Previously in this series.
Your boatswain has perished.
You have been trying to get to Milford for the past three acts.
You are plotting a “bed trick” with your waiting gentlewoman.
You will believe literally anything written in a letter.
You remain chaste throughout a series of tribulations and are rewarded with a husband whom you have never met.
You wed your husband alongside four other women and their beloveds in a modest quintuple wedding.
You are indentured to a temperamental sorcerer.
You are indentured to a fanciful Spaniard.
You are the beloved of many shepherdesses.
You bring news from Venice!
There are but two forms of criminal justice in your town: capital punishment, or a public scolding from the Duke.
You are either a relentless punster or an unwitting malapropist.
Your “Pre-Pubescent Boy” disguise is having the unnerving effect of attracting many ladies.
Your greatest joy is exchanging barbs with the Steward.
It is so very difficult to tell who anyone is if it’s even the least bit dark, or if they are the least bit disguised or veiled, even if they are standing right next to you and you have known them all your life.
You are the King of France, and you are loathsome.
You are a courtier, and you sneer at rustics.
You are a rustic, and you sneer at courtiers.
You are the goddess Diana, and you sneer at everyone.
You have lost track of your twin again.
You suspect your twin is lost at sea.
You are beginning to suspect—oh, but it is impossible to believe!—that your twin is not dead at all!
You are beginning to suspect that your twin is posing as you about town and exchanging love-tokens with your betrothed.
You have forsworn your life of piracy for an unreciprocated romantic friendship with a tender lord.
You are the victim of horrific anti-Semitism! Ha ha! It is all a comedy! Ha hahahaa!
You have at least one friend named Antonio.
You know 46 different words for “boner.”
No one you know ever really dies; they just reanimate a bit later.
You are almost entirely incomprehensible thanks to a dubious edit in the First Folio.
You have a burning suspicion that women, like men, might be capable of self-actualization, and you speak a great deal about this to your servingwoman. You are not sure, however, so you marry the suitor your father has chosen for you just to be safe.
You are being pursued by a bear.
Tags: books, elise lebreton, how to tell what novel you’re in, shakespeare
You know 46 different words for “boner.”
Before this, I never properly appreciated how Shakespearean middle schoolers are.
Of, potentially, how middle-school-y is Shakespeare.
The more I think about it, the more parallels between Shakespeare and middle schoolers I see. I mean:
You will believe literally anything written in a letter.
You are either a relentless punster or an unwitting malapropist.
You are beginning to suspect that your twin is posing as you about town and exchanging love-tokens with your betrothed.
Substitute “crush” for “bethrothed” and Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield have that last one LOCKED DOWN.
I saw a wonderful video awhile ago about how when The Globe started doing performances using what would have been the pronunciation of words in Shakespeare’s day that they discovered even more dirty puns. Well worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
That’s amazing. Shakespeare was an artist, and his truest medium was dick jokes.
I *am* being pursued by a bear! But I had to stop and tell you how great this wa–ARGH!
I am but all understood; my gratitude First Folio.
You send your servant off with incredibly vague instructions and then get mad at him when he inevitably gives the love potion to the wrong person.
Man, Puck gets a bad rap.
It’s Oberon’s fault, but Oberon never admits he has faults, so.
Oberon’s a colossal dick.
the colossalest dick
You just described a routine day in my office
“You have a burning suspicion that women, like men, might be capable of self-actualization, and you speak a great deal about this to your servingwoman. You are not sure, however, so you marry the suitor your father has chosen for you just to be safe.”
that one hurt
Your eyes have been compared to vegetables, skies, and flowers.
I hope the vegetable is cabbage.
Leeks, actually, in the play-within-a-play in Midsummer. 🙂
You have one person of the opposite sex that you scorn in particular, even if you scorn all members of the opposite sex. You will be married to them by the end of the play.
My OTP ❤
Thanks for this! If anything were going to make me smile on the Monday after daylight savings, it would be this…and photos of Emma Thompson from Much Ado.
For a second I thought (hoped) that this piece was “How to tell if you are Emma Thompson.”
Or maybe, If Emma Thompson Were Your Girlfriend.
IF EMMA THOMPSON WAS YOUR GIRLFRIEND, YOU WOULD SUDDENLY KNOW HOW TO WEAR CHUNKY OVERSIZED SWEATERS IN AN INSOUCIANT SORT OF WAY
Imagine combining your music collection!
You’d have to elevate it into a contest “okay but do you have this?” “YES, of course, do you have this?” “You sweet parsnip, of course I do!”
If Emma Thompson were your girlfriend, you would have conversations made entirely of puns, delicate ribbing, and charming self-deprecation.
If Emma Thompson were your girlfriend, you would always have a bottle of wine on hand, with the appropriately-sized wineglasses for that type of drink.
If Emma Thompson were your girlfriend, you would hang out with Hugh Laurie at every opportunity, just enjoying the back-and-forth between the two of them.
