#literary intertext

[msclaritea]

~John's Lament: Sonnet 58~

 That God forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!

 O, let me suffer (being at your beck), Th' imprison'd absence of your liberty; And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check, Without accusing you of injury.

 Be where you list, your charter is so strong That you yourself may privilege your time To what you will; to you it doth belong Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.

  I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;   Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well. 

imprison'd absence of your liberty. i.e., when you are absent it is though I am in prison. Here we see Shakespeare's battle to come to terms with his relationship with his flawed lover. Paul Ramsey explains: The struggle to justify or deny the evils of the friend was costly and virtually continual, taking its strongest and most startling form in lines 58.11-12. . . The friend is the standard; therefore he can do no wrong; when he does wrong, being the source and standard of good, he may forgive himself wrong; he may not be blamed, be he blameworthy or not. X

This is John's ongoing frustration, first with Sherlock, then Mary. Although for very different motivations, they have repeatedly left him behind, or out of the game. Even if it was for his protection, it chafes at his manhood, at his perceived abilities to help them. It crushes his ego. As hard as John tries not to be hurt by all of this, he just can't help it. This has only increased his feelings of distrust, and of somehow, not being good enough, resulting in the past, of attempting to distancing himself from Sherlock, even as he continued to miss him, and in regards to Mary, being distracted by another woman. He still cares deeply, but seems to have lost himself; his sense of utility.

There has also been some debate as to whether this sonnet and Sonnet 57 were addressed to a man or a woman.

 Modern critics accept that the poems were addressed to a young man, and they view the language of class in the sequence from 56-59 in terms of a complex dynamic of class difference and desire. The speaker's metaphoric description of love as enslavement is complicated and enriched by the fact that here, the speaker is literally as well as figuratively subordinate to the beloved

David Shallwyck asserts that the sonnet "accomplishes the remarkable feat of simultaneously offering an apology and levelling an accusation." X

 In sonnets 57 and 58, Shakespeare discusses how love is like slavery in its different manifestations. The object of the narrator’s love has a dominating power over the narrator, which controls him and guides his actions. line 9, the narrator says that the control over him by the lover is very strong, however he doesn’t seem to make any effort to resist these temptations and exertions of power, but rather resigns to them and accepts them as part of his life. The use of the word "tame" to describe himself in sonnet 58, line seven, suggests that the narrator doesn’t want to actively resist the domination by the lover but instead is resigning his will to the lover. As the narrator lets himself be enveloped in his love for the young man, he loses a part of his own willpower. In sonnet 58, line four has the narrator awaiting the leisurely needs of the lover, and again in line 13 "I am to wait" signifies the author waiting for the lover. X

 You will remember, of course, this conversation between Sherlock and Mary in Morocco:

Mary Watson: Every movement I made was entirely random, every new personality just on the roll of a dice! Sherlock Holmes: Mary, no human action is ever truly random. An advanced grasp of the mathematics of probability, mapped onto a thorough apprehension of human psychology and the known dispositions of any given individual, can reduce the number of variables considerably. I myself know of at least 58 techniques to refine a seemingly infinite array of randomly generated possibilities down to the smallest number of feasible variables.

 The statement Sherlock makes about 'feasible variables' is actually quite loaded, as it basically affirms that when it comes to predicting  person's future behavior, based on their past, but this is also referenced in canon. From The Sign of Four:

"while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician."

 Also, in Psychology: "Human psychology is actually very predictable when you know a bit about how the brain works and this means that you can often spot when we have had a hand in something. While we might think we can make something look random, we actually fall into a number of traps that draw attention to our involvement. X

Last, but not least, in the dialogue on Gaming, which I guess, would be obvious. Gaming Theory is indeed dependent on Psychology and Mathematics, in building games, and especially on the conversation of Artificial Intelligence, which brought me to the following discovery, posted below. Read it carefully, then compare it to Sherlock's speech, above.

 https://me.me/i/i-believe-you-are-wrong-as-no-human-action-is-1664945

That's the same speech, apart from just a few changes, including the number 27, changed to 58, which confirms the intent to link this scene with the sonnets. I don't know how many remember, but the site created for TSOT, Idatedaghost.com was taken over by a Minecraft Server, called Hive Games, soon after the airing. X

Although I am in the camp of S4 being Sherlock's POV, @fleurdelisandbees I still appreciate your Cipher meta, ESPECIALLY the Rickroll part, which talks about misleading links. Also, Sonnet 59 was referenced before 58, in TST. Minecraft Gaming is now attached to BBC Sherlock, twice! @ravenmorganleigh @darlingtonsubstitution @fellshish @tjlcisthenewsexy @madzither  @monikakrasnorada​ @sherlock-meta-collection @sherlock-overflow-error @sherlocks-dimples

*The above version of Sonnet 58 is a paraphrasing, used for easier reading. 

[msclaritea]

~The Cat & The Hound~

Excerpts from The Brazilian Cat by Arthur Conan Doyle

Our story opens with the central figure of the writing, Marshall King, telling us about the difficulties of having expensive tastes and expectations, but no money and no job. No kidding, huh? A normal person might say, 'Time to go to work.' But, Marshall, who doesn't identify himself by name until much later in the story, doesn't seem to have the same thought processes as a normal person. X 

He is the heir of some wealthy relatives, namely Lord Southerton, but is perplexed that most of his family has no interest in his trials or day-to-day living. Until one day, a cousin named Everard King, takes notice of Marshall and sends an invitation for him to come visit. Marshall thinks this is a great opportunity to cash in with a family member who can help him out of his financial snare.

