Now he will be swinged for reading my letter,- an unmannerly slave, that will thrust himself into secrets! I’ll after, to rejoice in the boy’s correction.  

-Launce

The Two Gentlemen of Verona             Act III, Scene i, Line 380

 

One definition should help here. Swinged means beaten, thrashed, or flogged. Now it should make pretty good sense. Well, that is to say, the lines will make sense. Exactly who ‘he’ is and what letter he read, that’s a separate issue. Since these are the last lines of a fairly long scene which I have not read, and since I have very little familiarity with this play on the whole, I don’t know the answers to those questions. I only know that ‘he’, whoever he is, is a boy without manners who is facing a beating for reading Launce’s letter, and that Launce is going to be happy to see this beating take place.

I suppose we’d have to dig into at least this scene, if not the whole play, in order to get a full understanding of today’s lines. I don’t really have time for that this morning. Perhaps you do?  

I don't have time to go digging for a pic today either. Perhaps when I retire in a few years... 

 

Now, in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed,

That he is grown so great? Age, thou art ashamed!

Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!

-Cassius

Julius Caesar     Act I, Scene ii, Line 150

 

Pretty straight forward, don’t you think? Comments?

 

O young and noble Cato, art thou down?

Why, now thou diest as bravely as Titinius;

And mayest be honour’d, being Cato’s son.

-Lucilius

Julius Caesar     Act V, Scene iv, Line 9

O young and noble Cato, art thou down? No, he's not down, and that's not Cato. That's my young associate. We sent him up there to hang the Christmas icicles, and now he's on his phone. 

Oy, get back to work!

 

It appears, by his small light of discretion, that he is in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay the time.

-Theseus

A Midsummer Night’s Dream   Act V, Scene i, Line 245

This is the scene where a bunch of the characters are watching a play, within the play. They’ve just seen one of the players appear with a lantern, doing his best to portray the man in the moon. This is roundly criticized as a poor portrayal of the moon, but then Theseus (who is, after all, the Duke here) comes in with today’s totally random line. He’s telling the other audience members that it appears to be a waning moon, and that they need to lighten up and watch the play: stay the time. See it out. Shut up and watch the play.

That would seem to be sound advice. Advice I myself should follow more often. Stop complaining and questioning, Pete. In courtesy, in all reason, shut up and listen with an open mind. Stay the time.

    Well, I fell down the rabbit hole of looking for a pic for a while, and then I realized that I don't need a pic for every post. So here you go: a pic-less post. After all, no one's going to read this post based on my pics. I'd need a video of a chipmunk dressed in a football uniform dancing to a marachi band in order to get viewers for my blog. I don't have that. Sorry.

 

Mowbray, you overween to take it so;

This offer comes from mercy, not from fear:

-Westmoreland

King Henry the Fourth Part II   Act IV, Scene i, Line 149

 

Okay, I think I got it. It was confusing because in the line previous to today’s Totally Random line Mowbray has said

But he hath forced us to compel this offer;

And compel means be forced to, so it seems like the line says he’s forced us to be forced this offer. But I think it should be read that he’s forced us to be compelled to accept this offer. Yeah, that’s it. And by the way, overween means to presume too much.

So, Westmoreland has come to tell the rebel force that Prince John wants to listen to their grievances and grant them if they’re reasonable. Mowbray’s response is that they’re being forced to do this

And it proceeds from policy, not love.

To which Westmoreland replies with today’s line. There, does it make sense now?

Ahh, you overween to think that there's going to be a picture here, because there is not.

 

Her part, poor soul! Seeming as burdened

With lesser weight but not with lesser woe,

Was carried with more speed before the wind;

And in our sight they three were taken up

By fishermen of Corinth, as we thought.

-Aegeon

The Comedy of Errors           Act I, Scene i, Line 107

We’re in the middle of Aegeon’s tale at the beginning of the play which gives us the backstory to the play. He’s describing how his wife, with two of the four boys, drifted away after the boat split in two and they were picked up by fishermen of Corinth. He’ll go on to explain that he and the other two boys, in the other half of the boat, were picked up by sailors from Epiduarus. And that is the premise for how two of the boys and the mother were separated from the other two boys and their father.

It's a pretty hokey story, but also pretty important as it gives an important part of the premise for the rest of the play. Good ol’ backstory, eh?  

This is a pic from the bridge of the ship. That water is the Drake Passage which can be a pretty rough sea at times. We crossed it to Antarctica and then back again. It was pretty calm, as this pic shows, on the way out, but it got a bit rougher on the way back. Luckily, it didn't get rough enough to break the ship in half, like it did to Aegeon's, but it did get rough enough to give me a real good case of mal de mer, poor soul! I don't think I'll be doing the Drake Passage again anytime soon.

 

No, Master Brook; but the peaking cornuto her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual ’larum of jealousy, comes me in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kiss’d, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife’s love.

-Sir John Falstaff

The Merry Wives of Windsor        Act III, Scene v, Line 71

And what do you think of that? That's a bit of a long one, so assuming you’re willing to work your way through it, I’ll give you some context.

Falstaff is explaining to Master Brook (who is actually Master Ford in disguise) how he, Falstaff, was surprised by Master Brook whilst he, Falstaff, was in the process of seducing Master Brook’s wife. A peaking cornuto is a sneaking cuckold. Given that definition, and that bit of context, the passage should make some sense. I suggest you read it again armed with this information.

Now I went back and checked. This is the twenty-fourth time that John Falstaff has been the speaker of our Totally Random line. That’s quite a bit. Consider though, that he was in three plays: the two Henry IV’s and this one, The Merry Wives of Windsor. In fact, based on at least one source that I found, Falstaff has more total lines (again, over the course of three plays) than any other Shakespeare character. Yes, Hamlet has the most lines in one play, but he was only in one play, whilst Falstaff has more over the course of three plays.

To be sure, Falstaff is one of the favorites of many, many esteemed Shakespeareans, not the least of which was Harold Bloom. And here’s an interesting fact, I had two connections with Prof. Bloom. It seems his masseuse was my daughter’s good friend and roommate, and his dentist was my dentist of the past forty years (until he retired two months ago, darn it). Isn’t that interesting? Well, I thought it was.

And here is some of the handiwork of said dentist. I can't help but think that if Sir John Falstaff got a look at those gold crowns his first, and perhaps only, thought would be how to get them out of my mouth and into his pocket.