Not sure if you’ve posted about this book yet, but Richard Burt’s Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998, revised edt. 1999) is a damn good book on queer Shakespeare, with a focus on film/TV adaptations and pop culture. Well worth checking out.
Submitted by shakespearean—thank you!
By Meltha.
Mercutio first met Romeo in hell. At least, that was where he had thought he was. Hell, after all, is a place that has no hope left in it. Mercutio had seen his father, his mother, his two older brothers and his little sister fall ill with plague, slowly slipping away each day. His God-fearing neighbors had turned their backs on them, fear stripping them of any semblance of humanity. Eventually, in their panic, the people of Verona nailed shut the doors of every effected house to prevent the spread of contagion or the escape of the doomed inhabitants. He had been surrounded by the continual stink of death, and hope had ceased to exist for him except as a dim memory.
For three weeks Mercutio had lived in that hell, watching helplessly as his family died one by one, but inexplicably the disease did not touch him. However, there was no food left in the house, and he had soon sunk to the level of eating rats, the only creatures to break the edict of quarantine. He began to grow delirious and weaker day by day, his mind becoming unhinged with famine, grief, and terror.
But hell was not to be his final resting place. At long last the door was pried open, and Friar Lawrence had stood silhouetted against daylight so blindingly bright that Mercutio had thought he might be God. The holy man had been horrified at what had been done during his absence to visit one of his superiors in Mantua, and the friar had come to put the dead to rest; he had not expected any survivors. In his shadow had stood a small boy, barely daring to peek around the voluminous folds of the friar’s brown robes. Friar Lawrence had looked down, only just now realizing the child was there.
“Great saints! Romeo, thou must not enterest this place. What dost thou here? No, answer not, I have not time for thy idle prattle. Be a good child and run back to thy parents’ house,” he had said.
“Will he die?” he asked, frowning seriously.
“Fear not,” he said kindly, bending to speak to him face to face with a consoling expression. “There are worse things than death, and those who have treated these poor souls with such contempt have far more to fear than this one does if he be called to his eternal home. But hie thee hence! There’s a good lad.”
With a long backward glance, the little boy ran along the cobbled streets. His eyes had briefly connected with Mercutio’s bleary ones, and somehow in that moment a bond had been forged. Meanwhile, uttering Paternosters and Aves with an urgency that seemed to propel him with superhuman force, Friar Lawrence had carried the weak and ill Mercutio back to the church where he nursed him to health over several months.
Mercutio had been ten years old.
Submit your own headcanons about Shakespeare’s works!
Your mod has finally gotten around to emptying out several things that were sitting in his inbox and his to-queue bookmark, so you can expect to see several new posts over the next few days. To keep up the influx of content, please submit anything you have been sitting on that is even remotely related to queer Shakespeare! I’d like to get this place up and running again.
Tchy
![[Two male actors, one in Elizabethan-era men’s costume, the other in a corseted blue dress, from a production of The Tempest. They both have short hair, and neither is wearing make-up. The man playing the male character is standing and the man playing the female character is sitting, on the other side of a painted column. They are gazing lovingly at each other.]
The theatre company is The Lord Chamberlain’s Men—an English, all-male touring group named after the playing company for which Shakespeare worked for most of his career. Their productions of cross-dressing plays are made infinitely queerer by having male actors playing female characters who pretend to be men—a dramatic conceit that the plays were written for in the first place.
(Submitted by epicenenineteen.)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx4ik1DyNA1qgb8u8o1_400.jpg "[Two male actors, one in Elizabethan-era men’s costume, the other in a corseted blue dress, from a production of The Tempest. They both have short hair, and neither is wearing make-up. The man playing the male character is standing and the man playing the female character is sitting, on the other side of a painted column. They are gazing lovingly at each other.]
The theatre company is The Lord Chamberlain’s Men—an English, all-male touring group named after the playing company for which Shakespeare worked for most of his career. Their productions of cross-dressing plays are made infinitely queerer by having male actors playing female characters who pretend to be men—a dramatic conceit that the plays were written for in the first place.
(Submitted by epicenenineteen.)")
