Today’s Totally Random Lines

  

I thank you. Let’s withdraw;

And meet the rise as it seeks us. We fear not

What can from Italy annoy us; but

We grieve at chances here. – Away!

Cymbeline

Cymbeline           Act IV, Scene iii, Line 34

Let’s see: Cymbeline is the play about the people around an ancient king of Britain named Cymbeline. It’s scene four here, so we’re obviously well into the play. Without getting into too much context, at this point in the play Cymbeline is in a bit of a tizzy. His daughter is missing (she’ll be back), his stepson is missing (dead, he won’t be back), and his wife is sick with a fever (I’m not sure what happens with her). To complicate matters, an invading Roman force has just landed. All in all, Cymbeline’s not having a good day. 

One of his lords has just told Cymbeline to buck up and put his troops in motion against the Romans. The king is responding to the lord with Today’s Lines. By the sound of Cymbeline's reply, it does look like he's going to buck up. 

And that’s about it. I’m afraid I don’t have any commentary on Today’s Lines, political or otherwise. If you find that disappointing, I've put a link below to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Substack post of the day. It's about rising to the occasion, sort of like Cymbeline in Today's Line. Kareem has a pretty good blog, but you have to pay for it unless, like me, you're content to just get the preview. So here you go.

Tucker Who?, History Has No Delete Button, & Show Me the Money

  

 Apparently, this guy doesn’t have much to add either. Nor does he seem interested in Kareem's post. To each, his own. 

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,-

And so wast thou, Lord Hastings,- when my son

Was stabb’d with bloody daggers: God, I pray Him,

That none of you may live his natural age,

But by some unlookt accident cut off!

 

Margaret

Richard the Third       Act I, Scene iii, Line 215

 

So, yesterday we had Henry VI receiving his new bride, Margaret. Today we have moved on several years and we have that very same Margaret giving us Today’s Line. In the ensuing years Margaret’s husband and son have both been killed by the Yorks who have taken over Henry's throne. Now Margaret is just a former queen and, in fact has been banished.

Apparently she hasn’t left for her banishment yet, because she is here in this scene cursing all the Yorks and York followers for their part in deposing her husband. She saves her best curses for Richard, who is brother to the current York king, Edward IV. It comes after Today's Lines. I won’t give you that whole tirade, but here’s the end of her curses for Richard.

Thou elvish-markt, abortive, rooting hog!

Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity

Thou slave of nature and the son of hell!

Thou slander of thy mother’s heavy womb!

Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins!

Thou rag of honor! Thou detested-

And then Richard cuts her off before she can finish. Do you get feeling that she doesn’t like Richard very much? I do.

Shakespeare really paints Richard as the creepy villain, worthy of Margaret’s curses, but Richard was certainly not alone fighting to have the Yorks take power away from the Lancasters and Margaret’s husband.

Anyway, I’ve got a few comments about this.

First, take a look at the first line of Margaret’s curse:

Thou elvish-markt. I’m not sure if she’s calling Richard elvish-markt because he looks like an elf - smallish and somewhat ill formed -, or if it’s because he’s been marked by the elves – meaning that the elves marked him as evil. Either way, my concern is with the word elvish. It’s common knowledge that Will coined many terms and phrases and literally created many words, but did you know that there was a twentieth century writer who took this word, elvish, and changed it, in all of his works, to the now accepted elfin. Yes, JRR Tolkien took elfin, which was considered irregular and substandard, and made it the standard in his works when speaking about anything that applied to the Middle Earth’s elves. Interesting, eh?

The second thing I wanted to mention about Margaret’s rant is how eerily familiar her feelings are to my own feelings (and, to be sure, many people’s feelings) about the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I bring this up because I was, coincidentally, journaling this morning about the fact that today’s upsetting political climate is due not to policies, as it might have been in the past, but rather to the existence of one person whose very nature is, to say the very least, questionable, and to say the most, reprehensible. It/he is very different from Shakespeare’s Richard, but similarly reprehensible, nonetheless. In the past, politics would bother me in the sense of what actions, or laws, or tax legislation was happening and how they would affect me, but today, now, I worry about everything because of what government in the USA has become, or perhaps what it isn’t anymore. It has become an entity wholly subservient to the whims of a six-year-old: a very precocious, and very dangerous six-year-old. And it’s very troublesome that this six-year-old has the moral compass, or lack thereof, of Shakespeare’s Richard. One can only wonder where and when today’s Richard will find his Bosworth Field; and, most worryingly, how much damage he will do before he finds it. 

