O, yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars!

-Lady Percy

  

King Henry The Fourth Part II            Act II, scene iii, line 9

How many zillions of times do you suppose those words, or variations of them, have been spoken over the millennia? I guess that’s the first thought that crossed my mind, but rather, let’s take a look at what’s going on here.

Ironically enough, Lady Percy is speaking to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Sound familiar? It should. Just scoot back a few days to Tuesday’s post. Yup, that’s right; this is the guy who called in sick to that battle. So today’s action is taking place at a later date, and just so you know, Northumberland’s son Hotspur got killed in that battle where Pop pulled a no-show. Well right now he’s planning on heading off to fight a new battle and his wife and daughter-in-law (Hotspur’s widow) are trying to talk him out of it. Spoiler alert: they succeed. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that this Northumberland guy really just doesn’t want to do any fighting. Who can blame him? I don’t want to go to war either.

Here is a father and four sons. This father went to war before any of the other guys in this picture were born. None of the sons went to war, and it’s my thought, though I never asked him, that he was glad that none of us did. I’ve always believed that he, and most of those Greatest Generation guys, felt that they had done the fighting so that we wouldn’t have to. Thanks Dad.  

Do they still fly to the Roman?

-Coriolanus

  

Tullus Afidius                      Act IV, scene vii, line 1

Tullus is the leader of the Volscians, and the ‘they’ that he speaks of are the men of his army. The Roman he refers to is Coriolanus, whom Tullus has co-opted into the Volscian army. The answer to the question is ‘Ya, you betcha.’ Well, that’s not exactly what his lieutenant says, he wasn’t a Minnesotan, but that’s the gist of it. He says

            Your soldiers use him as the grace ‘fore meat,

            Their talk at table, and their thanks at end.

If that’s not a ‘Ya, you betcha’ I don’t know what is.

I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t help but repeat myself. This is a really, really interesting, and in many ways currently relevant, play. Upon consideration, though, I think I’d rather not get into it as that would lead to a discussion of the current geo-political situation and climate. And I’ve no desire to go there right now. It’s too early in the morning, and I’m feeling pretty good about life right now; no need to spoil it.

Let’s just end with a second consideration of Will’s lines about how the men feel about Coriolanus.

            Your soldiers use him as the grace ‘fore meat,

            Their talk at table, and their thanks at end.

How would you like to be the grace ‘fore meat, the talk at table, and the thanks at end? Kind of the be all and end all, but it’s a pretty good two-lined way of putting it. Just a bit more poetic than ‘Ya, you betcha.’

Here's a Minnesotan. If you said, 'Hey Jon, did you catch that all by yourself?' he might say 'Ya, you betcha!'

I do not think so; since he went into France, I have been in continual practice; I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart: but it is no matter.

-Hamlet

 Hamlet                                         Act V, scene ii, line 208

Horatio has just warned Hamlet that he’s going to lose if he goes up against Laertes in a fencing match and this is Hamlet’s reply.

I sat in the chair looking out at the birdfeeder a few minutes ago, and I was thinking about what bird I would encounter in today’s reading. As you see, there is none in today’s line. But just a few lines down…

Horatio asks Hamlet if he wants him to delay the fencing match to another time. Hamlet replies,

Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be.

So the answer is sparrow. And while that just seems to be Hamlet’s longwinded way of saying ‘whatever will be, will be’, it reminds me of a funny story: I had a job when I was younger at a place where my brother Phil also worked. It was a place where we would go out and clean smoke damaged houses. We would usually pack a lunch for the day. Well one day we were sitting outside eating our lunches, I think it was me, Phil, and a guy named Jeff. Phil had found a dead sparrow on the ground and unbeknownst to Jeff or me he had replaced the meat on his sandwich with the sparrow. So we’re sitting there opening our lunches and Phil opens his, and then looks inside the bread to see what he’s got, and says, ‘Oh, not sparrow again!’ Perhaps you had to be there, but it was pretty funny.

