wix@bergil.DEC (Jack Wickwire) (05/30/85)
This is being forwarded through me to NET.STARTREK. I only do some basic
formatting and I am not responsible for its often erudite content. All
responses sent to me will be forwarded to the author.
Theren *are* some benefits to a college education! I found
"Plato's Stepchildren" to be so extremely embarrassing that,
until the other night, I had not watched it since its first
rerun in the summer of 1969. But the other night I lacked
the energy to turn the TV off. And there's *literature* in
them thar sadists!
The song Alexander sings, about "Pan marking time with his
hoof (with his hoof)" is a chorus from Aristophanes's "The
Frogs". The lines Kirk is made to say as he kneels to Parmen,
"Being your slave, what should I do but tend/Upon the hours
and times of your desire?/I have no precious time at all to
spend...", are the beginning of Shakespeare's Sonnet 57.
And the song Spock is made to sing (argh!) is a Renaissance
love poem I recognize but have so far been unable to track
down.
What I want to know now is, how did those neo-Platonians
get hold of Elizabethan and Renaissance poetry? They tell
Kirk they left after the downfall of Plato. They would
therefore have been still on Earth when "The Frogs" was
performed; but certainly not for the publication of
Shakespeare's Sonnets. Perhaps somebody got too clever.
Here's the entire sonnet. Parmen was a nasty one.
Sonnet 57
William Shakespeare
Being your slave what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
Save whre you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your will,
(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.
(From the Cambridge Text established by John
Dover Wilson, which accounts for the odd (to us)
punctuation.)
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PDDB