let the sky rain potatoes

i’m obsessed with benedick and beatrice and the fact that he trusts her. claudio refuses to believe that hero is innocent no matter what she says. no one believes her, even leonato immediately takes claudio’s word, a man who he has known for a few days, over his own daughter’s. and beatrice knows it’s a lie but no one believes her because the word of a woman means nothing. but benedick believes her. he doesn’t know hero that well, he has no evidence to prove that she is innocent, but he knows she is because beatrice says so, and he trusts her - more than he trusts even claudio, his “sworn brother”. the contrast between claudio’s “proof” destroying his trust in hero, and benedick trusting beatrice no matter what, even though he has no proof

Yes, Benedict choosing to stand with Hero is one of the crucial points of this play. And I love that even before he has Beatrice’s oath that Hero’s innocent, and the Friar’s corroboration, he’s having doubts. He doesn’t leave when the Prince and Claudio do. When Leonato goes on a horrible rant where he loudly tells his own daughter that she’d be better off dead than dishonoured, Benedick says:

“Sir, sir, be patient: for my part, I am so attired in wonder, I know not what to say.”

As in, he’s not sure that Hero’s innocent, but he’s also not sure that she’s guilty, and so instead of yelling at her horribly, we should try to find out what is actually going on. His admission that he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on is proof of great wisdom and integrity from a guy who spend the first half of this play acting like an absolute class clown.

Right! He's the only one who asks How doth the lady? It's why I love him so much.

* Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

ok here's something i've been baffled about for a while that seems like it fits best on this blog: why are there so many big-budget pieces of fiction that completely fail to use grammatically correct early modern english? i don't blame individual authors for not knowing how to conjugate verbs after "thou" and where to put "thy/thine" or whatever, but you'd think that, say, a video game that presumably has a ton of people working on it could get someone to check over the script and make sure there are no glaring errors. and yeah, that would cost money, but it's shocking that so many people don't realize that "old timey language" is something you can do wrong and that there are people who will notice if it's done wrong. like it just feels like sloppy writing!

I'm not sure what big-budget works from the modern day are written in early modern? I guess the closest I've seen are things that take place in a generic "fantasy" verse where they talk vaguely Old Timey but I don't think those were ever meant to be perfect representations of early modern any more than they were supposed to be perfect representations of the medieval period. It's more of an aesthetic. I think if they were written in true early modern it would lose viewership since early modern is a dialect/language that takes a while to learn and a modern english speaker typically won't be able to perfectly parse an early modern text with no prior education.

oh, good point. i suppose i don't mean full-on early modern english, i mean "vaguely old timey" in a way that borrows a handful of grammatical conventions from EM english. i agree that they're not going for historical accuracy! the point is more like... why not give the same consideration to using "thou" correctly as you would give to any other grammar in your writing! it's just annoying to me.

as for examples, dark souls is especially egregious about this (at least the first game, can't speak to the others). i assume this might have something to do with the fact that it had to be localized into english, so like, more steps required for the writing. unfortunately i don't have a lot of other examples off the top of my head! but it's certainly something i've seen a lot - it's what rouxls kaard is parodying lol

"aesthetic" shakespeare misquotes are always so funny to me because they NEVER sound like Shakespeare at all.

like I would understand if people thought that Shakespeare was the one who wrote something like "mischiefs feed like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed" (taken from Ben Jonson's play Volpone)

but it's always some shit like. "when I saw you I fell in love.. and you smiled because you knew" or "you say you love rain, but you open your umbrella when it rains....."

i like the idea of doing shakespeare adaptations set in high school a la 10 things i hate about you or she's the man but i feel like we're missing some opportunities by only doing the comedies. i wanna see macbeth but it's about a really high stakes student council election

@homobiwan Coriolanus but it's an even higher stakes student council election

i've read multiple macbeth adaptations set in high school, and one of the winter's tale! (winter's tale is technically a comedy but it has tragic elements) but i haven't seen any movies with that concept.

damn, measure for measure would be horrifying set in a high school, but all too believable, and now i really want to see that D:

You guys should definitely check out the play Teenage Dick! It’s a Richard III adaptation that’s about extremely brutal student government elections but also ableism, misogyny and cultures of popularity/bullying in the digital age; both Richard and Buck (Buckingham) have Cerebral Palsy and Buck uses a wheelchair.

