Sage advice

[truepenny]

From George Chapman:

Counsels (as your entrails)
Should be unpierc'd and sound kept.

I've finished reading The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, which is certainly not one of the world's great plays, but which does feature a dance of ghosts at the end. And Bussy is as long-winded dead as he is alive.

Also? Homoeroticism. And lots of it.

Comments

What?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Homoeroticism? In Elizabethan/Jacobean England?

Say it ain't so--

There's an article on historical homosexuality in the newest village voice which mentions Abe Lincoln and Will, but none of the rest of our boys. And it does mention the Robin Hood thing, but not the possible connection to Edward I.

Nor Richard Lionheart's little flings.... *g*

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0326/kaye.php

Unlike most queer theory pieces, it *does* make a nod to historical changes in views of sexuality. But not a significant one, sadly.

Re: What?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, but even I wasn't quite prepared for the Duke of Guise to say to Clermont D'Ambois, "Thou shalt my Mistresse be; me thinkes my bloud / Is taken vp to all loue vvith thy vertues." Now in context this is allegedly because Clermont preaches ascectic stoicism so persuasively that the Guise is renouncing fleshly pleasures to be in love with Clermont's mind and spirit, but I dunno. Especially when, at the end of the play, having revenged his brother and kept his honor, and despite having a mistress who loves him so much she literally cried her eyes out for him, he commits suicide so that he can follow the Guise into death. It starts to look like one of those Clermont + the Guise 4EVER!!!1! type deals.

I think this may be the most homoerotic Jacobean play I've ever read. Any more homoerotic and you tip right over into homosexual--which, I would argue, is what Marlowe did with Edward II, and more power to him.

Re: What?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Hurm. Is this our same Guise who kills everybody under the sun in Massacre at Paris? Or a relative?

There's some HoYay! in that one too, IIRC, for all the text is impossibly corrupt. But I think it's Henri HoYay!?

You're right, however, that is pretty blatant. Go George....

We may in general underestimate how much damage the Puritans and Victorians did to panopoly of human loyalty and sexuality. We might have avoided the 1950's entirely if somebody had just chopped off Stubbes' hand a little quicker. *g*

(Well, you know, everybody in *my* book is assuming that anybody Kit so much as talked to on the street must have been sleeping with him. We can always tar Chapman with the same brush: they were pretty good friends....)

Re: What?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yup, same Guise. There's an exceptionally squicky passage where Clermont is defending the Guise's actions basically with the argument, "They were asking for it," beloved of rapists since 4004 B.C. And the Guise in this play is a remarkably sympathetic character, standing up to Henri III and his toadies; apparently Chapman saw him as embodying true nobility in a degenerate age. Or something.

Have you seen anything that talks about Chapman's religion? I know he was exceptionally unfond of James I, having been imprisoned for his share in Eastward Ho!, but was he Catholic?

Re: What?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I think he (Chapman) was one of the cryptoCatholics, but I dunno why I think that.

Ew. Guise. Ew.

*g* Renaissance politics and religion. Man, the cold war was simple, wasn't it?

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Counsels (as your entrails)
Should be unpierc'd and sound kept.

Good advice, which I shall adhere to.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Especially the part about the entrails.