Production of Hamlet where during the play scene Hamlet sets up a projector and puts on the Lion King

“This is what Shakespeare would have wanted.”

“Shakespeare wouldn’t have wanted this.”

No! You’re both wrong! Shakespeare wanted one thing and one thing only. To sell tickets.

If people spend money at the Globe theatre and don’t steal his bones then his ghost is happy

“Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.”

Shakespeare’s actual grave. He put a curse on anyone that tries to touch his bones. That’s what Shakespeare wants. Buy tickets and don’t touch his bones.

[image description: a photo of shakespeare’s grave with the plaque transcribed above]

“Buy my stuff and leave me alone” - every writer’s creed

oh! I have to tell you guys a great story one of my professors told me. So he has a friend who is involved in these Shakespeare outreach programs where they try to bring Shakespeare and live theatre to poor and underprivileged groups and teach them about English literature and performing arts and such. On one of their tours they stopped at a young offenders institute for women and they put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet for a group of 16-17 year old girls. It was all going really well and the girls were enjoying and laughing through the first half - because really, the first half is pretty much a comedy - but as the play went on, things started to get quiet. Real quiet. Then it got up to the suicide scene and mutterings broke out and all the girls were nudging each other and looking distressed, and as this teacher observed them, he realised - they didn’t know how the play ended. These girls had never been exposed to the story of Romeo and Juliet before, something which he thought was impossible given how ubiquitous it is in our culture. I mean, the prologue even gives the ending away, but of course it doesn’t specify exactly how the whole “take their life” thing goes down, so these poor girls had no idea what to expect and were sitting there clinging to hope that Romeo would maybe sit down for a damn minute instead of murdering Paris and chugging poison - but BAM he died and they all cried out - and then Juliet WOKE UP and they SCREAMED and by the end of the play they were so upset that a brawl nearly broke out, and that’s the story of how Shakespeare nearly started a riot at a juvenile detention centre

Apparently something similar happened during a production of Much Ado at Rikers Island because a bunch of inmates wanted to beat the shit out of Claudio, which is more than fair tbh

honestly Shakespeare would be so pleased to know his plays were nearly starting brawls centuries into the future

I played Claudio once and I fully support this

“When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side…there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.” And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period.”

Oskar Eustis

anyone who told you much ado about nothing is good and worth watching was RIGHT and you should listen to them

Ah here we go! Free full play for anyone who needs it, i watched it last week so i still had the link in my history heh :D enjoy!

God I love this version

no idea if it's my hormones, what I've seen in the news lately, the weight of living the past few years, or just because it's Judi Dench...but this impromptu performance really made me cry for a good ten minutes, no kidding.

maybe i’m just a grumpy english major but i feel like a lot of the “lol people think shakespeare is pretentious but actually his plays are just dick jokes and swordfighting” posting can verge into “lol what if the curtains are just blue” territory. yes shakespeare plays are full of those things AND they are also profound and complex and thematically rich. people spend their careers analyzing them for a reason, actually. it’s not just dick jokes all the way down. and sometimes people spend their careers analyzing the dick jokes. stop trying to pick one side of the dichotomy between high and low culture. it’s both. it can be both.

shakespeare wasn't lying that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow can creep in this petty pace from day to day

neither was Smash Mouth. the years start coming and they don't stop coming

hamlet / bill and ted’s excellent adventure

Concerning Juliet’s age

I find a big stumbling block that comes with teaching Romeo and Juliet is explaining Juliet’s age. Juliet is 13 - more precisely, she’s just on the cusp of turning 14. Though it’s not stated explicitly, Romeo is implied to be a teenager just a few years older than her - perhaps 15 or 16. Most people dismiss Juliet’s age by saying “that was normal back then” or “that’s just how it was.” This is fundamentally untrue, and I will explain why.

In Elizabethan England, girls could legally marry at 12 (boys at 14) but only with their father’s permission. However, it was normal for girls to marry after 18 (more commonly in early to mid twenties) and for boys to marry after 21 (more commonly in mid to late twenties). But at 14, a girl could legally marry without papa’s consent. Of course, in doing so she ran the risk of being disowned and left destitute, which is why it was so critical for a young man to obtain the father’s goodwill and permission first. Therein lies the reason why we are repeatedly told that Juliet is about to turn 14 in under 2 weeks. This was a critical turning point in her life.

