why blame you me to love you? @gender-ganymede - Tumblr Blog

i love you miranda the tempest i love you helena all's well that ends well i love you princess of france love's labour's lost i love you mrs page and mrs ford merry wives of windsor i love you innogen cymbeline i love you portia merchant of venice i love you tamora titus andronicus i love you gorgeous and slightly insane women in underrated shakespeare plays

#oh my god please i want to see the tempest just for miranda #shes like the girl version of frederick from pirates of penzance

cyberpunkboytoy

To my knowledge, live performances of Titus Andronicus involve post-assault Lavinia spending the rest of the play bloody, with red dripping down her chin and crude, soaking bandages wrapped around her stumps.

I'd love a staging where she's cleaned up fairly quickly. She's stitched, she's washed up, she's wearing fresh clothes with long sleeves to cover her stubs and her mouth stays closed and free of bleeding—and the rest of the cast still treat her as just as horrifying of a sight. Gruesome, too sad to look at. They point at her, who for all intents and purposes looks like a regular young woman with long sleeves, and shriek of how harrowing a sight she is.

(because it's not actually the violence they care about, right? At the end, they care more about her lost chastity than her lost hands. The ugliness is not visual but superimposed onto her. And isn't it all the more disturbing, that she could outwardly look almost unchanged but they would still treat her like a tragedy?)

#PLEASE because all i can think as im reading it is that i wish they would treat Lavinia even the slightest bit gentler #what happened to her is awful and her family's grief is real #but it benefits her in no way to be treated like a grotesque object or a “thing”#titus andronicus

Posting the below in case anyone wants to join me in my "Shakespeare Book Club" (I'm the only member right now)

Basically, I'm trying to read all of Shakespeare's works in one year, and giving myself a week per play.

Since I'm posting this late, I'm already on Titus Andronicus... but anyone who wants to join me in reading/posting discussions throughout the year is more than welcome!!

Also, i'm reading the annotated folger editions, but it's by no means a requirement!! Any edition will do!!

#shakespeare #book club #reading challenge #join me friends!!

callsignsundance

it actually makes me feel sick how much of titus andronicus is about families and more specifically siblinghood. saturninus and bassianus. titus and marcus. the andronici siblings, particularly lavinia and lucius. chiron and demetrius, and later, aaron's son as well. it's all the inherent horror of being a sibling, being so tied to someone that they can never not be a part of you, even more so than a parent or a child. a mother or a husband can be replaced but who can grow me a new brother.

#currently reading titus and this is all ive been thinking about #titus andronicus

aq2003

grabbed all of the ebook versions of the folger shakespeare library's annotated versions of shakespeare's plays (+sonnets and poems) and put them all in one place in case anyone is interested

#resource #shakespeare #come get your ebooks woo!!!

aq2003

this is so cool and also rosencrantz and guildenstern's sign names are killing me lol

butchhamlet

i also think some of my hamlet takes/interpretations are somewhat inseparable from the fact that i read hamlet as at least fairly young, regardless of exactly how old he is, because the way the older characters in the play treat him resonates very deeply with my experience of being a mentally ill teenager. like, you know something is wrong, you know this thing you're experiencing (in hamlet's case, grief, but also the knowledge of the murder) is real and it's unimaginably painful and it might actually kill you, and yet not ONLY are the people around you telling you to just Be Normal and Get Over It, they are ALSO?? acting like everything is FINE?? they're walking around and living their lives like everything is perfectly normal and the same it's always been, and they're interacting with you like they expect you to live that way too, and at some point you inevitably hear the siren song of "just how much do i have to act out before they're FORCED to acknowledge it?" and then you put on an antic disposition and kill your situationship's dad, you know how it is.

this doesn't mean hamlet has to literally be a teenager. like, hell, you could have your thirtysomething hamlet and still lean into this reading, because it would be really compelling to highlight that a thirty-year-old hamlet is a fully grown adult being shoved into the role of a teenager/youth because the generation above him refuses to treat him like an adult or allow him autonomy. but i do think this is why hamlet as, like, Traditional Handsome Brooding Protagonist man almost always falls flat for me, because your average traditional handsome brooding protagonist man isn't being constantly infantilized, denied, ignored, told his emotions are meaningless, told he can't possibly be an authority on his own experience, etc. obviously some of this is stated in the text (particularly claudius's get-over-it speech), but in performance it falls flat for me if he's just stalking thirtyfiveishly around the castle as Some Guy Who Also Lives Here. no!!! they put that prince in the INCONVENIENT TEENAGER WE DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH box and you're gonna ACT LIKE IT

#this absolutely #i first read hamlet when i was 15 and this is exactly the interpretation i always come back to #hamlet

helen-cooper-fan-account

I so badly wish I knew someone in person who liked hamlet so we could discuss it over coffee

thatgirlonstage

Okay okay I wanna play

Spin the wheel for a Shakespeare character!

Would you fuck, marry, or kill this character?

Fuck

Marry

Kill

Voting ended onJun 13, 2024

Reblog for sample size, etc. Would love to hear what you got + reasoning in the tags!

