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Full🧵 here:
I finally watched The Sound of Music and like I get it now, I get it.
It’s a beautiful two hour love story of a strict man finally opening his heart again and then a fifty minute public service announcement to hate the nazis. Brilliant.
You’re not wrong there…
Reblogging this version cuz those two gifs show the sexiest duality a man can have.
2 things a man should do
Look at me like he can’t believe I exist
Hate nazis
The best part is that it’s a true fucking story y’all
I just read a detailed account of the Bal des Ifs and I’d never realised how funny this event was when you don’t focus on Madame de Pompadour. All I was taught at school is that it was the masquerade ball in 1745 where Louis XV first took (public) notice of la Pompadour, but what I didn’t know was that the former royal mistress had recently died so there was a vacancy so to speak, and a lot of noblewomen showed up specifically hoping to catch the King’s attention. But he came dressed up as a shrub (a yew tree similar to the ones in the royal topiary gardens) along with seven other men in identical costumes, so no one knew for sure which one was the King. People always focus on how Madame de Pompadour recognised the royal shrub and talked to him, but what about the women who didn’t!! History is written by the winners but I want to hear about the women who doggedly danced the minuet with random shrubs hoping this one was the one. My book mentions that a determined noble lady followed a yew tree outside the room on a hunch, only to find that she had bet on the wrong shrub. This is what the shrub costumes looked like by the way, imagine stalking one all over the park of Versailles at night because you think his gait looks kingly and you are an ambitious noblewoman
these are important postscripts, thank you
Guys, we've talked about this.
You need to give your domesticated wading ghosts larger death pools. I understand if you can't find a real Well, but you need an enclosure at least 5 times the size of the spirit itself.
Thank you for the PSA, and it’s certainly good advice! I am happy to report that in this particular photoset we’re looking at a temporary holding tank, possibly being used to keep a lab employee safe during a routine water test. There is a strict no-shared-space policy for outside contractors at reputable spirit preserves, both to keep the ghost from becoming frustrated at its inability to approach what it perceives as prey, and to ensure the safety of outside parties. Training sessions focusing heavily on positive reinforcement are used to get the ghost accustomed to the holding tank as well as short trips between the pond and an appropriate secured location. Many health checks and enrichment activities can be conducted directly at the water source, but sometimes a more controlled environment is required. Please be assured that the ghost in the photographs is doing ‘well’. ☆⌒( ^ ▽ ゜)
Unless you were a tech at NASA back in the day, when one time some hydrogen a) escaped in a particular building, and b) caught on fire. This was extremely difficult because hydrogen does NOT burn on the visible spectrum humans evolved to see (and flee). Rather, it technically does, but it’s so pale that in practice, no one could see it. Additionally, pure hydrogen burns without smoke and with so little ambient heat that you can’t really sense it till you walk into it. So, per the lore, for a few days all the techs in that building just walked around brandishing brooms in front of them like lances. If your broom lit on fire, congrats! You have located more burning hydrogen! Do not proceed!
oh my god it's real and it was LITERALLY called "the broom method" holy shit
Would anyone like to see pictures of this bird I’m friends with
I love her
i am loving people’s attempts to identify this bird its just an australian magpie, she’s not a chimera, she’s not a fucked up crow, etc. she is just….. a regular run of the mill magpie
She is also a mother…. here is her yelling son who she brought to me one time
HOW THE HELL DID YOU BEFRIEND AN AUSTRALIAN MAGPIE
i give her chips sometimes
From what I’ve heard, australian magpies are actually quite nice if they trust you not to hurt them. Swooping season happens because, as a species, they’ve learned that most humans are Dangerous and so they preemptively attack to protect themselves and their young. If you’ve been nice to a group of magpies, though, they’ll remember you and you won’t be swooped at.
Magpies are extremely cool birds, and very intelligent… which means that they know that humans are the biggest threat around and that we can be good friends. Thus, swooping, and also not swooping humans who have proven themselves to be trustworthy sources of food.
