Act 4 Flashcards
Cloten: Why should his mistress, who / Was made by him that made the tailor, not be fit too?
Why should Innogen, who was created by that same God that created the tailor, not also be sexually compatible- comparing Innogen to Posthumous’ garments- anticipates that she, like the clothes, will ‘fit’/suit him
Section 1: The rather –
Section 2: saving reference of the word –
Section 3: for ‘tis / said a woman’s fitness comes by fits.
Section 1: Even more so (trans. of ‘the rather’) -
Section 2: A phrase asking pardon of the word ‘fit’ for his indecorous puns (e.g. ‘excuse the pun)
Section 3: it is said that a woman’s sexual desire (literally ‘fitness’) comes by fits
Therein I must / play the workman.
In that respect (therein), I will have to be like a skilled craftsman in encouraging Innogen sexually
I dare speak it to myself, for it / is not vainglory for a man and his glass to confer / In his own chamber
If I may say so myself - for it is not undue vanity for a man and his mirror to converse in his own room -
beyond him in the advantage of time
exceeding him in opportunities for advancement
Alike conversant in / general services, and more remarkable in single / oppositions…What mortality is!
I am just as educated in military engagements as is Posthumus, and more effective in individual combat… what fools humans are!
n.b. Cloten is defeated three times over the course of the play - dubious assertion
(Yet this imperseverant thing loves him) in my despite
as opposed to me/in contempt of me
(thy mistress) enforced
raped
spurn her home
kick her home
having power of his testiness
having control over his angry moods (check this?)
To a sore purpose
To a grave end
Innogen: Clay and clay differs in dignity/whose dust is both alike
from person to person it is judged that there are different degrees of personal worth/even though they’re made of the same substance
•Allusion to biblical genesis in which man is moulded from earth/soil- clay
Innogen: Not so citizen a wanton as / To seem to die ere sick
•Not such a city-bred weakling as to appear to die when I’m merely sick
Innogen: stick to your journal course/the breach of custom / Is breach of all
•Stick to your daily (journal) routine/A disruption in one’s usual habits disorders everything else
Innogen: I’ll rob none but myself, and let me die / Stealing so poorly
•Only robs herself of company= she alone suffers penalty of loneliness if left to die
Stealing so poorly = stealing from herself (poorly since she has very little to her name)
Guiderius:
Section 1: I have spoke it/How much the quantity,
Section 2: the weight as much, / As I do love my father
section 1: I have already told you how much
Section 2: the weight (of passion) is equal to that which he has for his father
Section 1: Aviragus: I yoke me / In my good brother’s fault
Section 2: The bier at door
•Link myself to Guiderius in overwhelming love of Fidele/Innogen
The coffin stand at the door
Belarius: Breed of greatness
•Excellent ancestry- admiring royal blood/heritage of boys, but also inherent excellence of ancient Britons
Belarius: Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace
•Nature provides nurturing part of grain & husks- the disdainful/despicable along with honourable & virtuous
Nature has meal/flour that you keep, and bran which you throw away
Belarius: Yet who this should be / Doth miracle itself, loved before me
Innogen: I wish ye sport
Yet who this person is, makes a wonder of itself by being loved before me (justly preferred over him)
Innogen: I wish you good hunting
Innogen: Th’imperious seas breeds monsters; for the dish, / Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish
The imperial ocean produces monsters; but the fish that live in provincial rivers taste just as good.
•Also idea that Britain giving tribute is like smaller, sweet fish being cannibalised by greedy fish from imperious routes/waterways
Guiderius: He said he was gentle, but unfortunate; / Dishonesty afflicted, but yet honest
•Fidele claims to be of noble birth, but in poor circumstances; stricken by treachery, yet honest & true/loyal himself
Guiderius: He cut our roots in characters / And sauced our broths as Juno had been sick / And he her dieter
- He cuts our roots into shapes like letters
* And flavoured our broths as if preparing curative food for the queen of the gods
Section 1: As if the sigh was that it was for not being such a smile
Section 2: The smile, mocking the sigh, that it would fly
Section 3:
Aviragus: From so divine a temple to commix / With winds that sailors rail at
Section 1: as if the sigh was sighing because it wasn’t a beautiful smile.
Section 2: The smile mocks the sigh as though it would flee
Section 3: From house of God to mingle with (commix) adverse winds far rougher than the sigh itself
Guiderius: Grief and patience, rooted in him both, / Mingle their spurs together
•Grief & patience (conceived as plants intertwining roots) mingle their principal roots together
Aviragus: Let the stinking elder, grief, untwine/his perishing root with the increasing vine
A wish that Fidele’s patience will grow and increase like the vine, causing the elder tree’s shallow roots (associated with grief), to give way and perish.
