malcolm: i cant be king! i like sex too much, which is morally way worse than our current king, who likes to brutally and indiscriminately murder children
i have a bunch of shit to do today and im gonna need a distraction later so rn i’ll say “while many couples in the literary canon had previously demonstrated classic tenderness there is a Modern Tenderness™️ that was 100% invented by beatrice and benedick” and hope somebody asks me to explain
oh, well thank u for asking!!!
ok so y’all know that i am queen of Stop Complaining About Love At First Sight In Shakespeare Plays It Was A Common Plot Device And I’m Sorry But You Really Just Gotta Fuckin Roll With It, Treat It Like Ghosts/Fairies/Witches IE A Fantastical Element That Enables The Plot To Occur but what’s so special about beatrice and benedick is that they’re one of the exceptionally few shakespearean couples (hamlet and ophelia are a notable exception, though they’re at least romantically involved from the jump) who already have a long history with each other when we meet them. and, as we learn later, there is a whole ass background to them that we hear exactly one (1) explicit reference to, beatrice’s quiet admission at the party about her double heart for his single one, false dice, etc. (and plenty of old plays are about gossip, but god does this old play about gossip feel modern in the little slices of ancient history we get, the small-town drama of ill-kept secrets). but with everything that they are to each other and have been, through all the merry wars of wit etc etc, what i love love loveabout beatrice and benedick is that they’re friends
they’re old friends. they’ve known each other forever (i get frustrated by ppl casting them as twenty-somethings; not only does it textually make more sense for them to be older, but why wouldn’t you take the opportunity for them to have known each other since they were young-n-stupid and now, twenty years later, find themselves in their forties and no less stupid for the effort??). they have inside jokes, for god’s sake. lbr, “you always end with a jade’s trick” is referring to SOMETHING— sexual? embarrassing? both? only beatrice and benedick know
i have such a vivid picture in my mind of exactly how id stage their scene right after the wedding:
time has passed. out in the backyard the wedding decorations have sagged, chairs are kicked over, crepe paper sits in sad little heaps as beatrice sits in a deck chair chain-smoking in her bridesmaid’s dress. she’s in that post-crying phase of “my makeup dried all down my face in weird tragic rivulets and i look absolutely batshit but why bother wiping it off im just gonna start crying again” when benedick shows up, and god how fckin tender is “have you wept all this while?” “ay and i will weep awhile longer” “i will not desire that”. you can just see him standing there on the back porch, all limp and useless because the woman he loves is in pain and he can’t do anything about it. so he plops down next to her and they sit there in sad but companionable silence, a moment of stillness after all the chaos, until finally it settles over him that god who even cares? everything’s fucked and all these secrets are so stupid and they both know it anyway so it’s very casually that he reaches over, swipes her cigarette from her fingers, takes a drag and says “i do love nothing in the world so well as you. is not that strange?”
two old friends side by side during a crisis. twenty years and the timing’s never been right, but it never is, is it? and one friend says to the other “it’s been you the whole time. fuckin wild, huh?”
modern tenderness/mortifying ordeal of being known/self recognition through the other etc
i can NOT stop thinking about when c.s. lewis introduced a character by saying “his name, unfortunately, was Eustace Scrubb” like BRUH no need to do him dirty like that you GAVE him that name. tf
You forgot he immediately followed it with “and he almost deserved it.”
do you ever think about how weird it is that the moral of Frankenstein is kind of less just “graverobbing is weird and creepy” and more “take some fucking responsibility if you’re going to do so”
“if you’re going to create a large corpse son, you better be ready to love him”
“We can’t play God and then wash our hands of the results.”
Mythbusters ended too soon. I feel like The Cask Of Amontillado is exactly the myth they would have tested.
Like, figuring out how long it takes the mortar to dry. Finding the maximum amount of time before knocking down a recently built brick wall. Establishing the best place on a recently bricked wall to topple it and escape.
And then, doing all of that while drunk.
Mythbusters, you left us too soon.
actually, they made that episode – I have a copy of it in my basement, wanna see?
