Saturday 2 September 2017

How Does My Royal Lord? How Fares Your Majesty?


Pitt the Younger :
I used to read to my father when he was ill -
I read him Shake-Spear

SCENE VII. A tent in the French camp. LEAR on a bed asleep,

soft music playing; Gentleman, and others attending.Enter CORDELIA, KENT, and Doctor
CORDELIA
O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work,
To match thy goodness? My life will be too short,
And every measure fail me.
KENT
To be acknowledged, madam, is o'erpaid.
All my reports go with the modest truth;
Nor more nor clipp'd, but so.
CORDELIA
Be better suited:
These weeds are memories of those worser hours:
I prithee, put them off.
KENT
Pardon me, dear madam;
Yet to be known shortens my made intent:
My boon I make it, that you know me not
Till time and I think meet.
CORDELIA
Then be't so, my good lord.To the Doctor
How does the king?
Doctor
Madam, sleeps still.
CORDELIA
O you kind gods,
Cure this great breach in his abused nature!
The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up
Of this child-changed father!
Doctor
So please your majesty
That we may wake the king: he hath slept long.
CORDELIA
Be govern'd by your knowledge, and proceed
I' the sway of your own will. Is he array'd?
Gentleman
Ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep
We put fresh garments on him.
Doctor
Be by, good madam, when we do awake him;
I doubt not of his temperance.
CORDELIA
Very well.
Doctor
Please you, draw near. Louder the music there!
CORDELIA
O my dear father! Restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made!
KENT
Kind and dear princess!
CORDELIA
Had you not been their father, these white flakes
Had challenged pity of them. Was this a face
To be opposed against the warring winds?
To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stroke
Of quick, cross lightning? to watch--poor perdu!--
With this thin helm? Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,
To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!
'Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once
Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him.
Doctor
Madam, do you; 'tis fittest.
CORDELIA
How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?
KING LEAR
You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like moulten lead.
CORDELIA
Sir, do you know me?
KING LEAR
You are a spirit, I know: when did you die?
CORDELIA
Still, still, far wide!
Doctor
He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile.
KING LEAR
Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?
I am mightily abused. I should e'en die with pity,
To see another thus. I know not what to say.
I will not swear these are my hands: let's see;
I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured
Of my condition!
CORDELIA
O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me:
No, sir, you must not kneel.
KING LEAR
Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
CORDELIA
And so I am, I am.
KING LEAR
Be your tears wet? yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
CORDELIA
No cause, no cause.
KING LEAR
Am I in France?
KENT
In your own kingdom, sir.
KING LEAR
Do not abuse me.
Doctor
Be comforted, good madam: the great rage,
You see, is kill'd in him: and yet it is danger
To make him even o'er the time he has lost.
Desire him to go in; trouble him no more
Till further settling.
CORDELIA
Will't please your highness walk?
KING LEAR
You must bear with me:
Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish.

Exeunt all but KENT and Gentleman

Pearl


And goode faire White she het; 
That was my la dy name ryght. 
She was bothe fair and bryght; 
She hadde not hir name wrong. 

(Boke of the Duchesse, 948–51). 


THE [OC]: We offer you a gift. Return to us the human on your Tardis and in exchange, you may speak with her again. 

OLD GRANDFATHER :
Speak with whom? 

(A shadowy figure walks out of a ground floor archway with a bright light behind her.) 

OLD GRANDFATHER :
Young lady, who are you? 

PEARL : 
Is he here? Is the Doctor here? 

(Her Doctor, Dr. Disco AttackEyebrows comes out of the TARDIS.) 

PEARL: 
Doctor! 
(they hug) 
I knew it! I did, I knew it. I knew you couldn't be dead, you don't have the concentration. Doctor? What are you doing? 

(He scans her with the sonic screwdriver.) 

AttackEyebrows: 
Just keep still, please. Pearl.

PEARL: 
Yeah. 

AttackEyebrows: 
My friend Pearl was turned into a Cyberman. 
She gave her life so that people she barely knew could live. 

So, let's be clear. NOBODY imitates Bill Potts. 

Nobody MOCKS Pearl


Pearl: 
Bill Potts is standing right in front of you. 

