You can see Olivier’s interpretation here.
Heh. I just want to say that I thought you were responding to the question right above your post, which was wondering where the “Richard III is a mincing queen” interpretation from The Goodbye Girl came from. I was reading and re-reading those lines, trying to figure out which parts were implying he was light in the loafers!
Anyway, Brainglutton, seems like Olivier borrowed Richard III’s lines from Henry VI and morphed 'em into Richard III. Not inexecusable but not quite kosher, neither. IMHO anyway.
:smack:
Sure sure. I type faster than I think a lot of times and my fingers frequently screw up that kind of thing. I am going to blame that one on firefox’s spell check and me trying dash something off quickly while I was being pulled away from the computer and me not being careful enough about the correction I selected.
What, you didn’t get that?
“I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages”
How plain does he have to say it?! Flaming tranny! Richard, Queen of the Desert!
I hope I haven’t misunderstood your post, because I don’t see this at all. It seems to me you’re placing emphasis on punctuation and a strict adherence to the meter. As to the former, I’m pretty sure that was not completely consistent in WS’s day. As to the latter, I admit I don’t know if that was the practice at the time.
But then you have to explain “Made…York”. It must be passive because the “by” is there. Even if “made” isn’t passive, it definitely refers to a completed action. So how can the “winter” be “now”? It just doesn’t make sense.
Here’s a clip from the delightful, IMHO, In the Bleak Midwinter, mostly it’s hamlet, but there’s one bit of R III, I wish they’d DVD this.
I don’t know where you saw petard explained as staff, but wherever it was you’ve been misled. A petard is a small bomb. The engineer hoist by his own petard simply means the engineer blown up by his own bomb.
:smack:You’re right, and I really did know that but got some wires crossed.
The slang meaning is to be propelled upward by a fart, petard also meaning fart (descended from the Latin word for fart, pēditum). More specifically it means a ‘shart’ if you’re familiar with that terminology- something really nasty to happen in such a way as to propel one.
No, that’s wrong. The Sun in Splendour (also Sun in His Glory or May Sun) is just a single sun, of specific shape (8 straight alternating with 8 wavy rays), and usually with a face. The sundog, as seen before Mortimer’s Cross, does look like 3 suns, but Edward’s badge was just a single SiS.
I am putting emphasis on meter and punctuation only to show the suggestion of the double meaning of winter in this case. I would translate the line as:
“Now is the end of our very bad times, we have been brought out of them into these good times by this Son of York.”
while the general interpretation of the thread would have it saying
“Now a very bad time has been turned into a better time because of this Son of York.”
The difference is small, sure, but there is a finality to the first interpretation that is missing from the second. The emphasis on meter and punctuation is only to show that the word choice and ordering is deliberate. Shakespeare could have just as easily said
“Now the winter of our discontent is made
glorious summer by this son of york”
It still scans that way.
If he wanted to emphasize the word “Now” it could have been written (and he has used this for in other works)
“Now-
The Winter of our discontent has been
made glorious summer by this son of york”
Which also scans and fits the blank verse just as well. He didn’t, and there is a reason. I am looking at the meter and punctuation to find that reason, but it’s not the only way to analyze the lines. Hell, it’s probably not the best way to analyze the lines in a first or even second pass.
Meter wasn’t completely consistent in Shakespeare’s day, but I would contend that, at least with Shakespeare, when it was inconsistent it was inconsistent intentionally. The forms were set and breaking the form was a choice. If you look at these lines, the second line doesn’t actually scan properly, and I would say that was done to put extra emphasis on the word “Son” so that the son/sun pun works better*.
But none of that is an accident (well, it might be, but you sort of have to assume it was deliberate). WS knew the rules, and if he broke them he did it with reason particularly in a speech given by nobility. This is doubly true when it’s the opening speech of the play.
The form was part of the work, and ignoring it because it might have been occasionally ignored by the playwright is a mistake. That doesn’t mean that the primary meaning of winter in the speech is as a symbol for endings, but I think it’s wrong to say that it wasn’t set up to suggest that too. The rest of the speech carries on the metaphor of winter oppressing the hose of York and I do think that oppression is the primary use of the word winter, but the line is set up so it packs just a bit more punch than that.
Also, I have to add the disclaimer that this is just one way of looking at things and a way that I have found to be helpful when you get stuck trying to figure out exactly what any Elizabethan playwright meant. But it’s easy to get sucked into your own navel doing this sort of analysis, and while these kinds of details are interesting they aren’t really the main point.
*For those interested, my thinking is that the proper emphasis of the phrase “Son of York” is to say “SON of YORK” but there are too many syllables in the line (11 instead of 10) and you would have to emphasize it as “son OF york” to fit the meter anyway, which is strange and unnatural. But if you emphasize what is already the pun (the word “son”) you end up with a double the line emphasis (THIS SON) and then a de-emphasis of the word “of” which creates a natural break in the way you have to speak the line giving “son” a bit more breathing room for the pun to land, and also re-emphasizes that it is *this *particular son/sun you are speaking about, which works for the play.
It could also be played that York is left hanging because it’s the important word and Shakespeare is trying to put Richard’s focus on the house of York, but that doesn’t explain the bizarre emphasis on the word “of” and I like my interpretation better.
My sister and I once drove across Australia, in the process of moving from Darwin to Melbourne. It was June, and pretty chilly in some places, but we took two weeks and saw some sights, and it ended up pretty fun. To save some money, we camped when we could, and prepared for this by buying a bunch of cheap camping equipment.
It was the winter of our discount tent.
Do you mean “The period of our discontent is now in its winter [i.e. ending] stage”? Because that’s the only alternate interpretation I can squeeze out of it.
I disagree. The finality of the second is in the word “made”, i.e., already completed. If I understand you correctly, according to your interpretation, “we” are still in the last stage. That’s only approaching final, which is not as final as being out of it.
Huh? How does it “still” scan when the first line now has 11 syllables?
He has? At the very beginning of a play? At the beginning of a scene? I know he splits lines between two characters, but does he really just start with a hanging, incomplete line?
“Now” is emphasized just by being first in the sentence (and the play). That alone justifies considering the first foot as a troche. Compare “I see it now” and “Now I see it.”
So would you scan the line as “made GLO-ri-OUS sum-MER by THIS SON of YORK”? If so, that results in moving the strange and unnatural emphasis to “summer”. But if you elide glo-ri-ous into two syllables, GLO-rious, the line now scans and we have appropriate emphases all the way through.
But if Shakespeare valued metric consistency and changed it only for a good reason, note that the “Alarums” and “Marches” lines just a little later in the speech only have 9 syllables. Reason? My opinion is that he thought the lines were fine as is.
Not that I can see. Not oppressing now. All done.