The funniest interaction I ever had with some magpies was when one of my former workplaces had our Christmas lunch as a picnic in a park. A pair of magpies were teaching their fledgeling how to beg for food from humans. First one would approach, crouch down and coo at us; someone threw them a bit of cheese. Then the other adult approached, crouched down and cooed at us; someone threw a piece of cabanossi. Both tidbits were picked up, taken back and shared with the offspring… then the adults were standing there looking at the fledgeling and then at us, obviously going “Go on, then, you try it!”
Fledgeling magpie nervously walked closer to us, looked back at its parents, then half-crouched and yelled “RAWK!” in our direction. We cracked up laughing, startling the poor baby, but he or she got over it pretty quickly when a HAIL of bits of cheese and sausage landed all around.
@asymbina @brookietf @tharook
THIS IS A GOOD NARRATIVE <3
I’m fascinated with the concept of baby animals being TAUGHT, complete with focus-drawing behaviors, followed by demonstration, about how to interact with humans.
So yeah, baby can have some chips.
@elodieunderglass
Emitting a recogniseable call is key with magpies. I lived just down the street from a park with a huge swooping problem for about 20 years, so I had time to run a lot of experiments. The conclusion I came to is that magpies don’t recognise humans visually, but aurally. If you make a friendly noise every time you see them (mine is a cooing ‘hello birdie’), don’t startle them or try to get too close, and politely go around them when they’re on the ground, they’ll soon remember you as a Polite Human and you’ll be exempt from the swooping as soon as you make the right noise.
Which is why I routinely crossed that park in swooping season, greeting the first magpie I saw in my usual fashion, and then strolled across the park in safety while assorted people in business attire ran past me screaming with their briefcases or handbags over their heads. The filthy looks I used to get when I stopped to speak to a magpie and then it went off to attack someone else were really pretty funny. Was it my fault they weren’t being polite?
We moved into a new swooping zone a few years ago, and I immediately began the campaign again. I got swooped a couple of times the first year, but never since. it really does work!
today in “things i’m disproportionately emotional about”:
it’s facial reconstructions of prehistoric humans!!
like, look at this part-homo sapiens, part-neandertal man from well over 30,000 years ago:
doesn’t he just look like a dude you’d wanna hang out with? like he probably washes dishes in the kitchen with you, and has excellent weed
what a charming fellow. what stories he probably has to tell. i’d definitely go shoot the shit with him on Contemplation Rock after i’d finished my day’s work carving a bone flute for the autumn hunting ceremony, or whatever
people have been people ever since people first became people, i tell you what
they all had lives and histories and families and friends and dumb gossip and games they played and total bullshit in which they believed wholeheartedly
they all argued about the nature of the world, and of themselves
they all sang songs
they all drew pictures
they all buried their dead in graves, and they buried their dead in graves well before they did a lot of that other stuff. they buried their dead with flowers, with panther claws, with the bones of animals they’d killed, with the bones of family members who had died at the same time or earlier. they buried their dead with their arms folded across their chests
they fell in love
they took care of their old and their sick and their disabled, even when it cost them
they made new things, and worried about what the new things meant for people everywhere, as a whole
Oh I like him he looks like he would appreciate my jokes
This dude would have great stories at a get-together and would bring some really great homemade dip.
I feel like he really digs Lo-Fi Music
This guy was sculpted by Alfons and Adrie Kennis, and their Neanderthal reconstructions are all delightful.
I love the kid in the last picture a lot- they look like a kid, just a little kid who’s done some mischief and is trying not to laugh about it.
I also adore their Lucy- they’ve struck a wonderful balance between the falling angel and the rising ape.
And their Turkana boy- there’s something precious and wistful in those eyes.
But my favorite has got to be their reconstruction of H. floresiensis.
Just look at her. That’s a face of someone who’s lived and seen a lot, but also a face that’s known love and joy and laughter. That’s a face with a soul.
They are all beautiful
What an amazing work, Kennis & Kennis!
why… why is Lucy looking at me like she’s my granny?…
she is your granny.
a collection of motivational insights regarding content creation and creative hobbies
and of course the classic
Elizabeth Bathory by Katya Gudkina
I don't get why they insist on casting the hollywoody superman dude bros for The Witcher series. Zach McGowan is RIGHT HERE.
