2010-08-17

a_t_rain: (titus)
2010-08-17 08:24 pm
Entry tags:

Day 27: Your favorite couplet

And to begin, wench, so God help me -- la!
My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.
-- Love's Labour's Lost
, 5.2.414-15

All right, so that one doesn't make a lot of sense out of context. In the speech which this couplet concludes, Berowne has renounced all the fancy language of love poetry ("Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, / Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, / Figures pedantical"). Instead, he promises, "Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed / In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes." And so the last couplet consists of blunt, one-syllable words of Anglo-Saxon orig- -- oh crap, was that French in there?

And because in LLL, as in most of Shakespeare, Girls Always Know Better, Rosaline points out that there is a crack and flaw in his vows: "Sans 'sans,' I pray you."

More rambling about LLL )

All the questions )