Agenda

Quiz

Word/Plot Questions

Reading Practice Cards

Staging Henry 2.2.125-143

 Quiz

1.  What danger does Henry confront even before he leaves for France?

2.  How does Henry deal with this danger?

3.  In a word or two, describe Pistol.

4.  Who is Mistress Quickly?

5.  To where are Bardolf, Nym and Pistol going when they say goodby to Mistress Quicky?

Bonus: In the particular accent of some of the characters in the play, what does ” ‘a ” mean?

Reading Practice Cards

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1. Provide a close paraphrase in contemporary English of your entire passage.

2. Answer the following questions:

a. Is your passage poetry or prose?

b. How would you describe the diction of the passage? Is the language low or high? Both? Where does the language come from?

c. How does the language make manifest the character who’s speaking it?

d. Find two figures of speech in your passage. Name them if you can.

3. Note any words or phrases you still can’t figure out.

 After Class

Here are my examples of some close paraphrases and answers to the above question for some quotes we did not get to:

Pistol: ‘Solus,’ egregious dog? O viper vile!
The ‘solus’ in thy most mervailous face;
The ‘solus’ in thy teeth, and in thy throat,
And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy,
And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!
I do retort the ‘solus’ in thy bowels;
For I can take, and Pistol’s cock is up,
And flashing fire will follow. (2.1.47-54)

Paraphrase: “Alone,” you great big dog?  O you vile viper!That “alone” in your most marvelous face;
That “alone” in your teeth, and in your throat
And in your hateful lungs, and in your belly, by god.
And which is worse, within your nasty mouth.
I do reply that “alone” in your gut
For I can catch fire, and my trigger is at the ready
And flashing fire will follow when I shoot my gun.

Analysis: Nym has just told Pistol, with whom he’s fighting, that he wants to see Pistol “solus,” that is, “alone,” to fight.  Pistol angrily repeats the word “solus” as an insult, as when someone says something we don’t like, and we say it back in an angry way.  This passage is poetry, but it’s bad poetry, reflecting that Pistol thinks he’s of high status, but is really ignorant and socially marginal.  What makes it bad poetry?  The body parts are overdone, and the word “lungs” is both unpoetic and too internal a body part (whoever said, “I’m going to punch you now in the lungs”!).  The vocabulary is pretentious, as when Pistol calls a dog “egregious” rather than big (fancy words and dogs, especially dog as an insult, don’t mix).  The rhythm of the lines is sometimes too strong, making it sound forced rather than natural.  And most of all, there’s the inadvertent pun in which instead of Pistol saying that he’s ready to shoot (Pistol’s cock is up) seems to be saying he has an erection.
French King: Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing,
Up in the air, crown’d with the golden sun,
Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him,
Mangle the work of nature and deface
The patterns that by God and by French fathers
Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
The native mightiness and fate of him.

Paraphrase:  Meanwhile, his mountain-born father, standing on a mountain
Up in the air and crowned with the golden sun
Saw his heroic child, and smiled to see him
Destroy nature’s work and deface
work that God and the French fathers had been making
For twenty years,  This King Henry is a stem
Of that winning tree, and so let us fear
His inborn mightiness and his great destiny.

This passage is poetry, a fitting form for the French king speaking about a serious subject, the victories of other kings.  The diction is also very high, with words such as “sire,” “crowned,” “golden” and “heroical.”  The “sun” is literally high, and so is King Edward III (“the mountain sire”) who is imagined standing on a mountain.  Circumlocution, a figure of speech, adds to the sense of elevation and formality in the passage.  King Edward is called “mountain sire” rather than plain “King Edward,” his son is not given a simple name (it was also Edward) but is instead his “heroic seed.”  Most of all, instead of writing that Edward killed lots of young Frenchmen, he instead describes these men as works of nature that God and fathers have been forming for twenty years.  Some other figures of speech: “mountain sire” is an example of ellipses, because we need to supply the word “born,” which is left out.  Besides condensing the phrase, I think Shakespeare purposely wants us to think of the father (“sire”) as if he were a mountain–that is, great and strong.  “On mountain standing” is anastrophe, written that way in part for the rhythm of the line of poetry.  The word “stock” is a pun, though not one for comic effect, but to condense two meanings in one, since “stock” can be both the trunk of a tree, and the family from which one is born.  Stem/Stock are also metaphors for child and parents / ancestors.

Pistol is a great fan of circumlocution and, more generally, of talking in some of the high ways of the French king here.  But he always gets it wrong, somehow.