Chains

About Chains

Overview

"Chains" is the final episode of the BBC sitcom Blackadder II, the second series of Blackadder, which was set in Elizabethan England from 1558 to 1603. Power-mad and self-professed "master of disguise", Prince Ludwig the Indestructible kidnaps Lord Blackadder and Lord Melchett. They escape his clutches but Prince Ludwig infiltrates the palace during a fancy dress ball. The episode was recorded 14 July 1985. Plot In the throne room, Blackadder informs Queenie and Nursie of an unknown incident that saw Blackadder insulting the unidentified individual before he pulled up his tights and jumped out of the privy window. Melchett arrives in, telling Queenie that his former tutor's son has been kidnapped and begs for her to pay the hefty ransom. Queenie consults Lord Blackadder on the matter – he tells her to tell Melchett's tutor's son to get stuffed, stating that only an idiot would be so foolish as to be kidnapped. However, literally seconds later, after he's left the room, Blackadder meets two men, one of whom asks him something while another hits Blackadder over the head, knocking him unconscious, the same process also happening to Melchett who has convinced Queenie to pay the ransom. The two then awaken in a damp cell accompanied by a deranged Spanish torturer. Blackadder does not speak Spanish, so after Melchett has translated that he is to be tortured, he and the torturer engage in a lengthy game of charades to determine the exact insults, threats, and mode of torture (for instance, the Spanish torturer is forced to go through several roles in order to call Blackadder a "bastard son of a bitch", and Blackadder is unable to explain via body language the meaning of "fornicating baboon" due to being locked up in a box covered in spikes). Prince Ludwig the Indestructible, a German pretender to the throne who mispronounces English words, intervenes just as the torturer is about to get started on Edmund, stopping the other man with his whip as Ludwig apologizes or to accept his "apple-ogies"; when Edmund does not recognise him, Ludwig reveals that he was once disguised as Big Sally, a waitress at The Old Pizzle in Dover, a pub Edmund frequented while meeting a black marketeer named Otto.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
— Frederick Douglass, Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C. (22 October 1883).
“Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them.”
— Abraham Lincoln's speech at Edwardsville, Illinois (11 September 1858); quoted in Lincoln, Abraham; Mario Matthew Cuomo, Harold Holzer, G. S. Boritt, Lincoln on Democracy (Fordham University Press, September 1, 2004), 128. .
“[T]o be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
— Nelson Mandela, in Long Walk to Freedom (1995), p. 404.
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Chapter 1
“Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, (1762), I, Ch. 2.
“The dog has been taught to pay attention; as long as he pays attention, he may escape his chain.”
— Sumerian proverb, Collection V at , .

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.