#I GOT HAMLET #dream come true #embarrassingly... i would rock his world

allsadnshit

Roasted chicken, ginger, daikon, shiitake mushroom soup with lime, cilantro, broccoli sprouts, and rice noodles

monsterlogic

allsadnshit

Thank u for this contribution

writing-is-a-martial-art

The divine right of kings but it's a curse

writing-is-a-martial-art

You will wear the crown, you have no choice, the spikes growing on your head have a metal sheen to them and coalesce into a mock halo. You will command, for your voice is a terrible thing, you are a terrible thing. You will be just, and you will be fair, for any grievances you cause to your people scar your body and leave lasting pain and false promises sizzle on your tongue like hot oil. Your god is watching and it won't forget what your ancestor did and it won't let you go

#the hollow crown #richard II act 3 scene 2 monologue my beloved

malvoliowithin

"problem plays" this "romances" that I'm proposing new and exciting Shakespearean Play Groupings for your amusement!

The Bad Dad Triad: King Lear, Henry IV Part 1, Romeo and Juliet

The "My Wife's A Floozy" Trifecta: Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, the Winter's Tale

The "Me And My Shitty Little Minion Are About To Fuck Up Your Shit Hardcore" Trilogy: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, the Tempest

The Falstaffiad: Henry IV part 1, Henry IV part 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor

The "Holy Fuck There's Two of 'Em" Saga: Twelfth Night, the Comedy of Errors

The "Dear Diary My Homoerotic Bullshit Has A Body Count Now" Series: Richard II, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus

The "Why Are The Fucking Trees Trying To Kill Me. Hate This Shit" Trilogy: Macbeth, the Winter's Tale, As You Like It

karl-von-moor-official

Ok but consider: A production of Hamlet that starts with the last scene and then Horatio has to play his role in the rest of the play, but he’s still completely dissolved in tears. Everyone else is oblivious and he has to keep it together for the sake of storytelling, but his voice cracks as he says “I think I saw him yesternight”, regret filling his tone, and he frantically holds on to Hamlet as he begs him not to follow the ghost; he practically chokes on his words as he shouts, “Be rul’d!” And he knows it’s no use, but he’s so reluctant to play his part in this and he can barely keep his emotions at bay. And then the end of the story draws nearer. He takes longer and longer to say his lines. He hesitates, tries to stretch out the little time he’s got left with Hamlet. He doesn’t want to be in this narrative, but he is. Until finally, as Hamlet decides to duel Laertes, Horatio simply gives up. Reluctantly, but knowingly, he accepts the fact that there’s nothing he can do but play his part and relive it all, just to honor Hamlet’s legacy and story. And Hamlet dies in his arms a second time.

#im obsessed with this idea #please god please i would give so much money to see this #i would pay money to DIRECT this your honor #hamlet #horatio

hamletthedane

cw transphobia

obviously this is an extremely bizarre tweet that got ratioed to hell and back, but it’s also hilarious that of all the authors in the entire English literary canon, she somehow landed on Shakespeare as the epitome of cisnormative writing.

like ma’am shakespeare’s characters go on stage and announce their gender to the audience within the first few lines in nearly every play. Including…you know….the very play you reference???

theabominableblogger

Some fun additions to this thread

hamletthedane

everybody who has ever read Shakespeare is currently in that thread like:

liveandletrain

AS YOU LIKE IT

everyone always cites Twelfth Night as peak Shakespearean Gender Fuckery but I dare anyone to look Rosalind from As You Like It in the eye and not acknowledge her as the most gender-fucking lead in Shakespeare’s entire bibliography.

Celia: “we must flee in disguise, so I shall be a demure country maid!”

Rosalind: “that sounds super rad, imma be a twink and name myself after the twinkiest twink that ever twinked!”

Celia: “that tracks”

Rosalind: “And then I’m gonna meet up with the guy I think is cute and help him practice flirting by pretending to be a twink pretending to be a girl (Aka me) and I’m going to be so incredibly normal about this.”

sophiamcdougall

William Shakespeare, visibly vibrating: Imagine a hot boy who is also a hot girl. Just imagine that. Are you imagining it yet? OK now imagine another one

stripedroseandsketchpads

Also people talk about in-universe cross dressing for modern purposes of casting, but even the most cisgender, heterosexual of Early Modern English theater had crossdressing.

Because the female roles were played by men.

Every play Shakespeare’s troupe or any other troupe ever performed at the fucking Globe (or the Swan, etc etc) had drag in it.

Any female character? Was always played by a man (as far as we know anyways) in a dress.

Lady Macbeth? Man (likely young) in a dress. Juliet? Boy in a dress. Any romantic female lead? Boy. In. A. Dress. Deal with it

#i fell in love with as you like it in high school because of how gender ambiguous the main romance is #like orlando is living the bisexual dream #imagine falling in love with a woman and then falling in love with a man and then finding out theyre the same person #supremely 10 out of 10

beeftea78-deactivated20200113

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

dukeofbookingham-deactivated202

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

let-the-awful-song-be-heard

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

theabigailthorn

I played Claudio once and I fully support this

bemusedlybespectacled

“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