DOCTOR: 
How is that even possible? 

BILL: Well, long story short. 

I totally pulled. 

The Queen of Courtesy. Do you remember, The Girl in The Puddle? 
Well, She showed up. She came for me. 


‘O perle’, quod I, ‘in perle  py  t, 
Art þou my perle þat I haf playned?’ 

" It has been objected that the child as seen in Heaven is not like an infant of two in appearance, speech, or manners: she addresses her father formally as sir, and shows no filial affection for him. 

But this is an apparition of a spirit, a soul not yet reunited with its body after the resurrection, so that theories relevant to the form and age of the glorified and risen body do not concern us. 

And as an immortal spirit, the maiden’s relations to the earthly man, the father of her body, are altered. 

She does not deny his fatherhood, and when she addresses him as  sir she only uses the form of address that was customary for medieval children. Her part is in fact truly imagined. 

The sympathy of readers may now go out more readily to the bereaved father than to the daughter, and they may feel that he is treated with some hardness. 

But it is the hardness of truth. In the manner of the maiden is portrayed the effect upon a clear intelligence of the persistent earthliness of the father’s mind; all is revealed to him, and he has eyes, yet he cannot see. The maiden is now filled with the spirit of celestial charity, desiring only his eternal good and the cure of his blindness.

It is not her part to soften him with pity, or to indulge in childish joy at their reunion. 

The final consolation of the father was not to be found in the recovery of a beloved daughter, as if death had not after all occurred or had no significance, but in the knowledge that she was redeemed and saved and had become a queen in Heaven. 

Only by resignation to the will of God, and through death, could he rejoin her. 

And this is the main purpose of the poem as distinct from its genesis or literary form: the doctrinal theme, in the form of an argument on salvation, by which the father is at last convinced that his Pearl, as a baptized infant and innocent, is undoubtedly saved, and, even more, admitted to the blessed company of the 144,000 that follow the Lamb. 

But the doctrinal theme is, in fact, inseparable from the literary form of the poem and its occasion; for it arises directly from the grief, which imparts deep feeling and urgency to the whole discussion. Without the elegiac basis and the sense of great personal loss which pervades it, Pearl would indeed be the mere theological treatise on a special point, which some critics have called it. 

But without the theological debate the grief would never have risen above the ground. 

Dramatically the debate represents a long process of thought and mental struggle, an experience as real as the first blind grief of bereavement. In his first mood, even if he had been granted a vision of the blessed in Heaven, the dreamer would have received it incredulously or rebelliously. 

And he would have awakened by the mound again, not in the gentle and serene resignation of the last stanza, but still as he is first seen, looking only backward, his mind filled with the horror of decay, wringing his hands, while his wreched wylle in wo ay wrazte. "

Prof. J.R.R. Tolkein's introduction to Pearl






38 The court where the living God doth reign
Hath a virtue of its own being,
That each who may thereto attain
Of all the realm is queen or king,
Yet never shall other’s right obtain,I
But in other’s good each glorying
And wishing each crown worth five again,
If amended might be so fair a thing.
But my Lady of whom did Jesu spring,
O’er us high she holds her empery,
And none that grieves of our following,
For she is the Queen of Courtesy.

39 In courtesy we are members all

Of Jesus Christ, Saint Paul doth write:
As head, arm, leg, and navel small
To their body doth loyalty true unite,
So as limbs to their Master mystical
All Christian souls belong by right.
Now among your limbs can you find at all
Any tie or bond of hate or spite?
Your head doth not feel affront or slight
On your arm or finger though ring it see;
So we all proceed in love’s delight
To king and queen by courtesy.’

40‘ Courtesy,’ I said, ‘I do believe 

And charity great dwells you among, 
But may my words no wise you grieve, 
You in heaven too high yourself conceive 
To make you a queen who were so young. 
What honour more might he achieve 
Who in strife on earth was ever strong, 
And lived his life in penance long 
With his body’s pain to get bliss for fee? 
What greater glory could to him belong 
Than king to be crowned by courtesy? 

