At long last, the highlight and ending of my London theatre marathon, and it would be yours, too: On stage Marlowe/Shakespeare slash fiction! I had hoped this to be the case from the sexy poster and the short summary, and when I acquired the programm and read it, I knew it, because among the listed crew is one Katherine Hardman, Intimacy Coordinator, whose previous Intimacy Coordinating tasks included AMC’s Interview With the Vampire. Clearly a woman who coordinated Lestat/Louis, Louis/Armand, and Lestat/Armand in an actor and audience friendly way would be up to Kit/Will, thought I. Thank you, RSC. And Liz Duffy Adams, who wrote the play. And Daniel Evans, who directed it.

Wyndham’s Theatre: Born With Teeth

Incidentally, the posters hadn’t said who would play whom, but I just assumed Ncuti Gatwa would be gay atheist spy Marlowe, and Edward Bluemel Shakespeare, and indeed this proved to be the case. Since this play is a two hander, meaning only two actors show up and are on stage the entire time, it needs a combination of great acting and hotness, and they both delivered.

( Come live with me and be my love… )

In conclusion: loved the play, loved the actors, loved the production, and am travelling back to Munich in a state of fannish delight.

Stella Duffy: Theodora : The Empress Theodora is one of those historical characters I am perennially interested in, and I have yet to find a novel about her entire life that truly satisfies me. So far, Gillian Bradshaw's The Bearkeeper's Daughter comes closest, but a) it's only about her last two or so years, and b) while she is a very important character, the main character is actually someone else, to wit, her illegitimate son through whose eyes we get to see her. This actually is a good choice, it helps maintaining her ambiguiity and enigmatic qualities while the readers like John (the main character) hear all kind of contradictory stories about her and have to decide what to believe. But it's not the definite take on Theodora's life I'm still looking for. Last year I came across James Conroyd Martin's Fortune's Child, which looked like it had another intriguing premise (Theodora dictating her memoirs to a Eunuch who used to be a bff but now has reason to hate her) but alas, squandered it. But I'm not giving up, and after hearing an interview with Stella Duffy about Theodora, both the woman and her novel, I decided to tackle this one, and lo: still not the novel about her entire life (it ends when she becomes Empress) I'm looking for, but still far better than Martin's while covering essentially the same biographical ground (i.e. Theodora's life until she becomes Empress; Martin wrote another volume about her remaining years, but since the first one let me down, I haven't read the second one).

What I appreciate about Duffy's Theodora: It does a great job bringing Constantinople to life, and our heroine's rags to riches story, WITHOUT either avoiding the dark side (there isn't even a question as to whether young - and I do mean very young - Theodora and her sisters have to prostitute themselves when becoming actresses, nobody assumes there is a choice, it's underestood to be part of the job) or getting salacious with it. There are interesting relationships between women (as between Theodora and Sophia, a dwarf). The novel makes it very clear that the acrobatics and body control expected from a comic actress (leaving the sexual services aside) are tough work and the result of brutal training, and come in handy for Theodora later when she has to keep a poker face to survive in very different situation. The fierce theological debates of the day feature and are explained in a way that is understandable to an audience which doesn't already know what Monophysites believe in, what Arianism is and why the Council of Chalcedon is important. (Theological arguments were a deeply important and constant aspects of Byzantine daily life in all levels of society, were especially important in the reign of Justinian and Theodora and are still what historical novels tend to avoid.) Not everyone who dislikes our heroine is evil and/or stupid (that was one of the reasons why I felt let down by Martin). I.e. Theodora might resent and/or dislike them in turn, but the author, Duffy, still shows the readers where they are coming from. (For example: Justinian's uncle Justin was an illiterate soldier who made it to the throne. At which point his common law wife became his legal wife and Empress. She was a former slave. This did not give her sympathy for Theodora later, on the contrary, she's horrified when nephew Justinian gets serious with a former actress. In Martin's novel, she therefore is a villain, your standard evil snob temporarily hindering the happy resolution, and painted as hypocritical to boot because of her own past. In Duffy's, Justinian replies to Theodora's "She hasn't worked a day in her life" with a quiet "she was a slave", and the narration points out that Euphemia's constant sense of fear of the past, of the past coming back, as a former slave is very much connected to why she'd want her nephew to make an upwards, not downwards marriage. She's still an impediment to the Justinian/Theodora marriage, but the readers get where she's coming from.

