Glossing (advanced) Flashcards
1.1
‘referred’
- given/ bestowed
- but also entrusted/ committed which might imply Innogen’s agency
1.1
‘too bad for bad report’
ie. worse than even a negative report could convey
1.1
‘I do extend him, sir, within himself,/ Crush him together rather than unfold/ His measure duly’
ie. minimise rather than express the full extent of his merits
(imagery of compressed cloth)
1.1
‘for which their father, old and fond of issue’
- obsessed with the loss of his children
- could also suggest their father wanted more children
1.1
‘breeds him and makes him of his bedchamber’
- Gentlemen of the Bedchamber in Stuart court were personal attendants of the king
- demonstrates how Posthumus is privileged by the king as a member of the household
1.1
‘And in’s spring became a harvest’
- Posthumus became mature even in his youth
1.1
‘A sample to the youngest, to th’ more mature/ A glass that feated them, and to the graver/ A child that guided dotards’
ie. exemplary to the young, an image of good behaviour for the more mature (ie. a mirror that showed them good behaviour), a guide/ help for the aged
1.1
‘her own price’
- value as heir
- the punishment she is willing to endure
1.1
‘Always reserved my holy duty’
- except for my responsibility as a daughter to ‘honour my father’
(as in the Bible’s Fifth Commandment) ie. “Honour thy father and thy mother” - Innogen’s defiance of her father in marrying Posthumus does not negate her sense of her other filial duties
1.1
‘But he does buy my injuries to be friends’
- he returns her injurious behaviour with solicitude to maintain marital harmony
1.1
‘Past hope and in despair: that way past grace’
- hopeless at the loss of Posthumus and in that respect despairing of God’s grace
1.1
‘I chose an eagle/ And did avoid a puttock’
- eagle was the king of birds, puttock was a bird of prey and a scavenger
- contrasts Posthumus’ excellence with Cloten’s greed/ rapacity
1.1
‘Nay, let her languish/ A drop of blood a day and, being aged,/ Die of this folly’
- to pine away, based on the belief that blood lost through grief would cause one to wither and die
1.1
‘But that my master rather played than fought/ And had no help of anger’
- was not moved by anger, so preserved his self-control
1.2
‘There’s none abroad so wholesome as that you vent’
- flattering Cloten by claiming ‘the sweat he emits is more ‘wholesome’ than the air flowing in to replenish it
(here ‘abroad’ means ‘outside’)
1.2
‘His steel was in debt; it went o’th’ backside the town’
- Cloten’s rapier missed Posthumus’ body completely - like a debtor who avoids his creditors by taking the backstreets
1.2
‘So would I, till you had measured how long a fool you were upon the ground’
- until you had fallen down to show yourself a considerable fool
(to ‘measure out one’s length’ = to fall)
1.2
‘She shines not upon fools, lest the reflection should hurt her’
- (treats her wit as beams of light)
- she avoids shining them on fools, lest she be injured by them being thrown back from the surface of folly
1.3
‘If he should write/ And I not have it, ‘twere a paper lost/ As offered mercy is.’
- the lost letter would be like the loss of heaven’s mercy
- or like a pardon for a criminal that arrives too late
1.3
‘Could best express how slow his soul sailed on,/ How swift his ship’
- Posthumus’ soul moves at a slower rate than the ship leaving the shore
1.3
‘At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, / T’encounter me with orisons’
- six am, noon and midnight were three of the Roman Church’s canonical hours (when prayers were supposed to be said)
- implies that Posthumus is a reason for praying, or that praying is a way of getting to Posthumus
1.3
‘…for then/ I am in heaven for him’
- ‘I am praying for him’
- ‘I am happy because of him’
- ‘I am uplifted spiritually because of him’
- ‘I go to heaven to meet him there’
1.3
‘And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,/ Shakes all our buds from growing’
- Cymbeline’s anger is like the north wind that shakes spring flowers, obstructing the love of Innogen and Posthumus
1.4
Iachimo: ‘But I could then have looked on him without the help of admiration, though the catalogue of his endowments had been tabled by his side and I to peruse him by items’
- Then I could look on him without feeling wonder or amazement, even if the long list of his qualities had been arranged in tabular form and I could examine him item by item
1.4
‘that which makes him both without and within’
- in the judgement of others and in his personal character
1.4
‘How creeps acquaintance?’
- How have you stolen into acquaintance with one another?
