{"id":12815,"date":"2010-02-22T10:14:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T15:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2010\/02\/22\/12815.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:54:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:54:05","slug":"wrong-hath-but-wrong-but-somet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2010\/02\/22\/wrong-hath-but-wrong-but-somet\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrong hath but wrong, but something’s gotta be right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OK, so you know how helpful you all were with my exit line<\/a> last time? Well, I have a different problem this time.\n

First of all, I have a great, great speech for when I’m about to die. But the last couplet, which is one of the few well-known lines I have, which is in fact one of the very few well-known lines in the whole play that is uttered by anyone other than Richard, that last couplet? Doesn’t make sense to me.\n

That is, I know more or less what it means. Here’s the line: Come, sir, convey me to the block of shame; Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.<\/i>. I have admitted, at this point, my complicity in underhand corrupted foul injustice<\/i>, and I have further admitted that foreshadowing is a legitimate literary device<\/strike> my own pledge had asked for and deserved nothing better than betrayal in response to my own. So what I’m saying is that I am being wronged by Richard in response to my own wrong behavior toward the Young Prince, and that insofar as I blame Richard, I needs must blame myself as well. Right?\n

Or, as SparkNotes and the No Fear Shakespeare<\/a> site have translated it, I have done wrong, so I will suffer wrong. I have been blamed because I deserved to be.<\/i> Boy, that’s terrible writing.\n

But the problem—my problem—is that I can’t make the words of the text mean that. If I am saying Wrong hath but [<\/i>the seeds within it that grow into greater] wrong<\/i>, that’s an awful lot of implication to put in between the words. If I am saying Blame [<\/i>that I place on Richard is] the due of blame [<\/i>that I place on myself]<\/i>, then not only am I jamming a lot of implication in between the words, I’m using due<\/i> in a way that is difficult to understand. For me as well as the audience.\n

Now, I don’t mean to say that I can’t deliver the line. Frankly, if I do say it myself, I think the bit that leads up to the closing couplet is going to be terrific, and then, I straighten myself, look at Tyrell (who I think will be my executioner, although it may be Brackenbury), take a deep breath and snap Come, sir! Convey me to the block of shame!<\/I> before smiling ruefully, opening my arms and saying Wrong hath but wrong, and blame… the due of blame.<\/i> Or, of course, I could play it the other way: resignedly asking to be brought to the block, and then suddenly turning on my escort and snapping out that wrong hath but wrong, and so on, as a threat that he, too, will pay for his support of Richard. In some ways, when the structure of the sentences are opaque, the actor is released to use the words as floaters, independent of the surrounding sentence, and shouting out wrong!<\/i> and blame!<\/i> will carry (I would think) the audience to the meaning I put into them.\n

On the other hand, it would be nice to feel like I’m working with the text and not around it. I don’t ordinarily feel any difficulty with Shakespeare’s language, you know. Oh, I like to work against the meter, but not against the language itself. I almost never have a problem with understanding the basic meaning of the sentences, or figuring out why the various parts of the sentence are presented in the order they are. I have lots of lines that I can say a number of different ways, even within the confines the character than I am narrowing, but the different ways is because they all make sense in different ways. And, in fact, for all of Buckingham’s courtly language, with his unnecessary modifiers and intensifiers, his sentences are for the most part straightforward. Either straightforward lies, or straightforward truths. This last couplet of mine, though, is baffling me.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger does something a second time, which means it’s a tradition, right? Oh, I hope not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theeyater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19019,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12815\/revisions\/19019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}