Even more importantly: instead of the narration claiming that Theodora is so beautiful (most) people can't resist her, the novel lets her be "only" avaragely pretty BUT with the smarts, energy and wit to impress people, and we see that in a show, not tell way (i.e. in her dialogue and action), not because we're constantly told about it. She's not infallible in her judgments and guesses (hence gets blindsided by a rival at one point), which makes her wins not inevitable but feeling earned. And while the novel stops just when Theodora goes from being the underdog to being the second most powerful person in the realm, what we've seen from her so far makes it plausible she will do both good and bad things as an Empress.

Lastly: the novel actually does something with Justinian and manages to make him interesting. I've noticed other novelists dealing with Theodora tend to keep him off stage as if unsure how to handle him. Duffy goes for workoholic geek who gets usually underestimated in the characterisation, and the only male character interested in Theodora in the novel who becomes friends with her first; in Duffy's novel, she originally becomes closer to him basically as an agent set on him by the (Monophysite) Patriarch of Alexandria who wants the persecution of the Monophysites by Justinian's uncle Justin to end and finds herself falling for him for real, so if you like spy narratives, that's another well executed trope, and by the time the novel ends, you believe these two have become true partners in addition to lovers. In conclusion: well done, Stella Duffy!


Grace Tiffany: The Owl was a Baker's Daughter. The subtitle of this novel is "The continuing adventures of Judith Shakespeare", from which you may gather it's the sequel to a previous novel. It does, however, stand on its own, and I can say that because I haven't read the first novell, which is titled "My Father had a daughter", the reason being that I heard the author being interviewed about the second novel and found the premise so interesting that I immediately wanted to read it, whereas the first one sounded a bit like a standard YA adventure. What I heard about the first one: it features Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, running away from home for a few weeks dressed up as a boy and inevitably ending up in her father's company of players. What I had heard about the second one: features Judith at age 61 during the English Civil War. In the interview I had heard, the author said the idea came to her when she realised that Judith lived long enough to hail from the Elizabethan Age but end up in the Civil War and the short lived English Republic. And I am old enough to now feel far more intrigued by a 61 years old heroine than by a teenage one, though I will say I liked The Owl was a Baker's Daughter so much that I will probably read the first novel after all. At any rate, what backstory you need to know the second novel tells you. We meet Judith at a time of not just national but personal crisis: she's now outlived all three of her children, with the last one most recently dead, and her marriage to husband Tom Quiney suffers from it. This version of Judith is a midwife plus healer, having picked up medical knowledge from her late brother-in-law Dr. Hall, and has no sooner picked up a new apprentice among the increasing number of people rendered homeless by the war raging between King and Parliament, a young Puritan woman given to bible quoting with a niece who spooks the Stratfordians by coming across as feral, that all three of them are suspected after Judith delivers a baby who looks like he will die. (In addition to everything else, this is the height of the witchhunting craze after all.) Judith goes on the run and ends up alternatingly with both Roundheads and Cavaliers, as she tries to survive. (Both Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell get interesting cameos - Stratford isn't THAT far from Oxford where Charles has his headquarters, after all, while London is where Judith is instinctively drawn to due to her youthful adventure there - , but neither is the hero of the tale.)

Not the least virtue of this novel is that it avoids the two extremes of English Civil War fiction. Often when the fiction in question sides with Team Cromwell, the Royalists are aristo rapists and/or crypto Catholic bigots, while if it sides with Team Charles the revolutionaries are all murderous Puritans who hate women. Not so here. Judith's husband is a royalist while she's more inclined towards the Parliament's cause, but mostly as a professional healer she's faced with the increasing humber of wounded and dead people on both sides. Both sides have sympathetic characters championing them. (For example, Judith's new apprentice Jane has good reason to despise all things royal while the old friend she runs into, the actor Nathan Field, is for very good reason less than keen on the party that closed the theatres.) Making Judith luke warm towards either cause and mostly going for a caustic no nonsense "how do I get out of this latest danger?" attitude instead of being a true partisan for either is admittedly eaier for the general audience, but it's believable, and at any rate the sense of being in a topsy turvy world where both on a personal level (a marriage that has been going strong for decades is now threatening to break apart, not just because of their dead sons but also because of this) and on a general level all old certainties now seem to be in doubt is really well drawn. And all the characters come across vividly, both the fictional ones like Jane and the historical ones, be they family like Judith's sister Susanna Hall (very different from her, but the sisters have a strong bond, and I was ever so releaved Grace Tiffany didn't play them out against each other, looking at you, Germaine Greer) or VIPs (see above re: Cromwell and Charles I.). And Judith's old beau Nathan Fields is in a way the embodiment of the (now banished) theatre, incredibly charming and full of fancy but also unreliable and impossible to pin down. You can see both why he and Judith have a past and why she ended up with Quiney instead.