In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of the law in many countries which states children can marry at 16 with their parents’ permission, or at 18 to whomever they choose - but we see it as pretty weird if someone marries at 16. They’re still a kid, we think to ourselves - why would their parents agree to this?

This is exactly the attitude we should take when we look at Romeo and Juliet’s clandestine marriage. Today it would be like two 16 year olds marrying in secret. This is NOT normal and would NOT have been received without a raised eyebrow from the audience. Modern audiences AND Elizabethan audiences both look at this and think THEY. ARE. KIDS.

Critically, it is also not normal for fathers to force daughters into marriage at this time. Lord Capulet initially makes a point of telling Juliet’s suitor Paris that “my will to her consent is but a part.” He tells Paris he wants to wait a few years before he lets Juliet marry, and informs him to woo her in the meantime. Obtaining the lady’s consent was of CRITICAL importance. It’s why so many of Shakespeare’s plays have such dazzling, well-matched lovers in them, and why men who try to force daughters to marry against their will seldom prosper. You had to let the lady make her own choice. Why?

Put simply, for her health. It was considered a scientific fact that a woman’s health was largely, if not solely, dependant on her womb. Once she reached menarche in her teenage years, it was important to see her fitted with a compatible sexual partner. (For aristocratic girls, who were healthier and enjoyed better diets, menarche generally occurred in the early teens rather than the later teens, as was more normal at the time). The womb was thought to need heat, pleasure, and conception if the woman was to flourish. Catholics might consider virginity a fit state for women, but the reformed English church thought it was borderline unhealthy - sex and marriage was sometimes even prescribed as a medical treatment. A neglected wife or widow could become sick from lack of (pleasurable) sex. Marrying an unfit sexual partner or an older man threatened to put a girl’s health at risk. An unsatisfied woman, made ill by her womb as a result - was a threat to the family unit and the stability of society as a whole. A satisfying sex life with a good husband meant a womb that had the heat it needed to thrive, and by extension a happy and healthy woman.

In Shakespeare’s plays, sexual compatibility between lovers manifests on the stage in wordplay. In Much Ado About Nothing, sparks fly as Benedick and Beatrice quarrel and banter, in comparison to the silence that pervades the relationship between Hero and Claudio, which sours very quickly. Compare to R+J - Lord Capulet tells Paris to woo Juliet, but the two do not communicate. But when Romeo and Juliet meet, their first speech takes the form of a sonnet. They might be young and foolish, but they are in love. Their speech betrays it.

Juliet, on the cusp of 14, would have been recognised as a girl who had reached a legal and biological turning point. Her sexual awakening was upon her, though she cares very little about marriage until she meets the man she loves. They talk, and he wins her wholehearted, unambiguous and enthusiastic consent - all excellent grounds for a relationship, if only she weren’t so young.

When Tybalt dies and Romeo is banished, Lord Capulet undergoes a monstrous change from doting father to tyrannical patriarch. Juilet’s consent has to take a back seat to the issue of securing the Capulet house. He needs to win back the prince’s favour and stabilise his family after the murder of his nephew. Juliet’s marriage to Paris is the best way to make that happen. Fathers didn’t ordinarily throw their daughters around the room to make them marry. Among the nobility, it was sometimes a sad fact that girls were simply expected to agree with their fathers’ choices. They might be coerced with threats of being disowned. But for the VAST majority of people in England - basically everyone non-aristocratic - the idea of forcing a daughter that young to marry would have been received with disgust. And even among the nobility it was only used as a last resort, when the welfare of the family was at stake. Note that aristocratic boys were often in the same position, and would also be coerced into advantageous marriages for the good of the family.

tl;dr:

Q. Was it normal for girls to marry at 13?

A. Hell no!

Q. Was it legal for girls to marry at 13?

A. Not without dad’s consent - Friar Lawrence performs this dodgy ceremony only because he believes it might bring peace between the houses.

Q. Was it normal for fathers to force girls into marriage?

A. Not at this time in England. In noble families, daughters were expected to conform to their parents wishes, but a girl’s consent was encouraged, and the importance of compatibility was recognised.

