The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0803  Monday, 3 May 1999.

[1]     From:   Ben Schneider <
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        Date:   Friday, 30 Apr 1999 15:40:07 -0500 (CDT)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.0790 Re: Chooseth

[2]     From:   Dana Shilling <
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        Date:   Sun, 2 May 1999 20:02:20 -0400
        Subj:   Parsley Stuffing

[3]     From:   Dana Shilling <
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        Date:   Sun, 2 May 1999 20:05:35 -0400
        Subj:   Stage Blood


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Ben Schneider <
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Date:           Friday, 30 Apr 1999 15:40:07 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: 10.0790 Re: Chooseth
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.0790 Re: Chooseth

Check out the real source of gift-giving in Shakespeare, translated in
1578, Senecas De Beneficiis, now available at www.stoics.com, my web
site.  A real gift has no strings.

Yours ever
BEN SCHNEIDER

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Dana Shilling <
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Date:           Sun, 2 May 1999 20:02:20 -0400
Subject:        Parsley Stuffing

I think the alleged funny part in the TS joke about a wench getting
married on the way to get parsley to stuff a rabbit was the parsley, not
the stuffing. Parsley was reputed to be a dynamic aphrodisiac. The
modern equivalent, told by Beavis & Butthead, would be something like,
"This girl "got married" (heh, heh) on the way to a party when she took
some Ecstasy."

Alan Bray, in "Homosexuality in Renaissance England," refers to "getting
married" as a term used for making love in "molly houses" (more or less
what we would call "gay bars," given the impossibility of finding
parallels in utterly different societies).

Parsley definitely is a diuretic, so the ever-reliable body-functions
humor comes in here too. Don't forget that women wore shifts but not
underpants, so the association of ideas would have been something like
eating parsley-having to urinate-squatting in the field-one thing leads
to another.

By the way, "get stuffed" in the modern context is used to/about men,
based on the supposedly shocking idea that the recipient is liable to be
penetrated by another man. The imputation is much less insulting when
used of a man.

Dana Shilling

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[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Dana Shilling <
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Date:           Sun, 2 May 1999 20:05:35 -0400
Subject:        Stage Blood

I suspect that Shakespeare and his contemporary theaters used the same
thing for stage blood as they used for Cleopatra's barge, the morn in
russet mantle clad, temple-haunting martlets-i.e., they described
something that they didn't have in material form. Considering that
elaborate costumes were a (if not THE) major capital expenditure for a
theater company, they couldn't risk getting gooey red substances all
over them-particularly in light of the primitive laundry practices
discussed in another thread.

Dana Shilling

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