If Emma Thompson were your girlfriend, she would overshare intimate details with strangers, but in a way that was somehow both charming and classy.
omg now I want Emma Thompson to be my girlfriend, you diabolical minx
I figured everybody already wanted Emma Thompson to be their girlfriend.
I think we do. Sorry, Mr. Wise!
He probably appreciates our excellent taste.
I thought it was “How to tell if you are in a Kenneth Branagh movie” and was much relieved.
You either work for, are besotted with, or have heard tell of a lovesick duke.
You are really, really good at ignoring the implications of the plot’s resolution.
Thank you, this is marvelous.
Parts of your anatomy are compared to Ireland. This is not a compliment.
Green? Damp and chilly? Full of Irish people??
Boggy and stank.
“You are almost entirely incomprehensible thanks to a dubious edit in the First Folio.” I am dying to know what this is a reference to! Trying to find out on my own via Wikipedia led me to discover the existence of the “Hortensio problem” in Shrew, which I don’t entirely understand but love just for the phrase “the Hortensio problem”.
Yes, I would love a First Folio explanation too.
“You will believe literally anything written in a letter.”
This is even worse in the tragedies. About half the problems in King Lear could have been avoided if anyone took two seconds to verify what Edmund says.
Basically, Shakespearean tragedies wouldn’t happen if any of the main characters took the time to actually talk to each other.
Amen to that! LOL!
Your alcoholic boyfriend marries you because you excel at practical jokes.
Sadly, that explains a lot of people’s relationships.
You are drunk, but not drunk enough as to be unable to exchange witty barbs with a high-spirited serving maid.
The ambush you have planned goes hilariously wrong.
You have a burning suspicion that women, like men, might be capable of self-actualization, and you speak a great deal about this to your servingwoman. You are not sure, however, so you marry the suitor your father has chosen for you just to be safe.
One of the reasons Love’s Labour’s Lost is my favorite Shakespeare comedy: the Princess shoots down Ferdinand’s obligatory proposal of marriage with all the incredulity it deserves. Her dad is dead, she needs to get back to Paris immediately, and this frivolous asshole chooses now to spring the question?
-Now, at the latest minute of the hour,
Grant us your loves.
-A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.
You know 46 different words for “boner.”
One of my favourite Terry Pratchett quotes: “Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them”.
Reading Shakespeare is extra fun when you’re keeping a special look-out for anything that might mean sex or genitals. There are a lot of references, it turns out.
You are the victim of horrific anti-Semitism! Ha ha! It is all a comedy! Ha hahahaa!
I read The Merchant of Venice trying to work out if I was supposed to think these people were vile, or if I was just very much not the intended audience.
I saw it on broadway with Al Pacino, and they managed to keep most of the humor while also making it as depressing as it should be. they added a heart breaking, wordless forced conversion scene, and it ended with all the young cast looking miserable and staring off into space, contemplating what had occurred.
“Or did you think I meant country matters?”
Like, even if the villain were Shylock the Non-Jewish Dickhead, I’d still wonder how in the hell I was supposed to cheer his daughter on for stealing his dead wife’s engagement ring and trading it for a monkey.
I know right, they provoke him, then they get mad when he fights back.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t get past perfect, radiant Emma Thompson-as-Beatrice at the top there. [heart eyes]
“You know 46 different words for “boner.””
But… that’s ALL Shakespeare. 80% dick jokes, 20% politics.
And the politics is all just about dicks, anyway, so.
Preach!
Obligatory breathless comment extolling the delights of Mark Rylance and Paul Chahidi in the 2012 Globe Twelfth Night, that is all and thanks for listening
I *do* sneer at everyone. By the transitive property, does this mean I am the goddess Diana? Because that would explain a lot.
You and every woman you know come exclusively in BBF pairs where one is tall and fair and the other is short and dark.
You and every woman you know come exclusively in BBF pairs where one is tall and fair and the other is short and dark.
You don’t want to be coerced into sex with the local magistrate in exchange for your brother’s life. Everyone thinks this makes you an uptight freak, even though he was planning to kill your brother anyway.
This one was such fun. I think you are using your MFA for the benefit of others. Good on ya.
This one was such fun. I think you are using your MFA for the benefit of others. Good on ya.
If your name is Claudio/Claudius, you are at best a jerk, and at worst a villain, but you are assuredly nothing good.
If your name is Claudio/Claudius, you are at best a jerk, and at worst a villain, but you are assuredly nothing good.
Your friends named Antonio are gay. All of them.
Amen to that! LOL!
It is so very difficult to tell who anyone is if it’s even the least bit dark, or if they are the least bit disguised or veiled, even if they are standing right next to you and you have known them all your life.
Indeed.
If you’re the “villain”, you’re the biggest victim! This is exclusive (as far as I know) to the Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night.