Q. How should we explain Juliet’s age in modern terms?

A. A modern Juliet would be a 17 year old girl who’s close to turning 18. We all agree that girls should marry whomever they love, but not at 17, right? We’d say she’s still a kid and needs to wait a bit before rushing into this marriage. We acknowledge that she’d be experiencing her sexual awakening, but marrying at this age is odd - she’s still a child and legally neither her nor Romeo should be marrying without parental permission.

Q. Would Elizabethans have seen Juliet as a child?

A. YES. The force of this tragedy comes from the youth of the lovers. The Montagues and Capulets have created such a hateful, violent and dangerous world for their kids to grow up in that the pangs of teenage passion are enough to destroy the future of their houses. Something as simple as two kids falling in love is enough to lead to tragedy. That is the crux of the story and it should not be glossed over - Shakespeare made Juliet 13 going on 14 for a reason. 

Romeo and Juliet is the Elizabethan equivalent of  ‘won’t someone please think of the children’  it’s a romantic tragedy  not a romance  romantic in that it’s a love story  but not a romance in the sense that it is supposed to be emulated  and is likely a social commentary of something happening at the time  whether it was ongoing religious feuds  which did tear families apart  uprisings across the country  or just general malaise with how the world was going in the 1590s  it’s also worth noting that R+J was based heavily on a poem writen  some 30ish years prior  by Arthur Brooke  known as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet  which in turn was based on the work of Matteo Bandello  who supposedly based most of his work on real life events  making his association to Lucrezia Gonzaga  an Italian noblewoman  who was married off at the age of 14  likely to solidify some sort of alliance during turbulent times all the more poignant  Shakespeare was and never has been the reserve of the intellectual and elite  that we are taught his work without historical context  robs us of the true value of his work social commentary  and this social commentary would like to have a few words with your false ideas of ‘historical accuracy’ (via @thebibliosphere)

I saw this in my emails and couldn’t see why I’d been tagged in it (all the while nodding vehemently along) and then I saw my tags and ah. Yep. Still forever mad at how badly Shakespeare is taught in most schools.

Wait but then why does Juliet’s mother talk about being already married younger than Juliet currently is?

Likely because her match to Juliet’s father was an arranged match to solidify family names and houses in order to avoid conflicts or to establish wealth. (It also serves to denote the tragic undercurrent of the play ie love is secondary to wealth and power.)

It wasn’t so uncommon for children of royalty or nobility to be betrothed from birth, or even symbolically married, in order to make alliances. But that doesn’t mean they were engaging in the kind of adult relationship we envision when we think of marriage today.

Which isn’t to say some people didn’t buck the norm and do horrible things Margaret Beaufort is a prime example of this, which the Tudors would likely be aware of. Her first marriage contract actually happened when she was one year old. It was later dissolved and she was remarried at the age of 12, and her second husband, Edmund Tudor, did in fact get her pregnant before dying himself. She was 13 years old when she gave birth, and it caused major health issues for her and nearly killed her. When she survived it was considered miraculous. Which should tell you just how not normal this kind of thing was thought of even back then.

I agree with absolutely everything in this thread of discussion. Even so, my long-standing fascination with both Shakespeare and late medieval / early renaissance history makes it impossible for me to to reblog without throwing in my extra few cents:

I. Margaret Beaufort

In my mind, there are few cases that better demonstrate the tensions between medieval norms and medieval realities than that of Margaret Beaufort. Like many other women of her time, she had only one child surviving to adulthood: Henry Tudor (later Henry VII and the founder of the Tudor dynasty). In that, Margaret wasn’t so remarkable: infant mortality made this a common enough outcome, though undoubtedly a tragic one.

Where Margaret’s case was exceptional is that Henry was also her only known pregnancy, without so much as a stillbirth, infant death, or even another pregnancy ever being mentioned in connection to her. In her own time, it was commonly assumed that her experience of childbirth at a very young age was what accounted for her barrenness, and even to us today, it doesn’t seem implausible to assume some kind of physical trauma that prevented later pregnancies from taking place, given all the medical knowledge we’ve accumulated about the risks of childbirth at either extreme of age.