"Mr. Everard King, my unknown cousin, was standing in person upon the steps of his house, for he had seen us in the distance, and guessed that it was I. His appearance was very homely and benevolent, short and stout, forty-five years old, perhaps, with a round, good-humoured face, burned brown with the tropical sun, and shot with a thousand wrinkles. He wore white linen clothes, in true planter style, with a cigar between his lips, and a large Panama hat upon the back of his head. It was such a figure as one associates with a veranda-like bungalow, and it looked curiously out of place in front of this broad, stone English mansion, with its solid wings and its Palladio pillars before the doorway."

..."The whole afternoon was occupied by this inspection, which included all the birds, beasts, and even reptiles which he had imported. Some were free, some in cages, a few actually in the house. He spoke with enthusiasm of his successes and his failures, his births and his deaths, and he could cry out in his delight, like a schoolboy, when, as we walked, some gaudy bird would flutter up from the grass, or some curious beast slink into the cover. Finally he led me down a corridor which extended from one wing of the house. At the end of this there was a heavy door with a sliding shutter in it, and beside it there projected from the wall an iron handle attached to a wheel and a drum. A line of stout bars extended across the passage. 

     "I am about to show you the jewel of my collection," said he. "There is only one other specimen in Europe, now that the Rotterdam cub is dead. It is a Brazilian cat." 

     "But how does that differ from any other cat?"

     "You will soon see that," said he, laughing. "Will you kindly draw that shutter and look through?"

     I did so, and found that I was gazing into a large, empty room, with stone flags, and small, barred windows upon the farther wall. In the centre of this room, lying in the middle of a golden patch of sunlight, there was stretched a huge creature, as large as a tiger, but as black and sleek as ebony. It was simply a very enormous and very well-kept black cat, and it cuddled up and basked in that yellow pool of light exactly as a cat would do. It was so graceful, so sinewy, and so gently and smoothly diabolical, that I could not take my eyes from the opening.

       Later, in our tale....

"I must see my cat before I go to bed," said my host. "A high wind excites him. Will you come?"

     "Certainly," said I.

     "Then tread softly and don't speak, for everyone is asleep."

     We passed quietly down the lamp-lit Persian-rugged hall, and through the door at the farther end. All was dark in the stone corridor, but a stable lantern hung on a hook, and my host took it down and lit it. There was no grating visible in the passage, so I knew that the beast was in its cage.

     "Come in!" said my relative, and opened the door.

     A deep growling as we entered showed that the storm had really excited the creature. In the flickering light of the lantern, we saw it, a huge black mass coiled in the comer of its den and throwing a squat, uncouth shadow upon the whitewashed wall. Its tail switched angrily among the straw.

     "Poor Tommy is not in the best of tempers," said Everard King, holding up the lantern and looking in at him. "What a black devil he looks, doesn't he? I must give him a little supper to put him in a better humour. Would you mind holding the lantern for a moment?"

     I took it from his hand and he stepped to the door.

     "His larder is just outside here," said he. "You will excuse me for an instant won't you?" He passed out, and the door shut with a sharp metallic click behind him.

     That hard crisp sound made my heart stand still. A sudden wave of terror passed over me. A vague perception of some monstrous treachery turned me cold. I sprang to the door, but there was no handle upon the inner side.

     "Here !" I cried. "Let me out!"

         "All right! Don't make a row!" said my host from the passage. "You've got the light all right."

     "Yes, but I don't care about being locked in alone like this."

     "Don't you?" I heard his hearty, chuckling laugh. "You won't be alone long."

     "Let me out, sir!" I repeated angrily. "I tell you I don't allow practical jokes of this sort."

 ..."And then, with a fresh wave of horror, my eyes fell upon the lantern. The candle had burned low, and was already beginning to gutter. In ten minutes it would be out. I had only ten minutes then in which to do something, for I felt that if I were once left in the dark with that fearful beast I should be incapable of action. The very thought of it paralysed me. I cast my despairing eyes round this chamber of death, and they rested upon one spot which seemed to promise I will not say safety, but less immediate and imminent danger than the open floor."

     How slowly those dreadful two hours went by! Once I heard a low, rasping sound, which I took to be the creature licking its own fur. Several times those greenish eyes gleamed at me through the darkness, but never in a fixed stare, and my hopes grew stronger that my presence had been forgotten or ignored.

..."Tracing the course of events afterwards, I conclude that I must have been insensible for about two hours. What roused me to consciousness once more was that sharp metallic click which had been the precursor of my terrible experience. It was the shooting back of the spring lock. Then, before my senses were clear enough to entirely apprehend what they saw, I was aware of the round, benevolent face of my cousin peering in through the open door. What he saw evidently amazed him. There was the cat crouching on the floor. I was stretched upon my back in my shia-sleeves within the cage, my trousers torn to ribbons and a great pool of blood all round me. I can see his amazed face now, with the morning sunlight upon it. He peered at me, and peered again. Then he closed the door behind him, and advanced to the cage to see if I were really dead."

The entire story is available here, and a fun read. On the names used:

Marshall an occupation name whose origin is from the Frankish mare ("horse") + skalkoz ("servant"). It is most commonly found as a surname, but may also be used as a given name. It is also an old Scottish surname meaning 'Love of Horses'. Related name: Phillip Everard "brave boar", derived from the Germanic elements Ebur "brave, hardy".   

Tommy, the beast Derived from the Aramaic tē’ōma (a twin). The name is borne in the Bible by an apostle who doubted the resurrection of Christ.

*Will have to take a closer look at stories with the name Tommy, Tom, Thomas.