41 THAT courtesy gives its gifts too free, 

If it be sooth that you now say. 
Two years you lived not on earth with me, 
And God you could not please, nor pray 
With Pater and Creed upon your knee –
And made a queen that very day! 
I cannot believe, God helping me, 
That God so far from right would stray. 
Of a countess, damsel, I must say, 
’Twere fair in heaven to find the grace, 
Or of lady even of less array, 
But a queen! It is too high a place.’ 

42‘ Neither time nor place His grace confine’,

Then said to me that maiden bright,
‘For just is all that He doth assign,
And nothing can He work but right.
In God’s true gospel, in words divine
That Matthew in your mass doth cite,
A tale he aptly doth design,
In parable saith of heaven’s light:
“My realm on high I liken might
To a vineyard owner in this case.
The year had run to season right;
To dress the vines ’twas time and place.




43 All labourers know when that time is due.

The master up full early rose
To hire him vineyard workers new;
And some to suit his needs he chose.
Together they pledge agreement true
For a penny a day, and forth each goes,
Travails and toils to tie and hew,
Binds and prunes and in order stows.
In forenoon the master to market goes,
And there finds men that idle laze. 
‘Why stand ye idle?’ he said to those.
‘Do ye know not time of day nor place?’ 

44‘ This place we reached betimes ere day’,

This answer from all alike he drew,  
‘Since sunrise standing here we stay, 
And No Man offers us work to do.’ 
‘Go to my vineyard! Do what ye may!’ 
Said the lord, and made a bargain true:
‘In deed and intent I to you will pay 
What hire may justly by night accrue.’ 
They went to his vines and laboured too, 
But the lord all day that way did pace, 
And brought to his vineyard workers new, 
Till daytime almost passed that place. 

45 In that place at time of evensong,

One hour before the set of sun,
He saw there idle labourers strong
And thus his earnest words did run: 
‘Why stand ye idle all day long?’
They said they chance of hire had none. 
‘Go to my vineyard, yeomen young, 
And work and do what may be done!’
The hour grew late and sank the sun,
Dusk came o’er the world apace;
He called them to claim the wage they had won,
For time of day had passed that place.

46 THE time in that place he well did know;

He called:  ‘Sir steward, the people pay! 
Give them the hire that I them owe. 
Moreover, that none reproach me may, 
Set them all in a single row, 
And to each alike give a penny a day; 
Begin at the last that stands below, 
Till to the first you make your way.’ 
Then the first began to complain and say
That they had laboured long and sore:
‘These but one hour in stress did stay; 
It seems to us we should get more. 

47 More have we earned, we think it true, 

Who have borne the daylong heat indeed, 
Than these who hours have worked not two, 
And yet you our equals have decreed.’ 
One such the lord then turned him to:  
‘My friend, I will not curtail your meed. 
Go now and take what is your due! 
For a penny I hired you as agreed, 
Why now to wrangle do you proceed? 
Was it not a penny you bargained for? 
To surpass his bargain may no man plead. 
Why then will you ask for more? 

48 Nay, more –am I not allowed in gift 

To dispose of mine as I please to do? 
Or your eye to evil, maybe, you lift, 
For I none betray and I am true?’  
“Thus I”, said Christ, “shall the order shift: 
The last shall come first to take his due, 
And the first come last, be he never so swift; 
For many are called, but the favourites few.”
Thus the poor get ever their portion too,
Though late they came and little bore;
And though to their labour little accrue,
The mercy of God is much the more.

49 More is my joy and bliss herein,

The flower of my life, my lady’s height,
Than all the folk in the world might win,
Did they seek award on ground of right.
Though ’twas but now that I entered in,
And came to the vineyard by evening’s light.
First with my hire did my Lord begin;
I was paid at once to the furthest mite.
Yet others in toil without respite
That had laboured and sweated long of yore,
He did not yet with hire requite,
Nor will, perchance, for years yet more.’ 

50 Then more I said and spoke out plain:  

‘Unreasonable is what you say. 
Ever ready God’s justice on high doth reign, 
Or a fable doth Holy Writ purvey. 
The Psalms a cogent verse contain, 
Which puts a point that one must weigh: 
“High King, who all dost foreordain, 
His deserts Thou dost to each repay.” 
Now if daylong one did steadfast stay, 
And you to payment came him before, 
Then lesser work can earn more pay; 
And the longer you reckon, the less hath more.’