But there was more to this. The vast Beaufort estate that came with Margaret’s young hand were so valuable that, to 15th/16th century English minds, it perfectly explained Edmund Tudor’s motives for having been so reckless with the health of his wife: having an heir of his own would ensure that her lands would stay with him, in the name of any children they might have together, whereas the lands would pass to someone else if she should die before having a child. Of course, most men in that situation would have waited anyway, as a child whose mother died in childbirth was much less likely to survive anyway, so contemporaries portrayed Edmund Tudor’s actions as short-sighted and foolhardy at best, amoral and cruel and worst. But Fate must have a sense of irony, because Edmund died before his son was even born, while Margaret lived, and as aristocratic women tended to do in those circumstances, she was remarried to Henry Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham.

Since Margaret was Stafford’s first (and only) wife, he would have depended on her to give him any heirs at all, to whom he could pass on the lands he already had, let alone any of Margaret’s own (and it would be logical to assume that the Beaufort inheritance would have been no less tempting to Stafford than it was to Tudor). He must have at least hoped for children from her, and at the time, there wasn’t any reason to expect she was totally barren either: there was the traumatic birth to consider, but she was more physically mature when she remarried, and there was room to hope that widowhood had given her time to recover. And yet, despite all this, it seems few people (if any) were surprised that Margaret did not bear any more children. It didn’t seem to doom her relationship with her second husband either: on the contrary, Margaret enjoyed a happy relationship with Stafford for well over a decade until his death, so if there was any bitterness on his part over his lack of heirs, he must have managed it well. Even in the contemporary sources (who don’t tend to be charitable towards female figures), any blame for her barrenness is laid squarely at the feet of the various men who were her guardians in her early life, who clearly abused their authority over her for their own benefit, rather than to safeguard Margaret’s well-being as guardians are supposed to do (one of them being Edmund Tudor himself… he wasn’t supposed to even be in the running for her wardship, but Henry VI actually outright broke a promise he had made to Margaret’s father to let Margaret’s mother be her guardian in the event of his death).

This indicates to me even more strongly that late-medieval / Tudor people would have not only been sympathetic towards what Margaret and women like her had suffered, but also understood that neglectful attitudes towards the health and happiness of dependents have consequences. Shakespeare’s own words make this clear, at the beginning of the play:

Tudor audiences would have understood these lines as the words of a benevolent father protecting his daughter from the advances of an overeager young suitor, invoking what seems to have been a Tudor-era trope that early marriages do not make for happy endings… not for the woman, not for her family or husband, and certainly not for the children she might otherwise have borne. Because Capulet came off as the “good father” in the beginning of the play, it makes it all the more shocking when his attitude changes and he becomes the all-too-familiar figure of the cold, uncaring patriarch who regards his children only as pawns*. I imagine the juxtaposition would have invited Tudor audiences to feel Juliet’s sense of betrayal as if it were happening to them.

* Jane Grey, the famed “nine days’ queen” was also rumored to be such a victim of her parents’ ambition: they also saw fit to force her into a marriage that she seriously objected to, and historical records point a fairly consistent picture of their callous disregard towards her wishes and genuine happiness.

II. Consent in Medieval Marriages

Twelve and fourteen are actually also important numbers in their own right, and Shakespeare’s choice to place Juliet between those two ages has an important symbolic meaning. Late medieval Catholic doctrine defined marriage as a sacrament, like the Eucharist (Communion), or Holy Orders. Many of the sacraments require those who receive them to understand what they’re getting into for the sacrament to have the desired effect. To guarantee understanding (at least from a theological perspective), you would have to be above “the age of reason”, the age at which you were considered to be able to think for yourself. Conservative definitions of the “age of reason” sometimes defined it as the age of fifteen or fourteen (or older), but was later fixed at twelve. Since marriage was one of these sacraments, a marriage where both spouses had not fully and knowingly given their consent was no marriage at all.* Therefore, twelve was considered the absolute lower age limit at which a person could marry without compromising the very spiritual foundation of the marriage itself, while fourteen was considered a safer age at which to assume the person had full control of their reasoning capacities.

The other side of the “consent” coin when it came to marriage was that consent wasn’t just a necessary condition to finalize a marriage, it was also sufficient condition. If a man and a woman had given their knowing consent to marry one another, and if they had intentionally verbalized this promise to one another and consummated their marriage, then no earthly power could invalidate this pact for any reason (outside of a few very specific ones, like incest) without risking damnation. Witnesses were convenient as a way to prove that the marriage had taken place, if a family member or some segment of society disapproved of the match, but they weren’t needed in order to make the marriage spiritually valid. Basically, the Catholic Church at this stage somehow ended up putting the idea of consent at the very heart of the idea of what made a marriage valid or not, and this had consequences not only because of the threat of hellfire, but also because Church law was secular law when it came to domestic matters like marriage and divorce. And then it came to pass that the English Reformation left this specific area of the doctrine mostly untouched, so the Tudors would have had similar ideas surrounding the question of consent and marriage as did their late medieval forbears.