1.4
‘…rather shunned to go even with what I heard than in my every action to be guided by others’ experiences’
- preferred to resist assent to the advice of others than allow myself to be influenced by them
1.4
‘upon warrant of bloody affirmation’
- pledge to support his claim by shedding blood
1.4
‘I profess myself her adorer, not her friend’
- her worshipper, not her lover
- ‘friend’ could mean ‘sexual partner’ or more negatively ‘paramour’
1.4
‘Either your unparagoned mistress is dead, or she’s outprized by a trifle’
- either your lady is dead (because the ring is valued ‘more than the world enjoys’ ie. more than what is on this earth currently) or she is worth less than the ring
1.4
‘We are familiar at first’
- we are on familiar terms from the start
1.4
‘I will have it no lay’
- I will not permit the wager
1.4
‘Lest the bargain should catch cold and starve’
- take sick and die upon cooler headed consideration
1.5
‘That I did amplify my judgement in other the conclusions\
- enlarge my knowledge by other experiments
1.5
‘To try the vigour of them and apply allayments to their act, and by them gather/ Their several virtues and effects’
- test the drugs’ potency and apply antidotes to determine how they work
- plans to test the strength of the animals and use the drugs which paralyse them
1.5
‘Think what a chance thou changest on’
- consider what an opportunity you have by changing sides
1.6
‘but most miserable/ Is the desire that’s glorious’
- but most pitiable is the unfulfilled desire of someone of high position
1.6
‘Blessed be those/ How mean soe’er, that have their honest wills,/ Which seasons comfort’
- those of low status who can have their plain desires, which increase their comfort, are nonetheless blessed
1.6
‘Change you, madam?’
- do you change colour?
- change your expression
1.6
‘Sluttery, to such neat excellence opposed,/
Should make desire vomit emptiness,/
Not so allured to feed’
- sexual desire would rather retch on an empty stomach than hunger to taste a debased woman, so different from a refined one
1.6
‘Can my sides hold, to think that man who knows/ By history, report or his own proof/ What woman is, yea, what she cannot choose/ But must be, will’s free hours languish/ For assured bondage?’
- Can my sides avoid bursting with laughter to think that a man, who knows by stories, other people, or his own experience that it is impossible for a woman to be constant, would waste his free time pining for someone to whom he is bound?
1.6
‘…-for certainties/ Either are past remedies or, timely knowing,/ The remedy then born’
- things we know for certain are either beyond our ability to do anything about, or, if we know in time, a solution can be created
1.6
‘lips as common as the stairs/ That mount the Capitol’
- kissed as many times as the hundred steps ascending Capitoline Hill to the temple of Jupiter
1.6
‘fastened to an empery/ Would make the great’st king double’
- joined with an empire that would double the territory of any king by marriage to such a woman
1.6
‘With tomboys hired with that self exhibition/ Which your own coffers yield;/ With diseased ventures’
- prostitutes who, for money, risk contracting all the venereal diseases that debauchery can bestow on nature
1.6
‘As I have such a heart that both mine ears/ Much not in haste abuse’
- ‘since I have such a trusting heart that it should not be hastily misled by what my ears have heard’
2.1
‘When I kissed the jack, upon an upcast to be hit away!’
- jack = a small white target ball
- upcast = another player’s throw
- Cloten’s jack has just ‘kissed’ the jack and then been knocked away by another player
2.1
‘upon an upcast’
- a casting/ hurling upward
- a chance/ accident
2.2
‘And be her sense but as a monument/
Thus in a chapel lying’
- may she have only as much sensation as an effigy on a tomb
2.2
‘that dawning/ May bare the raven’s eye’
- that dawn may reveal the eye of the raven
- a bird of prey was supposed to roost facing the rising sun so awoke at dawn
2.3
‘Your lordship is the most patient man in loss,/ the most coldest that ever turned up ace’
- the calmest man whoever threw the lowest number at dice
2.3
‘His steeds to water at those springs/ On chaliced flowers that lie’
- his horses take water from the dew in cupped flowers
2.3
‘Save when command to your dismission tends/ And therein you are senseless’
- except when she rejects you/ orders you to leave, a command to which you are oblivious
2.3
‘th’stand o’th’ stealer’
- fixed, concealed position from which the poacher waits to shoot his target
2.3
‘And am so near the lack of charity/ To accuse myself I hate you’
- am so close to lacking Christian charity as to charge myself with hating you
2.3
‘if ‘twere made/ Comparative for your virtues to be styled/ The under-hangman of his kingdom and hated/ For being preferred so well’
- if your positions corresponded to your respective virtues, Posthumus would rule the kingdom and you would be his assistant executioner, and hated for a preferential promotion to it
2.3
‘If you will make’t an action, call witness to’t’
- if you want to bring a legal action against me, call a witness to support your suit
2.4
‘The cutter/ Was as another nature, dumb; out-went her,/ Motion and breath left out’
- the sculptor made figures as natural as living ones but without speech, surpassing nature except for the absence of movement or breath
2.4
‘The vows of women/ Of no more bondage be to where they are made/ Than they are to their virtues, which is nothing’
- let the vows of women no more bind them to those they were made than women are bound by their own virtues, which is not at all
2.5
‘Is there no way for men to be, but women/ Must be half-workers?’
