How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
So little did I imagine, as I stood on the warm shores of that lake beside an English lord and heard the crickets sing, that only nine months hence, the Empire should receive its first blows; that I should hear bells rung all night, and cries of "Fire!" and lie awake in my frigid bed unable to warm myself; while outside, in the square near the Customs House, a crowd of hundreds would gather, shouting abuse at the Redcoats who stood on guard there; that this mob, full of false assurances that the King's soldiers could not fire upon citizens, would yell their spiteful taunts—"Fire! Fire at us, you cowards!"—"We ain't afraid!"—"Molly-boy! Bugger! Shoot for the heart!—throwing fragments of ice and trying to knock the bearskin hats from the soldiers' heads. The crowd would surge forward; surround the Redcoats; one would raise a plank to beat in a soldier's head—whereupon a private stumbled, felled by thrown wood—and the soldiers, at long last, fired into the crowd. (2.11.8)
Just a few lines later, Octavian's going to quote Seneca and tell us that waiting for the war is worse than war itself. But this description of the first scene of war—the scene that starts it all—makes us go hmm… Note that Octavian's account of the scene gets totally broken up by the shouts and general chaos he remembers hearing outside his window. The whole thing is tough to follow because that's what war is like: chaos. In other words, definitely not fun.
Quote #2
The next day, two of them were on display, one in an apothecary shop, another lying on a table in a nearby tavern. Bono went to see the latter corpse, paying threepence.
"That ain't much," he said, "to pay to see history."
"Worse than war," saith Seneca, "is the dreadful waiting for war." (2.11.10-12)
There's some truth to Seneca's quote, even though we're guessing that people in the middle of a war may not feel quite the same way as Seneca. Dreadful things do happen in the waiting of war… like displaying corpses
Quote #3
I did not hear of this charade until the next day, and did not understand its purport; rather thinking it a pleasant interlude from the more brutal games of the Sons of Liberty. There was something almost gentlemanly about it, a hint of sport. Dr. Trefusis and I walked along the wharves and spake of disguise, color, substance, and the solidity of matter. (2.16.2)
The "charade" Octavian's referring to here is the—and we mean the—Boston Tea Party. But from Octavian's perspective, this incident isn't anything more than a "pleasant interlude," something that actually seems "gentlemanly." It's funny how this is the event that makes it into our history books, isn't it? How we don't usually read about the violence of the colonials in the lead up to the Revolutionary War…