This theological point is not only the whole raison d’etre for the most central plot device in the play, but also adds an extra note of pathos to Juliet’s situation and an extra layer of moral judgment towards Lord Capulet’s behavior. If she did not insist on keeping her marriage vow, or if she married Paris knowing full well that she had already been married, both of those would be mortal sins for which she would risk damnation. And by extension, because he used duress against Juliet to try to make her comply with his sinful wish, Lord Capulet has also damned himself (albeit unknowingly, but even so, the narrative clearly presents forcing his daughter’s marriage as something he should know better than to do, anyway).

Until this point, Juliet’s marriage is characterized as an impulsive decision such as only foolish youth could make, but ironically, in that confrontation with Lord Capulet, this slip of a young girl is now portrayed as conducting herself with far more spiritual maturity and grace than any of the adults around her. Her parents are failing in their duty towards her by putting their dynastic concerns ahead of her health and happiness (when it’s been made clear they already know this is a Bad Idea), and her Nurse, who actually knows about the secret marriage and all the reasons why it cannot be taken back, is actively pleading with her to just forget it and pretend Romeo never was. Juliet’s choice here is monumental, because it involves not only disregarding her parents, but also an active decision to completely break with the woman who has been with her for literally everything in her life up to that point, a break so thorough that even Nurse herself doesn’t know that it’s happened. This dramatic turning point is a bittersweet portrait of the girl losing her innocence and growing up into an adult, from one angle, and from another angle it’s a paean to the pure-hearted idealism (different from the limpid innocence of childhood in that it’s willful and risk-taking, and fiery in quality) that can only be found in the young. Either way, it does Juliet’s character AND Shakespeare’s dramatic talents a massive disservice to portray her situation as something so simplistic or reactionary as lovelorn pining after an absent boyfriend, or rebelling against her parents, or “staying true to her own heart”.

This wasn’t just a plot device for the stage: many real-life lovers leaned on this feature of the Church’s teachings, when faced with the opposition of their families and communities, and in many cases, the Church was indeed forced to side with the couple, however reluctantly. Margery Paston, the daughter of a genteel landowning family in the 15th century, and Richard Calle, the Paston family’s longtime housekeeper, were one such case of a real-life Romeo and Juliet: they mutually fell in love, and married in secret when they came up against heavy opposition from Margery’s family. The Pastons responded by separating them, firing Calle from his job and having him sent to London, while Margery remained in Norfolk under house arrest. There, she seems to have been subjected to ongoing and intense pressure to walk back her marriage… if the couple had been married formally in church, this would not have been possible, but secret marriages were vulnerable to challenges like this because they were secret. A witness would have helped her and Calle’s case and made it more airtight, but even if the couple had had any, apparently the Pastons had succeeded in intimidating them into silence.

But even though the Pastons seemed to be winning, it’s hard to believe that bystanders wouldn’t have objected to at least some of what the Pastons were doing to try and get their way. Otherwise, Calle could not have written Margery in 1469, during their separation, saying “I suppose if you tell them sadly the truth, they will not damn their souls for us”. Their situation was objectively quite bleak.  For the months they were apart, it was made very clear to both Margery and Calle that, if the couple continued to insist on their marriage, the Pastons would disown Margery and throw her out of the house, therefore leaving her with few options for survival, let alone to find her way to Calle over a distance of a hundred miles. He mournfully acknowledges that their gamble might fail, and their worst fears might come true, but there is also defiance in his resignation, as he concludes, “if they will in no wise agree [to respect our marriage], between God, the Devil and them be it.”