Victor refusing to make the Monster a wife because he was worried they’d breed is such a cop out. Like, you’re cobbling together body parts from charnel houses. You can just not give her any ovaries. You can just spay her like a cat. Why are you this dumb Victor. You’re a doctor.
the implication that victor spend weeks giving the monster a working dick is also extremely weird
Something to remember is that Victor didn’t just give the monster a working dick! He wanted his creation to be made of the best parts of men-it’s why the monster is made up of so many different pieces rather than one fresh corpse, why he’s so large, and why Victor is disappointed that he isn’t beautiful.
So, what does this mean? It means that Victor looked at the dicks of various corpses, testing not only to make sure they work, but also to find what he considered to be the best corpse dick. Does this mean the monster was extremely hung? Or did Victor simply pick the dick that seemed most attractive to him? Did he memorize the appearance of the dicks, or did he line them up to compare?
We’ll never know, because the original story never touches on the subject, and it’s one of the few flaws in Mary Shelley’s work.
I know I started this conversation but I’m so sorry I did
Considering we know who Mary Shelley was spending time around I guarantee this was a CONVERSATION that she actively and adamantly refused to actually include in the text
Well, there is ONE adaptation which includes this very discussion.
So. Today in class we assigned Macbeth roles to students to read. When I asked the class who wants to be Lady Macbeth, a young man raised his hand. I kind of stared at him like “Lady Macbeth,” and he nodded like “I know what I’m about ma’am.” So then the student who ended up as Macbeth raised his hand and said “HE’S THE ONE, HE’S MY WIFE!” So I said “yeah sure why not,” and the entire class period they were blowing kisses to each other and winking at each other, and every now and then Macbeth would say “I’m the luckiest man on Earth” and Lady Macbeth would put a hand to his chest, and be like “BABE!”.
I just stared at them, knowing that they CLEARLY have never read ‘Macbeth’ before, so… all this lovey dovey… I don’t know if I have the heart to tell them the truth.
Update:
Macbeth is absolutely willing to fucking throw down for Lady Macbeth. Has already threatened a wall, a desk, a few students, a textbook that was neither his nor Lady Macbeth’s, and me
Lady Macbeth is enjoying the attention and has begun to use this new connection to his advantage. I’m starting to suspect he’s read ahead in the play.
Macbeth is going to end up living in detention at this rate.
Macbeth has no idea that he is the tragedy of the story. Claims to be the hero of the play, fails to see the irony in this
Macbeth slowly scooted his desk across the classroom to hold hands with Lady Macbeth. He was not subtle.
Macbeth has proposed on several occasions. Lady Macbeth just laughs and says they’re already married.
Macbeth’s girlfriend is in the class with them and is “totally not jealous or anything just thinks this whole fucking play is a waste of time”
Lady Macbeth should probably be a theatre major at some point, he fucking rocked Act V scene I
Other teachers and staff are emailing me about the “lovely lords”. Lady Macbeth now refuses to answer to anything other than Lady Macbeth and is always very upset when people don’t call him by his proper title.
Exciting news: we just published our interview with Sophie Grace Chappell, the author of over 100 articles and the UK’s only transgender philosophy professor!
What’s her tip for getting into philosophy?
‘Read, read, read, read, read. When you’re doing philosophy, reading is the petrol in the tank; if you don’t read, you’re not going anywhere.’
And how does she assess the current situation for trans people in the UK?
‘This lack of visibility makes it too easy for transgender people to be monstered—we become a dark vague threat that no one actually knows, not people with faces but a “woke mob” or shadowy semi-criminalised lurkers in the Ladies’.’
GIVEAWAY ALERT! Want to win some Eidolon swag to kick off the school year? Four lucky Substack subscribers will each receive their choice of a mug or a (recently New York Magazine-endorsed) tote from our store!
old paperbacks, messy hair, mismatched socks, disorganized playlists, kisses on collarbone, smeared mascara, crumpled paper, art galleries, museums, rainy sunsets and gothic architecture, coffee, studying under dim light