Would this novel work if the heroine wasn't Shakespeare's daughter but an invented character? Yes, but the Shakespeare connection isn't superficial, either. Judith thinks of both her parents (now that she's older than her father ever got to be) with that awareness we get only when the youth/age difference suddenly is reversed, and the author gives her a vivid imagination and vocabulary, and when the Richard II comparisons to the current situation inevitably come, they feel believable, right and earned. All in all an excellent novel, and I'm glad to have read it.

Yuletide has gone live, and I'm very much looking forward to all the stories waiting. My gift was just what I wanted: messy, complex siblings relationships, via a look at Elizabeth Seymour, from that other ambituos family in Tudor England. I love it!



The Other Seymour Girl (2724 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 16th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Elizabeth Seymour Lady Cromwell, Jane Seymour Queen of England, Thomas Seymour 1st Baron Seymour, Edward Seymour 1st Duke of Somerset, Dorothy Seymour, Henry Seymour (c. 1503-1578)
Additional Tags: Siblings, POV Multiple
Summary:

Elizabeth Seymour, through the eyes of her siblings.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

we share at least one fandom, which is great, and I'm really grateful you take the time and trouble to write a story for me. All the prompts are just suggestions; if you have very different ideas featuring the same central characters, go for them. Also, I enjoy a broad range from fluff to angst, so whatever suits you best works fine with me.



DNW:

- bashing of canon pairings or characters in general. By which I don't mean the characters have to like each and everyone - a great number of those I've nominated can be described as prickly jerks, among other things, and it would be entirely ic for them to say something negative about people they canonically can't stand - but there's a difference between that and the narrative giving me the impression to go along with said opinions.

- Alpha/Beta/Omega scenarios, watersports, infantilisation. Really not my thing, sorry.


Likes:

- competence, competent people appreciating each other

- deep loyalty and not blindly accepting orders

- flirting/seduction via wordplay and banter (if it works for you with the characters in question)

- for the darker push/pull dynamics: moments of tenderness and understanding in between the fighting/one upman shipping (without abandoning the anger)

- for the pairings, both romantic and non-romantic, that are gentler and harmonious by nature: making it clear each has their own life and agenda as well

- some humor amidst the angst (especially if the character in question displays it in canon)


The question of AUs: depends. "What if this key canon event did not happen?" can lead to great character and dynamics exploration, some of which made it into my specific prompts, but I do want to recognize the characters. Half of those I nominated are from historical canons, and the history is part of the fascination the canon has for me. ) However, if you feel inspired to, say, write Henry of Prussia, space captain, and manage to do it in a way that gives me gripping analogues to the historical situations: be my guest!

How much or how little sex: I'm cool with anything you feel comfortable with, from detailed sex to the proverbial fade out after a kiss. Or no sex at all (case in point: several of the non-romantic relationships I prompted), as long as the story explores the emotional dynamics in an intense way.

( Foundation (TV) )

( The Bearkeeper's Daughter - Gillian Bradshaw )

( Tudor Courtiers RPF )



( 18th Century Fredericians )

( Those About To Die (TV) )

There are still some free slots in my January meme, so if you want me to ramble on about the topic of your choice, ask me there.

I watched Glass Onion on Netflix which is indeed that rarity, a sequel of equal quality. All the actors are clearly having a blast, and yet it doesn't feel self indulgent, not least because in addition to Rian Johnson's (gleeful) anger at the super rich, there is, as in Knives Out, also a character to root for. (In addition to Blanc, that is, and in a way emotionally affecting that Blanc, in the detective role, can't be.) Here is an interesting interview with Johnson about this - spoilerly for Knives Out, but not Glass Onion -, though my favourite passage is this (which refers to a bit of dialogue that comes after Birdie, the Kate Hudson character, has prided herself on being a telling-it-like-it-is type:

Sims: The best line in the movie is Benoit saying to Kate Hudson’s character [a fashion designer named Birdie], “It’s a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth,” and her replying, “Are you calling me dangerous?” You’re illustrating the voice that certain people present to society.

Johnson: The whole movie, for me, is a bit of a primal scream against the carnival-like idiocy of the past six years.

