rereading act 5 of measure for measure to see how i could hypothetically make it a tragedy and i completely forgot isabella cries "And given me justice, justice, justice, justice!" I can literally not recall any other time in a shakespeare work where a single word has been successively repeated four times like that god wow. The escalation the desperation.. to me there is no way to do that line without turning out to the audience and screaming/begging THEM for justice, a call to action from a heartbroken woman grieving a brother who betrayed her
On a scale of one to Jon Snow, how badly do you regret your recent life choices?
The face of a man who let a million people burn so he could be king
Bran knew that he would be picked to be king.
So when Bran spent the end of season 7 and the first part of season 8 constantly saying how important it was for Jon to know who his parents are… it was so Jon would break up with Daenerys, she would go mad, burn a million people, and Jon would kill her; leaving the throne open for… Bran.
I mean if the show had made Bran an intentional villain or morally grey; acknowledge that he knew a city would be destroyed, and didn’t do anything to stop it, rather did his part to set up the pieces to make it happen, that would be a great twist. But the writers don’t seem to be aware of the implications of Brans psychic abilities and the choices he made ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Where is reading comprehension? Where is nuance?”
Ladies and Gentlemen, we need to make this a meme all Literature teachers and professors can get behind.
Make it happen!
alicent voice where is reading comprehension where is nuance
This!
feeling bonkers about measure for measure again. obsessed with the way angelo and isabella are such blatant foils of each other. angelo's introduced instigating the crackdown on vienna's sexual immorality while isabella's someone who's just become a nun and wants /more/ restrictions on her activities. (if you want a similar literary character from a different century, think dorothea from middlemarch.) devotion weaponized into self-restriction. they're both dangerously devout in their own way, though tellingly angelo's the only one who tries to push his beliefs onto other people and thus the one revealed to be a hypocrite in the end.
by contrast, the duke's a figure of total amorality. he spends most of the play in a friar's robes without performing the rites or following the strictures dictated by said robes. the duke has no faith the way angelo and isabella do. he's vaguely worried about ~corruption~ but why take a stand when he can get his overzealous second-in-command to do it and take the fall for him? dude could have revealed himself so much earlier but. he doesn't. the duke pretends to be in a comedy, but he's just a psychopathic puppeteer. he lets everyone think claudio's dead and for what. fucking deranged!!
the end of the play has the duke proposing marriage to isabella: her most important religious values mean nothing to him. angelo and isabella have their own beliefs, however self-flagellating. the duke only believes in himself.
You should have seen me on set that day. I was a bloody mess. [Laughs.] It was a very important moment for me, for obvious reasons. I wrote the “wedding night” episode in season five, which was a huge turning point for Sansa and for Theon. They are the only two people in this world that know know what the other endured, because they both were the victims of this abuser — sexual victims, psychological victims, pretty much every way you can be victimized, he inflicted upon them. They both survived it. They’ve both come through it. They both have a very long way to go, but they know that they have each other. I actually worked for a while on a dialogue scene between them where they talk all about it. I never even turned it in — it didn’t even make my first draft — and no one ever has read it but me. It felt like recapping something everyone had already seen. The audience knows what they endured. Those characters know what they endured. Having them talk about it felt forced, it felt contrived, it felt like I was writing a scene to answer my critics, which is not the reason you should write a scene. And when you have actors like Sophie [Turner] and Alfie [Allen] and a director like David [Nutter], you don’t need that stuff. So a scene that I never got right became distilled to what’s there: “I’ve come to fight for Winterfell if you’ll have me,” and then that shot in the middle of the song where they’re sharing a meal together. They’re drawing strength from each other even now. Having them share that meal on what could be their last night in the world spoke volumes.
Bryan Cogman about the scene where Sansa and Theon reunite and embrace (via sophietisthebest)
Ben Whishaw and “Mrs Tish” on the set of “A Very English Scandal”…
Via Laura Ingall on IG
I think they know exactly what they’re doing. They know Martin’s endgame plans more than we do. Sure their writing has some flaws (every writer has flaws), but considering all the great scenes and characters this show has given us, I’m willing to suspend some of my disbelief for a fantasy series.
Madeleine de Saint-Nectaire and other heroines of the French wars of religion
Between 1562 and 1598, France was torn by civil and religious conflicts between the Catholics and the Protestants. During this period, women distinguished themselves as spies, propagandists, political leaders or negotiators. Some of them even fought weapons in hand.
Agrippa d’Aubigné tells in his Universal history of Marie de Brabançon, widow of Jean de Barres, lord of Neuvy. In October 1569, the lady found herself besieged in her home by the king’s lieutenant who had 2,000 men and two cannons. She personally defended the most dangerous breach with a pike in her hand. Shamed by her example, her soldiers fought bravely. Observers recounts that they saw her defending the breach several times with her weapon. She nonetheless had to surrender in mid-November, but was allowed to walk away freely by the king’s command. Another lady noted for her military acumen was Claude de la Tour, dame de Tournon who defended her city against the protestants in 1567 and 1570. They couldn’t, however, breach her defense and had to leave.
Ordinary women also found themselves on the frontline. The city of La Rochelle was besieged between 1572 and 1573 and the townswomen fought in the defense. Brantôme tells that the besiegers saw a hundred women dressed in white appearing on the walls. Some of them performed support functions while others wielded weapons. Their bravery was confirmed by another account who tells that the women acted as “soldiers or new amazons” and that their courage led a street in La Rochelle to be called the “Ladies’ Boulevard”. Agrippa d’Aubigné similarly shows the women fighting with sword and gun. Brantôme adds that he heard that one of these women kept at home the weapon with which she fought and that she didn’t want to give it to anyone.
Another valiant lady was Madeleine de Saint-Nectaire (c.1528/30-1588) who came from a prestigious military family. She married the lord of Miremont, gave birth to three daughters, but was widowed and had to defend her lands. Agrippa d’Aubigné tells that Madeleine led a troop of 60 cavaliers against her enemy Montal, lieutenant of the king. When she fought, Madeleine charged ahead of all others, with her hair unbound in order to be recognized by both friends and foes. In 1575, Montal lured Madeleine and her troops away from the castle and planned to seize the place. The lady returned, charged at the enemy and routed their cavalry. Montal was wounded in the ensuing fight and died a few days later.
Letters written by Madeleine have been preserved and reveal another aspect of her character. They show a modest, polite woman, who cared for her husband’s illegitimate children and treated them like her own.
Bibliography:
Arnal J., “Madeleine de Saint-Nectaire”
Bulletin de la Société des lettres, sciences et arts de la Corrèze
D’Aubigné Agrippa, Histoire universelle
Lazard Madeleine, “Femmes combattantes dans l’Histoire universelle d’Agrippad’Aubigné”
Pierre Jean-Baptiste, De Courcelles Julien, Dictionnaire universel de la noblesse de France
Viennot Elianne, “Les femmes dans les « troubles » du XVIe siècle”