[Two male actors, one in Elizabethan-era men’s costume, the other in a corseted blue dress, from a production of The Tempest. They both have short hair, and neither is wearing make-up. The man playing the male character is standing and the man playing the female character is sitting, on the other side of a painted column. They are gazing lovingly at each other.]
The theatre company is The Lord Chamberlain’s Men—an English, all-male touring group named after the playing company for which Shakespeare worked for most of his career. Their productions of cross-dressing plays are made infinitely queerer by having male actors playing female characters who pretend to be men—a dramatic conceit that the plays were written for in the first place.
(Submitted by epicenenineteen.)
It would be marvellous of you to drop something in the submit box.
Regards,
The Management
p.s. I fixed the link. It’ll actually go to the submit box now.
p.p.s. I am clearly the best at life.
![lgbtlaughs:
[Middle Top: title in red reads “Ramona and Juliet.” Middle: paragraph on project. Top Left: girl in blue victorian dress and pulled back hair labelled “day,” the same woman with a long braid and red ball gown labelled “night.” The name “Ramona” is below. Top Right: girl in light pink dress with blue trimming labelled “day,” the same girl in a brighter pink gown labelled “night.” Below is the name “Juliet.” Bottom Left: two pictures of the same man in suits. The name below says “Mercutio.” Bottom Right: man in a top hat and foppish attire with a cane labelled “day,” the same man in a ruffled suit labelled “night.” Below the name reads “Nurse.”]
My drama class did a project on Romeo and Juliet where we had to design costumes for a specific era and we could “add our own elements”. We chose to do a Victorian time period… with lesbians and a male nurse because we wished Romeo and Juliet contained a foppish male nurse. There was dissent among our group over the name, though. A member of our group wanted to do “Julia and Juliet”. I’m glad I fought for “Ramona and Juliet”, though.
(Submitted by wutevrrr)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmkb7n34Je1qak0qdo1_500.jpg "lgbtlaughs:
[Middle Top: title in red reads “Ramona and Juliet.” Middle: paragraph on project. Top Left: girl in blue victorian dress and pulled back hair labelled “day,” the same woman with a long braid and red ball gown labelled “night.” The name “Ramona” is below. Top Right: girl in light pink dress with blue trimming labelled “day,” the same girl in a brighter pink gown labelled “night.” Below is the name “Juliet.” Bottom Left: two pictures of the same man in suits. The name below says “Mercutio.” Bottom Right: man in a top hat and foppish attire with a cane labelled “day,” the same man in a ruffled suit labelled “night.” Below the name reads “Nurse.”]
My drama class did a project on Romeo and Juliet where we had to design costumes for a specific era and we could “add our own elements”. We chose to do a Victorian time period… with lesbians and a male nurse because we wished Romeo and Juliet contained a foppish male nurse. There was dissent among our group over the name, though. A member of our group wanted to do “Julia and Juliet”. I’m glad I fought for “Ramona and Juliet”, though.
(Submitted by wutevrrr)")
[Middle Top: title in red reads “Ramona and Juliet.” Middle: paragraph on project. Top Left: girl in blue victorian dress and pulled back hair labelled “day,” the same woman with a long braid and red ball gown labelled “night.” The name “Ramona” is below. Top Right: girl in light pink dress with blue trimming labelled “day,” the same girl in a brighter pink gown labelled “night.” Below is the name “Juliet.” Bottom Left: two pictures of the same man in suits. The name below says “Mercutio.” Bottom Right: man in a top hat and foppish attire with a cane labelled “day,” the same man in a ruffled suit labelled “night.” Below the name reads “Nurse.”]
My drama class did a project on Romeo and Juliet where we had to design costumes for a specific era and we could “add our own elements”. We chose to do a Victorian time period… with lesbians and a male nurse because we wished Romeo and Juliet contained a foppish male nurse. There was dissent among our group over the name, though. A member of our group wanted to do “Julia and Juliet”. I’m glad I fought for “Ramona and Juliet”, though.
(Submitted by wutevrrr)
By Meltha.
Hamlet’s eyes had been startlingly blue, as blue as fresh spring violets. As they stared up at him, sightless, from the face of the dead prince lying on the floor of Elsinore’s main hall, Horatio wished he could tear his sight away from those perfect eyes that had, moments before, urged him to live and tell the tale of what had transpired to bring Denmark under the heel of young Fortinbras, the almost unbelievable twists and turns of brother against brother, ghosts appearing with commands of vengeance, madness and self-slaughter and poisoned foils, the ending of a dynasty and the death of so many that the dead outnumbered the living.
