Today's Open Thread brought to you by "Kissing Shakespeare", which sounds like all the things that are Not My Thing wrapped up into a single pretty package, but may very well be more awesome than knitted cowls and baby penguins. But not more awesome than baby penguins wearing knitted cowls.
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10 comments:
This week I've been reading the extraordinarily powerful Schindler's Ark, so I'm going to vote going back and having a bromance with Oskar Schindler.
Don't know whom I would or would not kiss, but I'd like to go back and get drunk with Keats. It would be interesting to find out what that would lead to.
That book looks pretty amazing, if somewhat wrong :) To be fair, if it were a choice between Shakespeare and Edward Cullen, I know who I'd pick.
Funny, my boyfriend's an actor and doing a Shakespeare tour in schools at the moment. There was a kid today who LOVED Henry VIII... and I admitted that I had a big ol' girlcrush on Elizabeth I when I was young. She was a tough redhead who controlled armies! There were fairy tale princesses and there was a real historical queen who was way more endowed with butt-kickingness. I had also ADORED Sir Francis Drake, I had started writing a story where my main character *coughAuthorInsertcough* went back in time and went on the voyage around the world with Drake in the Golden Hinde.
Since then I've discovered that Drake was a slaver, and idolising Elizabeth I seems a bit wrong given she would be quite comparable to an evil dictator if she were around today. Can I be bestest pals with Anne Bronte instead? I love the Tenant of Wildfell Hall :)
If it's supposed to be romantic, things sometimes get tougher because women don't show up in the books that often, and it's usually because they did things that the men around them wouldn't, so they get portrayed as fierce people with no need for romance. Y'know, kind of like how women are expected to behave in U.S. politics.
Might be fun to romance someone like the writer of the Tale of Genji, though. (The name, it escapes me.)
If it's not that way, though, I think I'd want to hang out with the Gawain-poet or Chaucer, to see the minds at work (and possibly talk politics).
I'll be honest, I would have loved to be BFF with Winston Churchill, because he was smart and funny and witty I don't need a reason, just because!
Ooh! I would totally love to go back and take the place of Big Nosed Kate, so I could make out with poor consumptive Doc Holliday!!
I think I got too excited about that. Maybe I need to relax a little...
BFF with Plato! Those would be some interesting conversations.
Romance with Madame de Pompadour - that would also be fascinating.
I don't seem to be romantically inclined, so that part's right out. Now, I could come up with an entire list of historical personages I wouldn't mind meeting, but... at the same time, I fear that that could make them much less interesting.
You know what, I think I'd rather trade my time travel coupon in for something a little less complicated and less likely to disappoint. Might I, instead, go to a Stan Rogers concert? (Hell, if past few decades time travel is easier, can I go to a John Denver concert, too?)
The thing that disturbs me about this is the premise. Girl wants to be an actor. She ends up transplanted into the Shakespearean era when women weren't allowed to be actors. So instead of being able to pursue her dream, she instead becomes The Girlfriend.
Bonus points if the girl is named Anne Hathaway.
It's hard enough to find a romantic interest (male or female) in the present day who is culturally equipped to think of women as Full Human Beings. I'd hate to try and find one in historical times* -- being forced to give nonstop lessons in Feminism 101 does not make for Teh Smexxxy Funtimes.
*well, I could probably make a pretty good case for Yeshua bar Yehosef, but there are other inhibiting issues there...
I'd love to take John Adams out to dinner, and just let him talk, but he made it quite clear he didn't fool around, even before Abigail. Would love to meet the man, though.
Oddly, I am finding it difficult to think of a specific historical figure I would like to get romantic with. I mean, Ciaran Hinds dressed as Julius Caesar yes, but Caesar himself, probably not. (And while we're at it, I still have not got over laughing at the scene in HBO's Rome, where Atia thinks Octavian is doin' it with Caesar, and is terribly disappointed to learn that she's misunderstood. Something about that sums up the character perfectly for me.)
Shakespeare--probably not. I admire the man no end as a writer, but as a person he doesn't belong in my bed, he belongs in London, a long time ago, chasing women from his own era, and thinking about going home and seeing Anne, and going bald, which casting directors seem to ignore...and there are just too many books and movies and such where the Dark Lady is a time traveller. Even Dr. Who did that one, and not well, IMNSHO.
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