51‘ OF more and less in God’s domains 
No question arises’, said that maid, 
‘For equal hire there each one gains, 
Be guerdon great or small him paid. 
No churl is our Chieftain that in bounty reigns, 
Be soft or hard by Him purveyed; 
As water of dike His gifts He drains, 
Or streams from a deep by drought unstayed. 
Free is the pardon to him conveyed 
Who in fear to the Saviour in sin did bow; 
No bars from bliss will for such be made, 
For the grace of God is great enow.

52 But now to defeat me you debate 

That wrongly my penny I have taken here; 
You say that I who came too late 
Deserve not hire at price so dear. 
Where heard you ever of man relate 
Who, pious in prayer from year to year, 
Did not somehow forfeit the guerdon great 
Sometime of Heaven’s glory clear? 
Nay, wrong men work, from right they veer, 
And ever the ofter the older, I trow. 
Mercy and grace must then them steer, 
For the grace of God is great enow.



53 But enow have the innocent of grace. 

As soon as born, in lawful line 
Baptismal waters them embrace; 
Then they are brought unto the vine. 
Anon the day with darkened face 
Doth toward the night of death decline. 
They wrought no wrong while in that place, 
And his workmen then pays the Lord divine. 
They were there; they worked at his design; 
Why should He not their toil allow, 
Yea, first to them their hire assign? 
For the grace of God is great enow.






54 Enow ’tis known that Man’s high kind 

At first for perfect bliss was bred. 
Our eldest father that grace resigned 
Through an apple upon which he fed. 
We were all damned, for that food assigned 
To die in grief, all joy to shed, 
And after in flames of hell confined 
To dwell for ever unréspited. 
But soon a healing hither sped: 
Rich blood ran on rough rood-bough, 
And water fair. In that hour of dread 
The grace of God grew great enow.



55 Enow there went forth from that well 

Water and blood from wounds so wide: 
The blood redeemed us from pains of hell, 
Of the second death the bond untied; 
The water is baptism, truth to tell, 
That the spear so grimly ground let glide. 
It washes away the trespass fell 
By which Adam drowned us in deathly tide. 
No bars in the world us from 
Bliss divide In blessed hour restored, 
I trow, Save those that He hath drawn aside; 
And the grace of God is great enow.


56 GRACE enow may the man receive 

Who sins anew, if he repent; 
But craving it he must sigh and grieve 
And abide what pains are consequent. 
But reason that right can never leave 
Evermore preserves the innocent; 
’Tis a judgement God did never give 
That the guiltless should ever have punishment. 
The guilty, contrite and penitent, 
Through mercy may to grace take flight; 
But he that to treachery never bent 
In innocence is saved by right.

Friday 1 September 2017

Warriorship : Finding The Friend Inside The Enemy

 
In a way, this is why I gave her to you in the first place. 

To make you see. 

The Friend inside The Enemy, 
The Enemy inside The Friend.

To Lose is To Win,
and 
He Who Wins Shall Los



ASHILDR: 
What if the Hybrid wasn't one person, but two? 

DOCTOR: 
Two? 

ASHILDR: 
A dangerous combination of a passionate and powerful Time Lord and a young woman so very similar to him. 

[TARDIS]

ASHILDR [on scanner]: 
Companions who are willing to push each other to extremes.

DOCTOR [on scanner]: 
She's my friend. She's just my friend. 

ASHILDR [on scanner]: 
How did you meet her? 

CLARA: 
Missy! 

[Cloisters]

DOCTOR: 
Missy. 

ASHILDR: 
Missy. The Master. 
The Lover of Chaos, who wants you to love it, too. 

She's quite the matchmaker. 

DOCTOR: 
Clara's my friend. 

ASHILDR: 
I know. And you're willing to risk all of Time and Space because you miss her. One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next. 

DOCTOR: 
Nothing. Nothing at all. 
I know I went too far. 
I get it. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. 





MASTER: 
You still haven't answered the question. 
What happens to me? 

DOCTOR: 
You're my responsibility from now on. 
The only Time Lord left in existence. 