Margery, for her part, was no less determined. When Margery was finally brought before the local bishop, he turned out to be sympathetic towards the Paston family, and gave Margery a long speech about the importance of pleasing her family and community (so much for the theological importance of consent, but then, clerical hypocrisy was nothing new to medieval people). But Margery remained steadfast (in fact, I am inclined to think from her next words that the bishop’s words only goaded her to greater resolve) and when she spoke, she not only continued to insist that she had said what she had said, but according to her mother she “boldly” added, “if those words made it not sure […] she would make it surer before she went thence, for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound [in marriage to Calle], whatsoever the words were.” Her wording left absolutely no room for doubt in the mind of even the most flexible theologian. And when Calle was cross-examined and his testimony found to match that of Margery’s, the bishop of Norfolk had no choice but to rule in the couple’s favor.

Margery’s mother did indeed make good on her word: she did both disown Margery and throw her out of the house. She seemed to have done it more to save face, however, than to actually punish her daughter, since she does seem to have made arrangements behind the scenes for Margery to stay with sympathetic neighbors. In the end, Calle was right, the Pastons were not willing to risk their own souls. Margery and Richard Calle got their happy ending, and had at least three children (and we know about them because we know Margery’s mother left them money in her own will).

* This also meant that Edmund Tudor actually would have been Margaret Beaufort’s first husband, not her second. It was true that she had already been “in a marriage” before being married later to Tudor, but strictly speaking, it was only a precontract (what we today would think of as an engagement) with signficance limited to the secular realm; there are a lot of reasons this would not have really been considered a marriage at the time, but the most theologically pertinent one is that the bride’s consent could not have been involved, because she was too young to be able to give it. Consequently, this paper marriage was easily dissolved as soon as her guardians thought it more politically expedient to marry her to Edmund Tudor. And for all intents and purposes, Margaret Beaufort herself considered Tudor to be her first husband, not John de la Pole.

tl;dr: the study of Shakespeare cannot be separated from historical and societal understanding of the times he lived in, and frankly, it’s a terrible shame that English classes don’t emphasize this more, because then you’re throwing out about 80% of the meaning his works actually hold.

Sorry to keep reblogging this long post but holy shit this is an excellent addition. Thank you for taking the time to write all that up.

I will forever be grateful to my eleventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Shaw, who taught us that when analyzing literature it is not only wise but absolutely essential to consider not only the author’s other works, but also the historical context in which it was written.

I was today years old when I learned that I was taught Romeo and Juliet wrong even AFTER being in the play.

@thebibliosphere do you know if it’s common for people to know the age of Juliet solidly and then think that the reason everything was dodgy was because Romeo was like 17/18 years old? Cause like…

Anyone I asked about Romeo’s age said “he’s like. An adult. A young one but an adult.” So for all my life I assumed Romeo was 18 going on 19 or 17 going on 18 while Juliet was just hardly a teenager.

Oh man, this is an old, old post.

Full disclaimer: I’m obviously no expert–just a former Shakespearian theater kid with a love of history–but no, Romeo is not eighteen, and nor was he considered an adult.

That’s a very modern perspective, and I suspect it comes from people latching onto the idea that if Juliet was considered legally old enough to be married at fourteen, then Romeo’s slight advantage in years must mean he was considered an adult when this is not at all how a Tudor audience would have viewed it.

Also, I don’t know where the idea that Romeo is eighteen/fully an adult came from, because Romeo’s age is unspecified in the original text, though the consensus is that he’s between the ages of fifteen at a minimum and seventeen at most. Neither an adult by our terms nor by Tudor ones.

As noted above, the minimum legal age for marriage in the Tudor era was twelve years old for noble girls, but what we did not mention was the legal age for boys, which was fourteen. So if we take the stance that Romeo is intended to be fifteen to sixteen, possibly hovering on the verge of seventeen, in the context of the times, he’s still considered barely old enough to marry, same as Juliet. He still needs the permission of his parents to marry because he is not considered legally old enough to make this decision himself.

His behavior isn’t that of a predatory adult pursuing a child (we’ll get to that) but that of a young man in the midst of his teens pursuing someone in both a suitable age range and social class for his standing. And from a thematic standpoint: the age and social class where your family might orchestrate a match to solidify alliances or to end a blood war if only they had their shit together.

This becomes very clear when you take into consideration the added context that most commoners didn’t marry until their mid-to-late-twenties when they’d had a chance to become financially established and also become both physically mature and strong enough to survive childbirth. There were, of course, always exceptions to this rule, but we’re speaking in generalities here. Only the rich married their kids off young, and most of the time there would have been clauses in place to prevent the girl from getting pregnant too young and dying in childbirth.