•Tree whose flowers & foliage have strong odour- associated with tree on which Judas hanged himself for betraying Jesus
Cloten: I cannot find those runagates
Cloten: some villain mountaineers
•Reference to Innogen & Posthumous- ‘those runaways/refugees/elopers’
Cloten: some base/boorish villain of the mountains
Guiderius: More slavish did I ne’er than answering / A slave without a knock
•I have never done anything more slave-like than responding to a slave like you without giving a harsh stroke
Guiderius: ‘for I wear not/my dagger in my mouth
Cloten: Thou precious varlet
Guiderius: For I do not use words as substitutes for weapons
•Castigates Guiderius as worthless knave
Guiderius: I am loath to beat thee
•Reluctant to strike you
Section 1: Guiderius: Cloten, thou double villain
Section 2: To thy mere confusion…
Section 3: not seeming so worthy as thy birth
Section 1: •Responding to the fact that Cloten called him a ‘single’ villain or that Cloten said that Cloten said that his own name was ‘Cloten, thou villain’
•Also element of duplicity
Section 2: to your total destruction…
Section 3: since you do not seem as worthy as your birth
Section 1: Belarius: No company’s about?
Belarius: Time hath nothing blurred those lines of favour…the snatches in his voice
Section 1: No company’s about?
•Time has not at all changed the memory of the distinctive features (lines of favour) of his face…the catches in his voice
Aviragus: I wish my brother make good time with him, / You say he is so fell
•I hope my brother came out of the encounter well, you have described him as very fierce
- Belarius: Being scarce made up, / I mean to man, he had not apprehension / Of roaring terrors; for defect of judgement / Is oft the cause of fear
- Guiderius: I am perfect what
- Guiderius: (what company do you discover) abroad
- Due to his youth, Cloten did not perceive the threat of terrors (or better, he did not experience serious fear), hence his erroneous judgement instilled fear in others
- Apprehension= perception
- Roaring= threatening
Guiderius: I know exactly what I did
Guiderius: around us
- Belarius: Though his humour/was nothing but mutation
- not frenzy/not absolute madness could so far have raved/to bring him here alone
- Belarius: It may be heard at court that such as we / Cave here, hunt here, are outlaws and in time / May make some stronger head, the which he / hearing - / As it is like him – might break out and swear / He’d fetch us in
Belarius: Although his disposition was unpredictable
Belarius: It wasn’t complete madness that brought him so far from court alone.
- Although maybe it was said at court that people like us who live in caves here and hunt here are outlaws and could make some stronger force, opposing the crown (make some stronger head). He heard this and it’s very likely that he exploded into speech (break out) and swore he’d arrest us.
- Piles up clauses, interrupts himself & considers options in long sentence to convince himself that Cloten would not do what he has actually done
Belarius: Yet is’t not probable / To come alone, either he so undertaking / Or they so suffering
•Yet it is unlikely for him to have come alone, either from his own initiative, or if the court assented to his coming
Belarius: If we do fear this body hath a tail / More perilous than the head
•’If we do fear that he was merely the head of a far more dangerous company of soldiers
Joke on Cloten’s headless body & also refers to imagined retinue
•Invokes image of scorpion/dragon with dangerous tail
Aviragus: Let ord’nance / Come as the gods foresay it
•May providence occur as the gods have foretold it
Belarius: The boy Fidele’s sickness / Did make my way long forth
•Innogen’s feigned illness seemed to prolong the way for Belarius/was weighing on him all the way here
Guiderius: That’s all I reck
•That is all I care
Aviragus: I would revenges / That possible strength might meet would seek us through / And put us to our answer
•I wish the forces seeking revenge- those which our strength is sufficient to meet- would find us out and force us to respond to them
Aviragus: To gain his colour / I’d let a parish of such Clotens blood
•To nurse Innogen/Fidele back to health, I would draw blood from a whole parish of Clotens
Belarius: They are as gentle / As zephyrs blowing below the violet, / Not wagging his sweet head, and yet as rough, / their royal blood enchafed, as the rud’st wind / that by the top doth take the mountain pine / and make him stoop to th’vale
•They are as gentle as breezes blowing around a violet without shaking it, but as rough when their royal blood becomes enraged (enchafed) as the strongest wind that knocks a pine down from a mountain into a valley.
Aviragus & Guiderius as gentle as mild breezes, esp. from west- contrast with ‘rud’st wind’
Belarius: Civility not seen from other, valour / That wildly grows in them but yields a crop / As if it had been sowed
- Civilized behaviour not imitated from other peoples- recalls ancient Britons
- Bravery that breeds naturally in their primitive environment but proliferates as if it had been cultivated
Guiderius: I have sent Cloten’s clotpoll down the stream / in embassy to his mother. His body’s hostage / For his return
- Clotpoll- thick/wooden head made of cold earth
- Head sent downstream like an ambassador to parley- body held as security to ensure head’s safe return, which will never happen
Belarius: ingenious instrument
•Skilfully constructed musical instrument
Guiderius: Triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys / Is jollity for apes and grief for boys
Celebrating over nothing and lamenting for trifles/is indicative of superficial joy and shallow grief
(•Apes imitate human behaviour & children thought to have changeable emotions)
Guiderius: O sweetest, fairest lily. / My brother wears thee not the one half so well / As when thou grew’st thyself
Oh, sweetest, most beautiful lily! Your brother isn’t wearing you half as well on his arms as you wore yourself when you lived and sustained your own growth