- is there any way to generate men without the participation of women?
2.5
‘Yet ‘tis greater skill/ In a true hate to pray they have their will./ The very devils cannot plague them better’
- however, the best to damn women is to pray, with true hatred, that they get what they want, because devils cannot make them suffer more than the consequences of their own desires
3.1
‘against all colour’
- without any pretence of reason or justice
3.1
‘salt-water girdle’
- characterises the ocean as a defensive belt encircling the British Isles
3.2
‘For mine’s beyond beyond’
- my longing exceeds that which already surpasses conception or expression
3.2
‘(Love’s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing/ To th’ smothering of the sense)’
- a lover’s adviser or confidant should fill the passages of ones so entirely that the senses are overwhelmed
3.2
‘We house i’th’rock, yet use thee note hardly/ As prouder livers do’
- yet we do not treat the heavens as callously as those who live more grandly
3.3
‘We make a choir, as doth the prisoned bird,/ And sing our bondage freely’
- we are only free to sing about our captivity
3.4
‘Into a haviour of less fear ere wildness/ Vanquish my staider senses’
- less fearsome demeanour before frenzy overcomes my calmer feelings
3.4
‘Some jay of Italy/ Whose mother was her painting’
- who is produced by cosmetics, not by parentage
3.4
‘Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,/ And for I am richer than to hang by th’walls,/ I must be ripped’
- because I am more valuable than someone fit only to hang on a peg and be forgotten (like an old garment), I must be torn apart (to enable the reuse of the material)
3.4
‘Took pity/ From most true wretchedness’
- stole the sympathy the actual misery should have received
3.4
‘Wilt lay the leaven on all proper men’
- will taint the reputation of all honest men
3.4
‘Obedient as the scabbard’
- her heart is as ready to receive the sword as if it were its own scabbard, its sheath
3.4
‘to be unbent’
- only to unbend your bow
3.6
‘Come, our stomachs/ Will make what’s homely savoury’
- our hunger will make plain food tasty
3.6
‘Were you a woman, youth,/ I should woo hard, but be your groom in honesty’
- would pursue you vigorously before I would fail to be your honourable bridegroom
3.6
‘laying by/ That nothing gift of differing multitudes’
- setting aside the worthless adulation of variable, fickle crowds
3.6
‘The night to th’owl and morn to th’lark less welcome’
- Innogen is more welcome to the brothers than the night to the owl (who desires it) and the morning to the lark (who desires it)
4.1
‘for ‘tis/ said a woman’s fitness comes by fits’
- it is said that a woman’s sexual desire/ sexual inclination comes intermittently, in ‘fits and starts’
4.2
‘How much the quantity, the weight as much,/ As I do love my father’
- in quantity, the accumulation of years of affection, the love for his father, may be greater, but in weight of passion this new love equals it
4.2
‘A thing/ More slavish did I ne’er tha answering/ A slave without a knock’
- I have never done anything more slave-like than responding to a slave like you without giving him a harsh stroke (knock)
4.2
‘for I wear not/ My dagger in my mouth’
- I do not use words as substitutes for weapons
4.2
‘May make some stronger head’
- arouse a stronger force opposing the crown
4.2
‘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 is to respond to them
4.2
‘sound thy bottom’
- measure your depths with a sounding line
4.2
‘Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity/ As a wren’s eye, feared gods, a part of it’
- if there is any pity left in heaven, even so small as a wren’s eye, grant me a part of it, fearful gods
4.2
‘I am nothing; or if not,/ Nothing to be were better’
- it would be better to be nothing rather than what I am
4.2
‘We’ll slip you for a season, but our/ jealousy/ Does yet depend’
- we will let you go for a time, but our suspicion still hangs over you
5.3
‘To darkness fleet souls that fly backwards’
- soldier’s souls that fly from the enemy hasten to hell or oblivion
5.3
‘Three thousand confident, in act as many/ For three performers are the file’
- as effective as 3,000 men, even though three men constitute the entire rank of soldiers
5.3
‘Those that would die or ere resist are grown/ The mortal bugs o’th’field’
- those who were willing to die before resisting became deadly, terrifying forces on the field
1.1
Thou’rt poison to my blood
- makes literal though exaggerated sense, as Innogen has married someone not of royal blood
5.3
With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer
Than those for preservation cased, or shame–
- the boys have faces so delicate they deserve to be protected with masks
- or rather they are fairer than those who cover their faces for modesty at balls etc,
5.3
may save,
But to look back in frown
- may avert merely by facing the enemy with defiance
5.3
‘gilded pale looks’
- restored colour to the soldiers’ faces blanched with fear
5.3
Those that would die or ere resist are grown
The mortal bugs o’ the field
- those who were willing to die before resisting became deadly, terrifying forces on the field
5.3
‘touch my shoulder’
- arrest me
5.3
‘Who had not now been drooping here, if seconds
Had answer’d him’
- if 1. supporters had followed his example
- if 2. reinforcements had backed him up
5.4
‘Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp;
Though light, take pieces for the figure’s sake:
- business transactions between men do not weigh every coin to be sure it contains the fully quantity of metal
- although the coin is underweight, it is valuable due to the image stamped upon it
5.4
With Mars fall out, with Juno chide,
That thy adulteries
- Mars was the God of war and Juno, the wife of Jupiter, was angry about her husband’s adulteries
5.4
To the shining synod of the rest
Against thy deity.