I do my best to keep these comments out of my posts, and I meditate to try to keep these thoughts from killing me. There are times, though, that I just can’t be silent about this.

Sorry.  

No need to apologize, Mr. Blagys. I feel your pain. So many of us do. 

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

  

And was his highness in his infancy

Crowned in Paris in despite of foes?

 

Duke of Gloster

King Henry the Sixth Part II  Act I, Scene i, Line 93

  

Context! Context!

Okay, here you go: the young King Henry sent Suffolk to France to bring home a bride for the king. In doing so Suffolk has agreed to give back to France the duchy of Anjou and the County of Maine (two big chunks of France that King Henry’s father, Henry the Fifth, won in the wars with France). Now Suffolk is presenting the bride to King Henry with the news of this deal with the French. Young King Henry is happy with his bride and the deal, and he leaves the scene with his bride and Suffolk. Once he’s gone, everyone else is ranting about what a rotten deal this is to have given land back to the French. The Duke of Gloster (father to Richard III and uncle to King Henry) is the first to rant, and Today’s Lines are in the middle of that rant.

What’s that? You want the whole rant? Well, it’s quite long…

 

I’d bail right now, if I were you. I'm stuck here, but you're not. There’s no telling if he’s going to follow through with that threat, but I can tell you that it’s a long rant, about thirty lines long.

Go ahead, skedaddle.  

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

Navarre had notice of your fair approach;

And he and his competitors in oath

Were all addrest to meet you, gentle lady,

Before I came. Marry thus much I have learnt,-

He rather means to lodge you in the field,

Like one that comes here to besiege his court,

Than seek a dispensation for his oath,

To let you enter his unpeopled house.

Here comes Navarre.

 

Boyet

Love’s Labour’s Lost   Act II, Scene i, Line 88

 

Long story short: Boyet is the attendant of the princess, and she has come to visit Navarre (Navarre is the name of the person and the place: his name is Ferdinand, the king of Navarre, but he's referred to simply as Navarre). Anyway, Navarre has made an oath to spend the next three years studying with his buddies and eschewing all female company. The princess knows this but has nonetheless sent Boyet to ask Navarre to receive her. Today’s Lines are what Boyet is now reporting to the princess.

So, if you read Today's Lines you will see that, based on what Boyet has to say above, Navarre was aware that the princess was coming and is willing to receive her, but he’s not going to let the princess into his castle. She and her ladies will have to stay in tents in the fields outside it.

And that’s the long story short. 

So, what did we get out of that? Anything? Where’s the genius of Shakespeare this morning? Anyone?

Honestly, Mr. Blagys, I think you might have your expectations a little high. Just like the princess who was expecting to be welcomed into the castle. You should be more like me. Lookee here: I was expecting nothing and then I got this treat from Mrs. B. Now I'm just as happy as can be. It's all about expectations, Mr. B. You should know that. 

Isn't that the same treat you had yesterday, Mojo?

No, and that's the thing! I wasn't expecting another one today, and yet...

See, expectations! It's all about expectations. And there, sir, is the genius of Shakespeare.   You're welcome, Mr. B.

 Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

This blot, that they object against your house,
Shall be wiped out in the next parliament,
Call’d for the truce of Winchester and Gloster:
And if thou be not then created York,
I will not live to be accounted Warwick.
Meantime, in signal of my love to thee,
Against proud Somerset and William Pole,
Will I upon the party wear this rose;
And here I prophesy,- this brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction, in the Temple-garden,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

 

Earl of Warwick

King Henry the Sixth Part I   Act II, Scene iv, Line 116

 

A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

Yes, that’s right, Warwick is predicting the amount of English that will die in what came to be known as The Wars of the Roses. I think we’ve been to this scene before, but it’s a good one, and it’s been a while.

