{"id":15158,"date":"2015-11-22T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T19:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2015\/11\/22\/15158.html"},"modified":"2015-11-22T11:06:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T19:06:00","slug":"queering-fluellen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2015\/11\/22\/queering-fluellen\/","title":{"rendered":"Queering Fluellen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last night, I rewatched the Branagh Henry V<\/cite>, which led me to look some stuff up in the original play<\/a>. And I was amused at a few items that could be interpreted from a (presumably unintended) queer perspective. [With some commentary from me in square brackets.]<\/p>\n

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First, Pistol talking with the Welsh captain, Fluellen:<\/p>\n

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Pistol<\/span>: Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours: [If you know what I mean, and I think you do.]<\/p>\n

The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fluellen<\/span>: Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at<\/p>\n

his hands. [Nudge nudge wink wink.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Later, Exeter describes the Duke of York in mourning:<\/p>\n

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So did he turn and over Suffolk's neck<\/p>\n

He threw his wounded arm and kiss'd his lips;<\/p>\n

And so espoused to death, with blood he seal'd<\/p>\n

A testament of noble-ending love.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[But, like, no homo!] [I think an early draft of this speech actually ended with “no homo!”, but Kit Marlowe convinced Will to replace that line.] [And by “convinced,” I mean Marlowe used his considerable charms<\/em>, including his talented tongue<\/em>. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.]\n

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A little later, Fluellen gives a speech about Alexander the Great, in the midst of which he says:<\/p>\n

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I'll tell you there is good men porn at Monmouth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[Supposedly this is because he pronounces “b” as “p.” But you and I know better.]<\/p>\n

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(I'm normally not fond of adding unintended sex jokes to Shakespeare<\/a>, beyond the multitude of such that are already there. But that's for performance purposes, and my post here is for non-performance joke purposes.)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, I rewatched the Branagh Henry V, which led me to look some stuff up in the original play….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,23,50,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-queer","category-sex","category-theatre"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}