“The Lindworm” By Naomi Butterfield

Kapsai region, Lithuania

BIRTHDAY TOMORROW

TOMORROW? BIRTHDAY? IMPORTANT ONE! TOMORROW! SLIGHTLY TERRIFIED? BUT STILL, TOMORROW! ADULTHOOD??????? PLEASE SPARE ME???

Passover

This potsherd from 475 BC was found on the island of Elephantine, close to the border between Egypt and Nubia, which was home to a small, close-knit Jewish community at the time.It reads; “To Hoshaya. Greetings! Take care of the children until Ahutab gets there. Don’t trust anyone else with them! If the flour for your bread has been ground, make a small portion of dough to last until their mother gets there. Let me know when you will be celebrating Pascha (Passover). Tell me how the baby is doing!”Besides a wonderfully evocative peek inside a daily conversation, the sherd contains one of the earliest non-biblical references to #Passover. Passover commemorates the liberation of the ancient Israelites from Egypt and is observed annually by Jewish people all over the world. This year, Passover begins tonight and ends on Thursday 16 April. You can find out more about this sherd and many other fascinating objects relating to Judaism in our collection in ‘The Jewish Journey’ by Rebecca Abrams, available online.

My mom took this really blurry picture of (basically) the full cosplay. I'm all ready for tomorrow! We didn't get to make the pants so I'm going to have to wear leggings that weren't handmade. I'm going to be medieval England!

I GOT MY CAP AND GOWN!

So I had a great time at the con today! The baby con I first went to two years ago is really growing up! These pictures were from the competition. Sadly, I didn't place, and I feel a little cheated considering some of the winners but! I'm not the kind of person to get hung up on these things. Everyone did a good job and I'm happy I got to be apart of it! I got to talk to one of the judges! I told him how I designed the things and he asked if I wanted to go into costume design and I showed him my pirate England cosplay and he thought it was great. I am happy. Very tired. Goodnight.

why do you think a lot of historians don't think that alexander (and, by extension, other people in history) was gay? sorry if this is worded strangely by the way

Anon I’m not yelling at you I love you but I have to yell because everyone on tumblr spreads such bad misinformation. NO HISTORIANS THINK ALEXANDER WAS STRAIGHT. NOR ANY OTHER OLD TIME GAYS. LITERALLY NONE. THIS IS A MYTH PERPETUATED ON TUMBLR AND IT ISNT REAL STOP BELIEVING IT IM LOSING MY MIND !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. Now that I am. Calm. Sorry. Even tho plenty of historians were homophobic back in like last century — no one currently writing, period — they still could not DENY that Alexander who kept a MALE CONCUBINE , FUCKED MEN. Even the MOST homophobic ones were like “it was his worst vice” but they couldn’t DENY it. NOBODY EVER sorry normal volume nobody ever denied it in the whole history of the world never. Never. No one. That is fake. People who say that do not know what they are talking about.

On the OTHER hand , historians will say that for example Hamilton was “straight” because there IS NO DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE OTHERWISE. no, a few gay letters are not hard evidence. YES, male friendship mores were WAY DIFFERENT in old times, and it’s WAY too much extrapolation to assume from a few gay sounding TO US letters that he was fucking that twink Laurens. That is BAD METHODOLOGY. that is not homophobic it is BAD METHODOLOGY. you cannot publish that kind of thing cuz it’s simply not got enough evidence. I don’t care if they probably were, there is EMPIRICALLY NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE.

Okay. Also. Last point. l hate the misinformation on this hell site. Last point.

Gay and straight were not labels that existed until the late 1800s. Historians do not write about sexuality in terms of gay and straight because gay and straight did not exist as we know them to people prior to the late 1800s. We can only judge how people in history had sex based on their actions. If a historian says Alexander wasn’t gay or bi it isn’t because they’re saying he didn’t fuck men. It’s because they’re saying it’s extremely reductive and bad scholarship to ascribe modern definitions of sexuality and modern sexual mores to the ancient world. When we’re just hanging out and talking one on one or casually, no problem saying gay and straight! It helps us conceptialize how they lived! It’s something we understand. But in a PAPER you are trying to PUBLISH, you CANNOT say that because it misinterprets the workings of their society.

Okay. Thank you. I hope this clears things up for every dumbass who makes those posts and misinforms my innocent fellow classics people who are new and do not know. I hate y’all. Not you anon. Y’all who peddle this ….. homophobia nonsense. Stop it

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. 

*God hesitates before sliding it towards himself* Well when you put it that way...

*slides God two dollars* I want a girlfriend

Happy Hanukkah!

And happy birthday Ozzy!