I thank thee, King,
For thy great bounty that not only giv’st
Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way
How to lament the cause.
~Richard II, 4.1
FETCH THE ALOE HENCE, FOR METHINKS I SPY A BURN IN DEGREE MOST SICK.
Not gonna lie, I’m pretty bummed they seem to have cut the scene with the three traitors from the Hollow Crown version of Henry V.
O, how hast thou with jealousy infected
The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?
Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet,
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem:
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion.
The line “the man that was his bedfellow” from act 2 scene 2 of Henry V in the Norton complete works of Shakespeare comes with the footnote: “It was common for men to share a bed”.
That’s like, the scholarly version of ‘NO HOMO’. Blah blah, just because Henry “dulled and cloyed” the guy with “gracious favors” doesn’t IMPLY anything, etc. Except that they seem to have forgotten that this is Shakespeare so it’s more like always homo.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll go back to giggling over all the ball-related puns from two scenes ago.