JACK: 
Yeah, but you can't trust him. 

DOCTOR: 
No. The only safe place for him is the TARDIS.

MASTER: 
You mean you're just going to keep me? 

DOCTOR: 
Mmm. If that's what I have to do.
It's time to change. 

Maybe I've been wandering for too long. 

Now I've got someone to care for. 

(Lucy shoots the Master. The Doctor catches him as he staggers back.

JACK: 
Put it down. 

DOCTOR: 
There you go. 
I've got you. 
I've got you. 

MASTER: 
Always the women. 

DOCTOR: 
I didn't see her. 

MASTER: 
Dying in your arms. 
Happy now? 

DOCTOR: 
You're not dying. 
Don't be stupid. It's only a bullet. 
Just regenerate. 

MASTER: 
No. 

DOCTOR: 
One little bullet. Come on. 

MASTER: 
I guess you don't know me so well. I refuse. 

DOCTOR: 
Regenerate. Just regenerate. 
Please. Please! 
Just regenerate. Come on. 

MASTER: 
And spend the rest of my life imprisoned with you? 

DOCTOR: 
You've got to. 
Come on. It can't end like this. 
You and me, all the things we've done. 
Axons. Remember the Axons? 
And the Daleks. 
We're the only two left. 
There's no-one else. 
Regenerate! 

MASTER: 
How about that. I win. 
Will it stop, Doctor? 
The drumming. Will it stop? 

(The Master dies.

DOCTOR: No! 



CHANCELLOR: 
There is, er, there is one part of the prophecy, my Lord. 

Forgive me, I'm sorry. It's rather difficult to decipher, but it talks of two survivors beyond the Final Day. 
Two children of Gallifrey. 

RASSILON: 
Does it name them? 

CHANCELLOR: 
It foresees them locked in their final confrontation, The Enmity of Ages, which would suggest...


RASSILON: 
The Doctor! 
And the Master. 


MASTER: 
Would it stop, then? The noise in my head? 

DOCTOR: 
I can help. 

MASTER: 
I don't know what I'd be without that noise. 


Accession - Mingling


The Others.... mingled.



CASSANDRA: 
They say mankind has touched every star in the sky. 

I am the last Pure Human. The others.... mingled. 


Oh, they call themselves New humans and Proto-humans and Digi-humans, even 'Humanish, but you know what I call them? 

Mongrels. 

I kept myself PURE. 





KING HENRY IV
God pardon thee! yet let me wonder, Harry,
At thy affections, which do hold a wing
Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.
Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost.
Which by thy younger brother is supplied,
And art almost an alien to the hearts
Of all the court and princes of my blood:
The hope and expectation of thy time
Is ruin'd, and the soul of every man
Prophetically doth forethink thy fall.
Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackney'd in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap to vulgar company,
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,
Had still kept loyal to possession
And left me in reputeless banishment,
A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.
By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wonder'd at;
That men would tell their children 'This is he;'
Others would say 'Where, which is Bolingbroke?'
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dress'd myself in such humility
That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts,
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,
Even in the presence of the crowned king.
Thus did I keep my person fresh and new;
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen but wonder'd at: and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast
And won by rareness such solemnity.
The skipping king, he ambled up and down
With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,
Soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state,
Mingled his royalty with capering fools,
Had his great name profaned with their scorns
And gave his countenance, against his name,
To laugh at gibing boys and stand the push
Of every beardless vain comparative,
Grew a companion to the common streets,
Enfeoff'd himself to popularity;

That, being daily swallow'd by men's eyes,
They surfeited with honey and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.
So when he had occasion to be seen,
He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes
As, sick and blunted with community,
Afford no extraordinary gaze,
Such as is bent on sun-like majesty
When it shines seldom in admiring eyes;
But rather drowzed and hung their eyelids down,
Slept in his face and render'd such aspect
As cloudy men use to their adversaries,
Being with his presence glutted, gorged and full.
And in that very line, Harry, standest thou;
For thou has lost thy princely privilege
With vile participation: not an eye
But is a-weary of thy common sight,
Save mine, which hath desired to see thee more;
Which now doth that I would not have it do,
Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.