Beatrice and Benedict are same-sex leaning disaster bisexuals who are both extremely surprised when they end up falling for someone of the opposite sex.
Romeo: I would die for you. Juliette: Okay, well, let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. THIS SUMMER (Begin upbeat/exciting background music) Benvolio: She’s in love with Romeo but her parents want her to marry Royalty. Mercutio: That’s where I come in. SHAKESPEARE’S GREATEST TRAGEDY Romeo (grinning in realization): A marriage of convenience. Juliette (with hopeful laughter in voice): This could actually work! NOW BECOMES Romeo (to Mercutio): What do you get out of it? Mercutio: My inheritance, my parents stop pushing girls on me, and I get to keep doing your cousin. Benvolio: He gets to keep…yeah. THE GREATEST COMEDY (Shot of the four of them running through the streets, hollering, laughing with masquerade masks on) (Shot of Romeo) Romeo: We just have to avoid getting caught for…ever. (Tybalt talking to Paris) Tybalt: I don’t think they’re actually in love. (Mercutio kissing Ben in an alley) (Romeo taking Juliette’s hand as she smiles) (Back to Tybalt and Paris) Tybalt: I’m going to get to the bottom of this. (Shot of Benvolio) Benvolio: They won’t let us be together to we made things so we can be. (Juliette in a courtyard, to Mercutio) Juliette: You need to be more careful, all four of our lives are at stake here. (Tybalt and Mercutio at the wedding’s dessert table) Tybalt: If I ever find out that you were unfaithful to my cousin I will kill you. Mercutio (music stop):………….cool, cool, good to know. THIS TIME (Another shot of a silly action sequence) ROMEO AND JULIETTE (More comedy) HAVE A PLAN (no music for finishing sequence) Benvolio (denying Merc a kiss in public) We can’t… Mercutio: (playfully) Is it because I’m married? Benvolio: I don’t care that you’re married!…You know, in any other situation, that would make me sound so terrible–
What’s In a Name JULY 2018 PG-13
(Spoiler: Tybalt ends up with Paris and helps guard their secret. Everyone lives)
Baby It’s Cold Outside discourse is the same as Macbeth discourse.
Explain?
OK, so one of the big debates in Macbeth involves the scene in which Lady Macbeth talks Macbeth into killing King Duncan. People debate strenuously over whether it’s a scene of Lady M pressuring her reluctant husband into it, or whether it’s a scene of her sensing, due to their emotional intimacy, that this murder is something her husband secretly wants and has partially internally decided to do, and is arguing him into it in order to help him give himself permission to do it, in the same way that people see their loved ones wavering over the dessert menu and jump in with things like, “Go on, get the cheesecake, it’s your birthday!” Readers and scholars disagree strenuously about this – we even studied an incident in college in which two 18th century illustrators attended the same performance and happened to draw the scene the day after, producing two images that advanced opposite interpretations even though they’d seen the exact same actors do the exact same performance. It’s a big deal.
In the same way, the Baby, It’s Cold Outside discourse is about whether this is a song about sexual harassment, or whether it’s a woman singing about how she wishes she could spend the night with the guy she just had an excellent date with if only the neighbors wouldn’t talk, and him responding, “Stay, baby, it’s cold out! No one could expect you to go home in this!”
I really don’t know (baby stab his side) King Duncan’s a bro (baby cut through his hide)
I like him a lot (That decrepit old sot?) This plan ain’t so great (But what a king you’d make!)
The guards might worry (Darling, do it in a hurry!) His sons will rush the door (So knock them on the floor.)
I’m not such a knave (Bash his head with a stave) But I’d be a good king (Now you’re starting to think)
The dukes might all talk (But their chatter means naught) Say, love, what do you mean (You’d make such a king)
I simply must go (baby cut through his hide) There’s a war on you know (baby cut through his hide)
But what of his wife? (And what of his life?) It feels like bad luck (But that don’t mean much)
I’ve got a bad premonition (And I’ve got a mission) But that’s just superstition (My love, you’re a vision)
The witches said I’d rule (If they lied they were cruel) So baby let’s stab Stab his siiiiide!
I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.
Seriously, we’ll never figure it out. I’ll wager trying to understand “exit, pursued by a bear” with the text of The Winter’s Tale as our primary source is like trying to understand loss.jpg when all you have access to is a single overcompressed JPEG of a third-generation memetic mutation that mashes it up with YMCA and “gun” – there’s this whole twitching Frankensteinian mass of cultural context we just don’t have any way of getting at.
no, but this is why people do the boring archival work! because we think we do know why “exit, pursued by a bear” exists, now, and we figured it out by looking at ships manifests of the era –
it’s also why there was a revival of the unattributed and at the time probably rather out of fashion mucedorus at the globe in 1610 (the same year as the winter’s tale), and why ben jonson wrote a chariot pulled by bears into his court masque oberon, performed on new year’s day of 1611.
we think the answer is polar bears.
no, seriously! in late 1609 the explorer jonas poole captured two polar bear cubs in greenland and brought them home to england, where they were purchased by the beargarden, the go-to place in elizabethan london for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports.’ it was at the time run by edward alleyn (yes, the actor) and his father-in-law philip henslowe (him of the admiral’s men and that diary we are all so very grateful for), and would have been very close, if not next to, the globe theatre.
of course, polar bear cubs are too little and adorable for baiting, even to the bloodthirsty tudor audience, aren’t they? so, what to do with the little bundles of fur until they’re too big to be harmless? well, if there’s anything we know about the playwrights and theatre professionals of the time, it’s that they knew how to make money and draw in audiences. and the spectacle of a too-small-to-be-dangerous-yet-but-still-real-live-and-totally-WHITE-bear? what good entertainment businessman is going to turn down that opportunity?
and, voila, we have a death-by-bear for the unfortunate antigonus, thereby freeing up paulina to be coupled off with camillo in the final scene, just as the comedic conventions of the time would expect.
you’re telling me it was an ACTUAL BEAR
every time I think to myself “history can’t possibly get any more bananas” I realize or am made to realize that I am badly mistaken
I read Hamlet back in high school and to this day my absolute favorite thing about it was when Guildenstern was trying to fool Hamlet into doing something or other and Hamlet’s savvy to it but rather than saying “you’re lying and trying to trick me” instead Hamlet outta nowhere whips out this flute and tells Guildenstern to play it.
And Guildenstern is all “I dont know how to play a flute, my lord”
And Hamlet takes a dramatic pause before he absolutely ruins Guildenstern with, “Well thats funny considering you thought you could play me”
this post sounds like im exaggerating but im not it’s straight up canon
Kimchi and Justice 