I hear you, Rian.

I also read The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope which was one of cahn's Christmas presents, and found it charming and engaging. The fairies manage to be genuinely other, which is always a plus in my book, and Kate was an excellent heroine. The relationship between her and her main antagonist eventually develops in the best kind of worthy opponent respect against the odds. If anything feels dated, it's the framing of late in Mary Tudor's reign, where (off page) Mary is just a meanie; one has the impression less for her religious policies and more because she supposedly makes sister Elizabeth live at Hatfield because it's the most unpleasant and coldest of Royal palaces. (Never mind the fact Elizabeth as a baby and toddler was put there already by her parents when her mother was still alive and Queen and that Mary was part of her household then.) After more recent takes on Mary I. which were far more interesting and more dimensional - for example, The Tudors had its myriad of faults, but its take on young Mary was one of its undisputed highlights, and Becoming Elizabeth has a very compelling, smart and heroic Mary while also showing the seeds of what's to come - it feels weird to go back to Cinderella!Elizabeth and Evil Stepsister!Mary. But this really is just early in the book to get the plot going, as our heroine Kate is banished by (mean) Mary to the titular location, and so it doesn't impact on the overall quality of the novel. (One last Tudor nitpick: when Kate finds out about pagan human sacrifice by burning, she reacts as one would, but I kept waiting for someone to bring up that if this is late in Mary I's reign, and Kate was a member of Elizabeth's household (thus presumably Protestant), Kate actually should firstly be aware of some present day Christian-on-Christian burnings, and secondly, if she remembers her childhood, be aware that there were also burnings ordered by Protestant Edward and Doing-His-Own-Thing Henry VIIII. (Meaning: executing another human being by fire should not be news to anyone living in the reign of a Tudor. Doesn't mean Kate can't be shocked. But not in the 20th century kind of way.)

Lastly, I'm continuing wiht the History of Byzantium podcast and am now around ca. 925 AD. Talk about violent regime changes. (Not just on the Byzantine side. The Abbasid Kaliphate is falling apart simultanously.) Iconoclasm is over and done with, and now I'm curious what the next big theological dispute will be - the great schism, I suppose?

Started but didn't finish: Once upon a time in Hollywood. Aber about an hour, I realised I didn't care about any of the characters despite being a soft touch for a well done "Hollywood on Hollywood" story, the fictional excerpts from the various Westerns, tv shows and movies alike, that Rick Dalton had been in just came across as self indulgent on Tarantino's part, and the aesthetic reconstruction of 1969's Hollywood plus the usual good soundtrack wasn't worth it. I'll pass.

Watched the first episode and immediately decided this was not for me: the cartoon series Star Trek: Lower Decks. Sorry. It's not the format - I mean, I loved The Clone Wars, which was also marketed primarly at a younger audience - it's the relentless slapstick-ness and way too much embarassment humor. I'm sticking to the non-animated Star Trek for now.

Listened to and actually liked: Six, the musical about Henry VIII's Queens, which maps each on a current day type of singer, stylistically, and does some both witty and empathic things with the two wives usually treated least well in fiction, Anne of Clevers and Katherine Howard in particular. Katherine Howard's song, All You Wanna Do is a fantastic example of that trickiest of feats to accomplish, a song where the singer starts out telling a very different story than the one she ends up telling, because she herself only realises/reveals while singing that the cheerful tale is actually a horror story. Terrific acting/singing, too. Here it is:

Finding out the No.1 box offiice hit in the year I was born, as per the meme used by sovay, isn't easy - first of all, numbers for 1969 are hard to come by, secondly, for which country? One website I found claims the No.1. hit in the US was "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", and another that for Germany, it was Once upon a time in the West, so let's go with either.

The other part of the meme, if I understood it correctly, consists of putting the main character of said movie into the first film you yourself remember watching. Hmmmm. Not completely sure, but it probably was Drei Nüsse für Aschenbrödel (Tři oříšky pro Popelku/Three Gifts for Cinderella), still my fave Cinderella version bar none. Which means we're either due for Three Hazel Nuts for Harmonica or Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and Cinderella. The later clearly is the reveal that when Butch and Sundance went into freeze frame and made cinematic history, to be imitated forever more, they didn't die, they went through a Narnia-type portal spitting them out in the snowy realm of fairy tale Bohemia. Once they've seen what a great shoot and rider Cinderella is, they try to recruit her.