That here is a Geralt alright. Change his hair color and we're good
I see your Zach McGowan and I raise you a John Wells:
Are there any snakes that you feel are crazy and don’t seem like something that is from earth
You will never be able to convince me that Arabian sand boas aren't a child's drawing of a snake somehow come to life.
Also, blunt-headed tree snakes look like they're form a planet where they have sentient spaghetti noodles instead of snakes:
Elephant trunk snakes look like someone tried to describe a boa to someone from another planet and they reconstructed one based on that description (and also it melted a little):
Tentacled snakes have tentacles at the ends of their noses that look like little mustaches. They're obviously from a much cooler planet where snakes have mustaches:
And the spider-tailed horned viper has such an impressive lure adaptation it's hard to believe it's real! They have lures at the end of their tails that look so much like spiders when they move them (to attract birds, their favorite prey!), it's incredible.
The coolest thing is that all of these snakes, weird and wonderful as they are, have very real evolutionary reasons to look the way they do! It's pretty dang incredible, and I feel so lucky to be alive at the same time as so many awesome snakes!
I did not know that today was going to be the day that we got a compelling new theory of how the “witches flying around on broomsticks” thing came about, but here we are.
I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:
isn’t he beautiful
listen to the SOUND when he bites
and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them
2000 pounds of Good Boy
you get me
I honestly expected like 5 notes, what HAPPENED here
More tags on this ridiculous post:
Wait, thats the 2nd biggest crocodile? Then what does the biggest one look like?
That would be Cassius, a very old Saltwater crocodile who is estimated to be around 114 years old and lives at Marineland Melanesia in Green Island, Australia. His official measurement is 5.48 meters, which makes him the largest in captivity currently. Because Utan is only slightly smaller and much younger, (only in his 50s), he will likely break Cassius’ record eventually. But for now, Cassius holds the title:
He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.
A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.
And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator. He is estimated to be just over 6m.
This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:
It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.
The Bull Shark lost.
THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out. The Dominator:
And that’s STILL not the biggest.
The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs). He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines. It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.
And here’s why:
Also, to prevent credit from getting buried on a separate reblog, I have been informed that the above image of the crocodile with the cartoon eyes and halo was made by @rashkah! (And it is wonderful and I would like to thank him for its existence, because it perfectly captures my feelings about terrifying giant primordial reptiles.)
@theonewhocheeps
Holy fuck
As far as Brutus is concerned I was led to believe that he lost that arm when relatively young.
Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.
Here’s him with a prey.
And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!
Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.
This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.
So how big is Gustave?
No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.
His estimated size is of at least 5,5m but some give him over 6m.
The terrifying parts are:
1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.
2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.
3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.
And this is NOT ALL.
Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.
He lived to tell the tale - my question is:
What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?
*Crocodile Dundee voice* Mate, that’s not Gustave:
THIS is Gustave:
And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE. He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.
This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:
And THIS is a god among his kind:
This is it, folks. The Final Form. THIS is what peak performance looks like.
Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship. Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth. EVER. Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates. Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet. It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.
That’s a problem.
Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure. Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.
But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM. What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces. A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area. The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.
Compare, 26 inch skull:
vs 29 inch skull:
Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).
And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:
and Purussaurus:
The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure. This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:
and a truly extraordinary individual:
One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look. A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth. They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down. Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.
Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:
than the pinnacle of his kind:
Lolong! It means Gramps or Grandpa, because he’s a relic of an ancient world where crocs more massive than he was walked the earth. His body is on display somewhere right now though I forgot where.
Every time I see this post there’s more crocodiles. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
@laurangeblossom
So many good boys
Over 100 Young Crocodiles Find Refuge on Their Father’s Back in India’s Chambal River
Colección favela verano 2022
hmm. serve.
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:
Paris: Younger than she are happy mothers made. Capulet: And too soon marr’d are those so early made.
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.