Basically, the entire Tudor audience, both noble and common, would have been watching this tragedy unfold on stage, clutching their pearls and going “Oh god they’re babies. Where are the parents?!”

To which the answer is “embroiled in a blood feud and not paying attention to the things that are happening under their nose until it’s too late.”

Paris, on the other hand, the suitor Juliet’s father wants to pair her with, and let’s be clear here, the man making it very clear he’s interested in her sexually, is twenty-five.

That line up above about “happy mother’s made”? That’s Paris, a twenty-five-year-old man looking at a fourteen-year-old girl and announcing that he not only wants to bed her but considers it fine for girls even younger than fourteen to become mothers. The man is a one-man parade of red flags, and that’s also what makes Juliet’s father switch so villainous. He’d rather marry his child off to a full-grown man who doesn’t care for her safety in the marital bed than resolve the feud with the Montagues, and the Tudor audience would have been deeply uncomfortable with this narrative, same as us.

So no, Romeo and Juliet isn’t a mess because Romeo was an adult. Romeo and Juliet is a mess because both Romeo and Juliet are functionally children trying to act like adults because no one else is. Not their parents, not the priest. And that’s the root of the tragedy.

It’s not a moral about problematic age gaps–though that is highlighted through Paris–it’s a moral about allowing vengeance to cloud your judgment and letting the children, the innocents who don’t know any better, try to behave like adults because you’ve left a void and would rather seek death than a peaceful resolution.

And I (still) really wish it was taught better in schools.

Rosemary? You mean spicy pine needles?

Are you insinuating that regular pine needles aren’t spicy???

Regular pine needles are regular

Not by rosemary standards

…Have you eaten pine needles?

We’ve been friends for like four years, do you seriously have to ask if I’ve eaten pine needles or not

I mean I’m pretty sure you have but I don’t want to assume

Of course I’ve eaten pine needles. Various kinds. Singleleaf pinyon is weirdly the best

Are they…

You know, I’d love to tell you but I’m pretty unclear about what marks the difference between “spice” and “strong-tasting plant that isn’t considered a spice”

I’ll have to eat some pine needles myself then to find out

Ok but it only counts if they’re PINE needles and not just any old needle-like leaf off a tree

I’m going to eat every needle-like leaf I see

Please Don’t Do That

Needle-Like Leaf Roulette

…I’ll accept this plan as long as you promise not to eat any yew leaves.

I can try very hard not to

Pine needles are distinguished by the presence of a sheath-like structure at the base of the leaf, almost always holding bundles of two or more leaves. Yews don’t have the sheath thing

It’s time for me to go out into the woods and stare at needle leaves

Finally you can gain real insight into my average daily life

this conversation reads like two shakespeare characters who come out in the middle of the play to talk about something completely unrelated for comic relief and then are never heard from again

god fucking dammit gimme a minute

Enter AERUH and MALUS SYL-VESTRIS, a pair of JESTERS.

AERUH I tell thee, rosemary is like a pine but with a spicy taste.

MALUS                         Art thou to claim that needles base of pine have not a spice?

AERUH A needle base of pine is merely base.

MALUS ‘Tis not when held, comparing, to anthos.

AERUH My dearest Malus, needles thou'st eaten?

MALUS How many moons have we as friends seen rise? How many suns have we as friends seen set? Thou sixteen seasons in my heart I’ve held, and hope that I in thine hast been the same. With brotherhood as rich and old as this, thou needst not ask me such frivolities.

AERUH I know thou likely has, to tell the truth, but I would not assume.

MALUS                       Well, yes, I have. A multitude of types I’ve eaten too. I’ll tell thee now: the best (though it is strange) is single-leaf pinyon.

AERUH                     And it has spice?

MALUS I truly wish that I could tell thee this, but now, i'faith, I cannot fully tell, the difference in classifying thus: to say “has spice” or merely “herbal strength”.

AERUH To tell this tale most clearly it would seem that eating needles from a pine’s required.

MALUS Aye, it would seem that that’s the task at hand, but caution tells that this is what’s to do: eat only needles of the honest pine, and none of lying leaf with pinelike shape.

AERUH I’ll eat them all.

MALUS                   I prithee, stay thyself.