This is the Temple garden scene where all the leaders of the two factions - those of the house of Lancaster (red rose), and those of the house of York (white rose) - align with one house or another and signify as such by plucking either a white or red rose. What follows is a series of civil wars in a battle for the throne. Whilst these wars are documented history, I cannot help but wonder if there is any historical reality to this scene from whence the name The Wars of the Roses arises. But does it really matter?

The reality in this scene of the portrayal of a few elites making decisions that will lead to wars where thousands of almost exclusively non-elites will suffer and die is spot on; as spot on in 1450 as it is in 2026. If that’s not relevance and reason enough to study Shakespeare today then what is? 

I'll tell you what's spot on: it's this treat that Mrs. B. gave me. That's what's spot on.

 

Yes Mojo, I suppose it is. 

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

Hold, take this letter; early in the morning

See thou deliver it to my lord and father.

Romeo 

Romeo and Juliet   Act V, Scene iii, Line 23

This is Romeo talking to Balthazar. They are in the cemetery and Romeo is about to open Juliet’s tomb. We're near the beginning of the last scene of the play. Paris has already arrived and is watching Romeo from the shadows. Remember Paris? He’s the guy who also loved Juliet and was supposed to marry her per Juliet’s parent’s plans. So whilst Paris watches, Romeo has arrived with Balthazar, and Romeo gives Balthazar a letter which is used later in the scene to verify Friar Knucklehead’s account of what has taken place previously in the play. Curiously, Romeo also talks about taking a ring from Juliet’s finger.

Here's the rest of Romeo’s lines after Today’s Lines above.

Give me the light: upon thy life, I charge thee,
Whate’er thou hear’st or see'st, stand all aloof,
And do not interrupt me in my course.
Why I descend into this bed of death,
Is partly to behold my lady’s face;
But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
A precious ring,— a ring that I must use
In dear employment: therefore hence, be gone:—
But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry
In what I further shall intend to do,
By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint,
And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs:
The time and my intents are savage-wild;
More fierce and more inexorable far
Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.

Okay, first off, what’s with this ring thing? Do I need to go back and read the whole play. Did he give Juliet his ring? And even if he did, how does he intend to use in dear employment this ring? And further, what’s with all these threats to Balthazar if he comes back to see what Romeo’s doing?  And what makes Romeo’s time and intents more savage-wild than empty tigers or the roaring sea?

It’s all a bit confusing as far as I’m concerned. I guess I don’t know this play perhaps as well as I should. What do you think Mojo?

 

Perhaps if you hadn't been gallivanting all over New Zealand and the Southern Ocean for the past month, leaving me here to fend for myself, you wouldn't be so confused and out of touch with Today's Lines. That's what I think, Mr. Shakespeare-Is-So-Great.

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

And then he (Marc Antony) offer’d it (the crown) the third time; he (Julius Caesar) put it the third time by; and still as he refused it, the rabblement shouted, and clapt their chopt hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps, and utter’d such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Caesar; for he swounded, and fell down at it: and for my own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

 

Casca

Julius Caesar         Act I, Scene ii, Line 242

Casca is telling Cassius and Marus Brutus what just happened with Caesar and the crowds. Cassius and Brutus were busy talking and did not witness it.

Apparently, the crowd, at the suggestion of Marc Antony, three times offered to make Caesar king, and three times he declined. Also apparently, Casca has a pretty low opinion of the crowd and the whole spectacle.

Cassius and Brutus had been busy talking about how they were afraid of Caesar becoming the king, and the fact that this would not be a good thing. Casca will be joining these two when the conspiracy to take out Caesar is formed.

Hmmm, someone making rumblings about becoming king in what was up until then a representative republic, and other people discussing the danger of that. It’s too bad that none of Will’s works have any relevance to our modern- day world (in case you missed it, that was sarcasm).

Program note: We will be leaving early tomorrow for four days in Cally before taking off from there for New Zealand for three weeks. We won’t be back in CT for most of January, and consequently, it’s unlikely I’ll be posting again before the end of January. Just so you know.

They're going where?

Until when?!!?! 

Uh-oh.