- an assembly or council of all the gods
5.4
crystalline
- bright and transparent
5.4
‘Tongue and brain not’
…
‘…or a speaking such/ As sense cannot untie’
- speak without thinking, or without understanding - since tongue and brain function as verbs
- that reason cannot work out
1.1
Puts to him all the learnings that his time/ Could make him the receiver of
- introduces him to all the eduction that he would be receptive to at his age
1.1
forbear
cease our conversation
1.1
And I shall here abide the hourly shot/ Of angry eyes
- I shall stay here to endure the continuous cycle of hostile glances
1.1
plight troth
make a vow of marriage
1.1
Should we be taking leave/ As long a term as yet we have to live,/ The loathness to depart would grow
- ‘if we took our entire lives to say goodbye, our reluctance to leave one another would only increase’
1.1
Innogen: Were you but riding forth to air yourself,/ Such parting were too petty
- ‘Even if you were only going to get some air and exercise, the manner of your parting would have been inadequate
1.1
P: While sense can keep it on
- while the capacity to feel ie. the length of his life
1.1
Posthumus: As I my poor self did exchange for you/ To your so infinite loss, so in our trifles/ I still win of you
- Just as when we gave ourselves to one another, I gave you a poorer man to your own detriment, when we are now exchanging gifts I still receive a more valuable token than the one I give you
1.1
pinch
pain
1.1
Cymbeline: O disloyal thing,/ That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap’st/ A year’s age on me
- ‘Who should restore my youthfulness rather than adding another year to my age’
1.1
Innogen: A touch more rare/ Subdues all pangs, all fears
- A more exquisite pain makes me insensible to other wounds or concerns
1.1
Innogen: over-buys me/ Almost the sum he pays
pays a prince for me (banishment) that almost exceeds my own worth
1.2
Innogen: I would thou grew’st unto the shores o’th’haven/ And question’dst every sail
- I wish you became fixed to (organically or integrally) to the shore, and questioned every boat coming in whether they bring a letter from Posthumus
1.4
Frenchman: We had very many there could behold the sun with as firm eyes as he.
- we have many there who can stare directly at the sun as he does
- (previously Innogen likens Posthumus to an eagle and saying ‘only the eagle can gaze at the sun’ was proverbial)
- (*might also be to do with the fact that previously Cloten’s foolishness would reflect the sun’s rays, but Posthumus can absorb them)
1.4
Iachimo: Ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable divorce under her colours are wonderfully to extend him, be it to fortify her judgement, which else an easy battery might lay flat for taking a beggar without less quality
- the approval/ praise of those who bewail this separation and banishment by taking Innogen’s side enlarges Posthumus’ reputation even further, if only to lend support to her choice of him, since she might otherwise be attacked for marrying someone of no higher rank than he
1.4
Iachimo: Your ring may be stolen too, so your brace of unprizable estimations: the one is but frail and the othe casual
- Innogen and the ring (the pair, or brace) are equally vulnerable. Innogen is weak and susceptible to theft, while the ring is subject to mischance or accident
1.4
Posthumus: You are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion, and I doubt not you sustain what you’re worthy of by your attempt
- *You are greatly deceived by being too confident in your opinion, and I have no doubt that you will get what you deserve in making this attempt