That was the tale Hamlet wished him to tell, and he would, as far and as wide as it might be told. If it took him all his life and that life was as long as Methuselah’s, he would tell and retell the story until the whole of Denmark, of Europe, of the world knew of the tragedy that had befallen the royal house. But it was not the tale that Horatio remembered with greatest clarity. That tale was one that would live quietly within his memory, always closest to the foreground of his mind, yet it would never pass the portals of speech, save perhaps in the murmurings of sleep. It was Hamlet who had told him he sometimes spoke as he slumbered, after all.
Horatio remembered a day in Copenhagen under a brilliantly blue sky in the pleasant warmth of June. There had been a festival, one that had involved dancing with charmingly pretty country girls to riotous music and the drinking of a good deal of ale. The day had worn on in a dreamy, perfect light that is possible only when one is eighteen and full of assurance that life will become better and better with each passing year, utterly forgetting any troubles or misgivings. When night had fallen at last, the two friends had found themselves in a drinking house of moderate repute, savoring something that was at least pretending to be ale but seemed to be less strong than the rather questionable-looking pitcher of water on the table.
“I tell you, Horatio,” Hamlet had said, leaning so far back in his chair he was in danger of toppling to the floor, “tis a lovely thing to be the likes of us, is’t not?”
![[A digital drawing of two light-skinned women with brown hair, both in elaborate gowns with veils pinned to their hair. One wears a red gown with long sleeves; the other is in a short-sleeved blue gown with long gloves. They are standing together, looking into each other’s eyes and smiling; the lady in red has her hand over the hand of the lady in blue.]
mintfrosting:
so I drew this
Lady Capulet and Lady Montague.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhj3vsjM7q1qduvu8o1_500.png "[A digital drawing of two light-skinned women with brown hair, both in elaborate gowns with veils pinned to their hair. One wears a red gown with long sleeves; the other is in a short-sleeved blue gown with long gloves. They are standing together, looking into each other’s eyes and smiling; the lady in red has her hand over the hand of the lady in blue.]
mintfrosting:
so I drew this
Lady Capulet and Lady Montague.")
[A digital drawing of two light-skinned women with brown hair, both in elaborate gowns with veils pinned to their hair. One wears a red gown with long sleeves; the other is in a short-sleeved blue gown with long gloves. They are standing together, looking into each other’s eyes and smiling; the lady in red has her hand over the hand of the lady in blue.]
so I drew this
Lady Capulet and Lady Montague.
![[A line drawing of two men, both in courtly attire. The younger-looking man is mostly in black, with a feathered cap, dark hair, and a book; the other, who looks a bit older and has a five o’clock shadow, is in light colours, with light hair and a short cape on his shoulders. The darkly dressed one is sitting facing forwards, with his eyes closed; his companion is turned towards him, leaning in, with his hand on the younger man’s leg.]
ohhhvienna:
by ~CupSmou on DeviantArt.
Whenever I see these two together on screen I just want to smoosh them together.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llvxy0BRLk1qbcwdpo1_500.png "[A line drawing of two men, both in courtly attire. The younger-looking man is mostly in black, with a feathered cap, dark hair, and a book; the other, who looks a bit older and has a five o’clock shadow, is in light colours, with light hair and a short cape on his shoulders. The darkly dressed one is sitting facing forwards, with his eyes closed; his companion is turned towards him, leaning in, with his hand on the younger man’s leg.]
ohhhvienna:
by ~CupSmou on DeviantArt.
Whenever I see these two together on screen I just want to smoosh them together.")
[A line drawing of two men, both in courtly attire. The younger-looking man is mostly in black, with a feathered cap, dark hair, and a book; the other, who looks a bit older and has a five o’clock shadow, is in light colours, with light hair and a short cape on his shoulders. The darkly dressed one is sitting facing forwards, with his eyes closed; his companion is turned towards him, leaning in, with his hand on the younger man’s leg.]
by ~CupSmou on DeviantArt.
Whenever I see these two together on screen I just want to smoosh them together.