Otoh, Harmonica spends tiime in fairy tale Bohemia during his missing years between his horrible childhood origin story and his later mysterious adult stranger appearance. He's clearly one of the kids running around in the estate, and Cinderella teaches him how to use the crossbow. Since he's an observant kid, he gets Vinzek to tell him where the later has come across the magical hazelnuts and does indeed find them in an hitherto undisclosed subplot of the movie. Only his hazelnuts contain 1.) a white Stetson hat, 2) a mustache who'll always be the perfect length, and c) "Best harmonica tunes of the multiverse" scorebook.

***

On a far more serious note, the author of the excellent Elizabeth (Tudor)/Philip (of Spain) AU* has written an intense and wrenching story about what one can call euphemistically the Thomas Seymour interlude in young Elizabeth's life after her father's death. For once, this isn't presented as a romance or as teen Elizabeth "seducing" her stepfather (ugh, Philippa Gregory), but as creepy grooming, and it's Elizabeth's pov throughout: The daughter of Chelsea.


*Disclaimer now necessary to make it clear this was neither The Americans nor The Crown fanfiction but 16th century RPF.

I saw Mary Queen of Scots, with Saoirse Ronan in the titular role, Margot Robbie as Elizabeth I., directed by Josie Rourke. My emotional reaction to this was roughly "Hang on, this isn't as bad as I thought it might be after the trailer...this is actually good...no, wait... ah yes. I can see now why the reviews made me not watch it in the cinema, and I was right to do so".

( Two Queens on one island )

Aside from being rl busy, I also am currently foiled in my desire to watch the latest Watchmen episode and will only manage to do so in one and a half weeks, sigh. Otoh, I did finish the first draft of my Yuletide treat, which means both assignment and treat are mostly done, and that means I can deal with Darth Real Life.

Meanwhile, back when heads of government were multilingual: two articles about the recently identified translation Elizabeth I. made from Tacitus. I knew she'd done some translations as a girl and young woman, but not that she kept up the habit into her old age, and this is definitely late Elizabeth:


Shorter article


Longer article

Both are cool and analyze Liz 1's skills as a translator, too, comparing hers with other versions, and put it in context with the era.

Having stopped reading Martin's novels after A Feast of Crows and stopped watching Game of Thrones after season 5, both without much rancor, simply because I moved on to stories which held my attention more, I have no skin in this game, so to speak, but like many a non-GOT person am watching the collective meltdown with some voyeuristic fascination. Independently from how good or bad the last season and the endings for the various characters were, though, I have to say, one bit in this interview with Emilia Clarke made me feel somewhere between bemused and aghast, i.e., David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told her that Danaerys basically was Lawrence of Arabia. (Movie version.) Guys, to paraphrase a politician from a long campaign ago, I've read Robert Bolt, I've watched Robert Bolt. (Who wrote the script to David Lean's movie.) You, no offense, are no Robert Bolts. ( Vaguely spoilery remarks based on my knowledge of the movie and osmosis of the last GOT season. )

Speaking of Robert Bolt reminds me of the non-Lawrence script he's known best for, A Man for all Seasons, and this in turn reminds me: today I also saw that the third volume of Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy finally has a publication date: March 2020. Talk about a downer ending. Of course, Hilary Mantel has the advantage of history, i.e. readers can't be angry at her for Cromwell's bloody downfall. The things I'm most curious about:

1.) Will Cromwell's abject letter to Henry - "most gracious sovereign, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy" - be presented as sincere, ironic, or simply dictated out of concern for his son (i.e. he thinks if he doesn't grovel, Gregory is done for) but with full awareness that there's no mercy to be had from Henry T.?

2.) Elizabeth Seymour, sister of Jane, Edward and Thomas, married to Gregory Cromwell: as opposed to all three of her doomed siblings clearly a survivor type and a main reason why Gregory wasn't harmed too much by his father's downfall: can't wait to read Mantel's take on her, since Mantel's version of Jane Seymour is by far the most interesting and original I've seen in any Tudor era novel, and hardly anyone bothered with Elizabeth before.

3.) Vol.1 had Thomas More and Vol.2 Anne Boleyn as Cromwell's primary opponent, but the problem with that last era is that his main enemies - Norfolk and Gardiner - aren't just both historically and in Mantel's version loathsome but also not even the clever type of evil, so: will Mantel build up Henry as the ultimate opponent or continue to keep him mostly off stage, with Cromwell being brought down by unworthy enemies being part of his tragedy?