Here is a selection from my Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio. It would seem to be an appropriate picture for the day. 

These letters come from your father.

-Messenger

King Henry The Fourth Part I          Act IV, scene i, line 14

Interesting; the letters come from his father. I guess I should read a little more. It should be pretty easy to get context here since it’s only line fourteen of the scene. Please hold.

Okay, here’s the deal. The messenger is talking to Hotspur, so that the letters are from Hotspur’s father, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. This father-son duo are the main guys involved in the uprising against Henry IV, and a battle is imminent. The letters tell Hotspur that his father is ill and won’t be showing up for the battle. That’s right, Dad’s calling in sick to the battle. Ain’t that a boot in the shorts! 

 

Ooof, hard to get happy after that, eh?

Pardon him, sweet Timandra; for his wits

Are drown’d and lost in his calamities.

 -Alcibiades

Timon Of Athens                      Act IV, scene iii, line 88

Today’s random page number is only two pages on from yesterday’s. If you recall, yesterday Timon was railing against his guests, and after that he left Athens for good. Today he’s living in a cave in the woods and Alcibiades comes along with a babe on each arm. Timon tells one of the babes, Timandra, to stick with being a whore. No, that’s literally what he says:

            Be a whore still: they love thee not that use thee;

            Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.

Nice, huh? And that’s where Alcibiades comes in with today’s line.

Now the thing is, this is a really good line that encapsulates the play. Or at least it seems to. This is a play about a guy, Timon, who has a good life and spends it throwing parties for all the up and coming people in Athens. The problem is that none of these people are his friends. They’re all a bunch of posers. So that when Timon runs out of money not a one of them is willing to help him, which sends him into yesterday’s rant and causes him to shun humanity altogether. But here’s the question: are his wits really drown’d, or is he now seeing things more clearly than ever before.

You decide.

The only hard part about picking today’s song is picking it. That is to say, there are about a zillion blues songs about people whose wits are drown’d and lost in his calamities.

I’m going to go with this one, not because it’s the best but because it’s the first one I thought of. Actually, the only appropriate part is the chorus, Oh, lonesome me. The rest is just about a broken heart. But it’s blues none the less, and I thought that Timon must be pretty lonesome living in that cave in the woods.

Oh, lonesome me.

BTW, two things: This is the Loggins and Messina cover of this song. It's an oldie and I'm not sure who is the original artist. And second, it sure is easier picking songs than it is finding pictures!

Your reeking villainy. Live loathed, and long,

-Timon

Timon Of Athens                      Act III, scene vi, line 92

Today’s Totally Random line is the end of one long sentence and the beginning of another. Here’s the first sentence:

                                       This is Timon’s last:

Who, stuck and spangled with your flattery,

Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces

                                                [Throwing the water in their faces.

Your reeking villainy.

And after that he tells them to live long, loathed lives, and goes into a litany of name calling:

                                        Live loathed, and long,

Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,

Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,

You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time’s flies,

Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks!

So needless to say, he’s not particularly happy with any of these guys, his dinner guests. Of course, they really are a bunch of schmucks and Timon should have realized that earlier. The next scene is Timon at the walls of the city, leaving the city behind forever, and cursing it. 

And a song for this?  Well, I'm not sure if Cap and knee is anything like Cap in Hand, but here you go.

Cap in Hand

I pray thee, tell me, then, that he is well.

-Hermia

A Midsummer Night’s Dream           Act III, scene ii, line 77

I’d like to dwell on the fact that this one line, ten-word sentence has four pieces of punctuation in it. And Bravo to that! The comma is a very undervalued little dot with a tail. It can do so much to add to the clarity of a sentence. And after all, what good is a sentence if the meaning of it is not clear? Why bother writing it at all? In many ways, an idea would be better left unwritten as opposed to being written in such a way as to promote ambiguity.

Now, keeping with our theme of song week, here’s today’s song about the comma, comma, comma, comma….

Comma Song