It’s got some humor (see student government) but it’s definitely emotionally moving and tragic too!

The major warning is that there is an on-stage depiction of (bullying-related) suicide which I was very much not expecting going into the production despite having read Richard III because that’s, well, murder. But if you can tolerate that it’s a very very good show.

king hamlet and hamlet:

[ Ides 2023 that deserves a repost]

Foreground: Cinna, Casca, Decimus, Brutus, Metellus, g.Casca, Titinius, Cassius

Background: Antony, Calpurnia, Caesar- at least.. it WAS Caesar. 🫡🙏🏻😔

my name is Casc and wen the day is ides of march the king must pay with all my frends (but firstly me) i do the stab i set us free

the prequel:

my name is Casc and in the nite wen sway of erth doth shayk with mite wen tempests flaym and portents sho i run away to cicero.

my name is Cass and wen it storms with fyre and portentous forms and other romans tayk their rest i walk outsyd i bare my brest

My nayms unnown

And wen it’s sprynge

I go to warne

The wuld-be kynge

Though he’ll not heede

Mine dredful truthe

I shoute “Bewayr”

I saye the sooth

For me, the Ides of March simply wouldn’t be complete without a picspam of Brutus and Cassius having ridiculous levels of sexual tension.

LOOK ALIVE, SUNSHINE

I was going to skip doing an Ides illustration this year, but I decided to pull out something from my illustrations vault at the last minute after watching the news in the Philippines the other night. the first Ides illustration was prompted by feelings of frustration and grief seeing the Marcos family come back into power and also that ballot substitution bullshit. and. well!!! you know how it is! we're on year 3 of making these illustrations, baby!

so let’s get into it: fuck Brutus, my man Cassius is getting center stage this time! after all, it’s Cassius who typically initiates the conspiracy while Brutus steals the spotlight. Brutus is here, though, he’s the one with blood on his hand, in reference to the account where Cassius accidentally stabs him in the hand trying to get another hit on Caesar.

it’s thematically compelling if you take into account that Cassius is mentioned at the start of Brutus’ biography as someone who finds tyranny intolerable (in addition: that dinner scene with Mark Antony)

Cassius and Brutus: The Memory of the Liberators, Elizabeth Rawson

Brutus, the Noble Conspirator, Kathryn Tempest

Cassius Dio 44.34

and Brutus is later mentioned to have taken part of Caesar’s power only to be dissuaded from people from fully embracing all of that

Plutarch, Brutus 7 (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert)

and Cassius, by accident, wounds Brutus in the act of assassinating Caesar. It’s like….he’s being compelled…..to act as a hand of Justice on behalf of the Republic……a little bit…..

Life of Augustus, Nicolaus of Damascus (trans. Toher)

and to preemptively cut off people from doing Caesar apologia in my inbox: we are engaging in a long and established tradition of using the Ides of March and the people who participated in it to discuss other stuff. you know. allegory and allusion and all of that. also ancient Roman conspiracies are fun. thank you & goodnight.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

Pictured, from top to bottom (actors are playing Richard unless otherwise noted): Cate Blanchett (Sydney Bell, 2008); Ian McKellen (Prospect Theatre, 1969); Fiona Shaw (National Theatre/BBC, 1997); Ralph Fiennes (Almeida, 2000); Michael Maertens (Berliner Ensemble, 2001); Dorothee Hartinger as the Queen (Berliner Ensemble, 2001); Jeffrey Carlson (Yale Repertory, 2007); Oliver Rix as Aumerle (RSC, 2013); David Tennant (RSC, 2013); Ben Whishaw (BBC, 2012)

@girlguidrigildo here we go

Obtained a (digital) edition of Hamlet that - for some reason - decided to illustrate Horatio and Hamlet’s scenes using art lifted from Mark Twain’s first edition of The Prince and The Pauper. And frankly it’s incredible:

I mean they’re not wrong for this choice, but it was definitely a choice

if you’re on a boat you’re dead BUT if you’re on a boat you also can’t die BUT this is because by being on a boat. you’re already dead

twelfth night by william shakespeare