AERUH Roulette with leaves.

MALUS                     At least restrain from yew.

AERUH I’ll do my best.

MALUS                That is all can we do. The scholars tell that needles true of pine can be distinguished from the lying yew by sheathlike clothing all along the base; the yew has no such guard.

AERUH                          With this new truth I now will venture out into the wood and seek the pines and pinelike fakes alike to stare them down and learn their secret truths.

MALUS With this thou canst at long and weary last Discover for thyself my life’s own path.

Exeunt.

Enter MACDUFF.

MACDUFF. Yo dudes that king there’s dead. Like dead as FUCK.

We love our man’s passion

if we ever get to meet Tom it would be like

i’d reblog this even if it was a still image

I know it’s a sesame street clip but seriously, who is the target audience for this?

Parents watching it with their kids, I guess?

literally everyone

Everyone. No, really… everyone.

For adults, the appeal is Sir Patrick Stewart doing a kid’s educational bit in full Shakespearean dress and style; there’s a delightful cognitive dissonance between the very serious presentation and the very simple content.

For very small children, it’s educational: this is the letter “B”; here’s how it’s shaped; here’s some words you know that start with it. Oh, and here’s a word you may not be familiar with that starts with it, so you can recognize that it’s the sound that matters, and not whatever other connection you made between the other two words.

For older kids: you’ve probably heard that “to be or not to be?” speech, or at least part of it, so you can enjoy some of the parody the adults are watching. Also, here’s how to describe how a letter is made - how to teach young siblings who don’t read yet, how to explain both the shape and the sound.

For kids with dyslexia: here’s how you differentiate a “B” from a P or D or E. You may have to go slowly and look carefully at the exact shapes that make up the whole, but there are differences and you can learn to recognize them. 

For teens or young college students: In addition to whichever parts of those are relevant to you, here’s what Shakespearean acting sounds like. Here’s how to enunciate clearly and slowly, so your audience can understand terms they may not recognize and still follow the gist of what you’re saying. If you’re reading Shakespeare in school, try sounding it out like this and see if that helps it make sense.

For new RenFaire workers: Here’s how to pronounce “zounds.” 

One of the most glorious things in the world is Shakespearean actors doing stuff like this.

I can’t believe he said the “z” word on a kids’ program. So filthy!

the more i learn about william shakespeare the more i lose my mind

his tragedy coriolanus contains the first recorded use of the word lonely meaning bill shakespeare might have invented the word lonely

the phrase the word lonely first appeared in is “like to a lonely dragon”

also on an unrelated note two of his distant relatives were executed in 1583 for a plot to kill the queen. they were beheaded and their heads were placed on pikes on london bridge meaning as young aspiring thespian william shakespeare arrived in london for the very first time, he might have been greeted by his relatives’ rotting heads. i woulda turned around and gone the fuck back to stratford

in his time period life expectancy was 35. monks were expected to drink gallon of beer a day. the names “agnes” and “anne” were interchangeable because the g was silent so it’s entirely possible shakespeare was married to a woman named agnes instead. the words “trash” “fart” and “slut” existed, but not the word “science.” speaking of language by 1600 “thou” had fallen out of fashion meaning shakespeare might’ve only included it to be more fucking dramatic

he never once spelled his surname “shakespeare” (he preferred “shakspere” apparently) and he once signed a legal document as “willm shaksp”

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLM SHAKSP

One of my favorite categories of internet hot take is “But Shakespeare STOLE from other ARTISTS” like that’s a scandalous revelation and not just how the early modern theatre worked

People complain that Shakespeare was poorly educated and therefore couldn’t be an Artiste ™ and then they turn around and complain that he was ‘unoriginal’ for drawing so much from authors like Holinshed and Plutarch and Seneca for his plays and poems, as if he didn’t study those authors at school and absorb them into his worldview and skillset.

Look at every English-language movie for, oh, let’s say the past 20 years.

Now remove every one that’s an adaptation of a play, book, short story, TV show, comic or game, including the ones that were “inspired by”.

Now remove every one that’s a remake, and every one that’s a sequel.

I don’t think anyone can say anything much about Shakespeare.

The teenager was asked to write a short scene or draw a short comic using a comedic trope from a list on a handout in their HS American Lit class. They chose to do the comic …

Hamlet