of Gaunt readily points out. But it seems to me
that the major emotion that John is expressing is a sadness for his country,
not a hatred towards his nephew Richard. Don’t get me wrong: he's not happy
with Richard, and he spends the first nine lines talking about him. But the
focus of most of what he goes on about after that, is England, and the worry
that he has for it.
So too, I
think, that is where I’m at. I don’t want to talk about the guy running the
country right now. Oh sure, I don’t think much of him as a person, or a so-called
leader, but I have no control over what he is. No, what really concerns me is not
him, it’s my home, America; and even more so, the home that my children or
grandchildren will be ending up with.
John of Gaunt
was right to worry, because the reign of Richard II descended into civil strife
that lasted the better part of a century.
I can only hope our current situation
does not reverberate so drastically into the future.
Here's the full speech of John of Gaunt. Please believe me when I tell you that it is well worth the read.
Methinks I am a prophet new-inspired
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot
last,
For violent fires soon burn out
themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden
storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast
betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the
feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This
royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This
earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This
other Eden, demi-Paradise;
This fortress
built by Nature for herself
Against
infection and the hand of war;
This
happy breed of men, this little world,
This
precious stone, set in the silver sea,
Which
serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a
moat defensive to a house,
Against
the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed
plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This
nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by
their breed, and famous by their birth,
Renowned
for their deeds as far from home,--
For
Christian service and true chivalry,--
As in the
sepulchre, in stubborn Jewery,
Of the
world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son;--
This land
of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for
her reputation through the world,
Is now leased
out—I die pronouncing it—
Like to a
tenement or pelting farm
England, bound
in with the triumphant sea,
Whose
rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery
Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky
blots, and rotten parchment bonds;
That
England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made
a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would
the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy
then were my ensuing death!
Mojo, being apolitcal, wishes to abstain from any participation in today's post.
I must respect his wishes.
