but the whole damned point for me is that Sam's relationship with Frodo is not selfish

Mmmm. Not having been in it, I could be talking rubbish here, but what about being in Love with someone makes it intrinsically more selfish than being friends?

Am-Chau: no, don't shut up!

Yeah, I mean as I said it's a simplification, but my understanding is that asking a friend to have sex with you would be a bit like asking them to shine your shoes. Also, sex was something one person did to another person, it wasn't seen as a mutual act at all.

But of course I'm talking about sexual acts, not sexual desire; there's nothing to say that Romeo wasn't gazing longingly all day at Mercutio, then slipping one of the Montague servants a fiver for a quick one in the stables at night.

Also, your bringing up the classical plays is a useful reminder that these things were much more codified in the ancient world than they were in Shakespeare's: sex between men was completely accepted, but only in certain, strictly hierarchical, situations, and with strict rules about who was allowed to do what to whom. The hierarchy stuff was still there later on, but in a less codified way because of course the acts themselves became illegal so everything went underground.

I mean as I said it's a simplification, but my understanding is that asking a friend to have sex with you would be a bit like asking them to shine your shoes. Also, sex was something one person did to another person, it wasn't seen as a mutual act at all.

That has to extend to affect our interreptation of the canon romances in the plays: the people of the time would have seen sex as something Romeo did to Juliet, not something they did together. Is that backed up by the text? Juliet's desire for Romeo is made clear, and the Nurse has a fair go at making it seem like Juliet did as much choosing as Romeo did. I'd have to do a lot more research into attitudes to sex at the time before I argued that one seriously.

of course I'm talking about sexual acts, not sexual desire; there's nothing to say that Romeo wasn't gazing longingly all day at Mercutio, then slipping one of the Montague servants a fiver for a quick one in the stables at night.

'Rosalind' always seemed like a pathetic cover-- here's the answer! 'She', the unattainable object of desire, was a man.

tries to beat plot bunny to death

your bringing up the classical plays is a useful reminder that these things were much more codified in the ancient world than they were in Shakespeare's: sex between men was completely accepted, but only in certain, strictly hierarchical, situations, and with strict rules about who was allowed to do what to whom.

So that there's a difference between slashing Julius as RPS, and slashing Julius as Shakespeare fanfic. Make it complicated, why don't you.

And I'd love to hear some examples of the situations in which such releationships were accepted in the ancient world.

...In any case, although I find this stuff interesting, slash is all about making texts your own isn't it, so I'm not interested in forcing slash writers to submit to some charter of historical accuracy or anything...I mean as far as I'm concerned people who treat Romeo and Juliet as a great big heterosexual love story are doing a greater violence to the text than any slasher ever could, so have at it.

I'm not interested in forcing slash writers to submit to some charter of historical accuracy or anything

I didn't think you were. I just like make life difficult for myself. And I feel that I'm more successfully making the text my own if I do it within the 'correct' context.

Plus, the history side of it is fascinating. Maybe even more so than the slash.

Romeo/Mercutio slash. Also see Tanith Lee's Sung in Shadow.

Am-Chau--the most famous ancient world example is the Greek institution of pederasty, where an older man would take an adolescent (in our terms) boy "under his wing" and become his mentor. (They would both be of the ruling class, so the hierarchy here is one of age.) It was always completely understood and accepted that this involved sex, but it had to be the older man who was the "active" partner. This was very important because for an adult ruling class male to be engaged in "passive" sex with another man would have fatally compromised his masculinity. It was OK for the younger man to be fucked because he was gaining something by it--namely, the mentorship/patronage of the older man.

In neither case, incidentally, would this behaviour preclude the participants also having sex with women.

Mmmm. Not having been in it, I could be talking rubbish here, but what about being in Love with someone makes it intrinsically more selfish than being friends?

Ah - I've expressed myself badly. I don't know that I think love is intrinsically more selfish, but I think that slashing a relationship - giving it an erotic dimension rather than a platonic one - doesn't neccesarily mean it's in terms of love. It just means that it's sexualised - and this can be about giving, but it can also be simply about self gratification. I've read one story which played Frodo/Sam as eros rather than agape and managed it beautifully, and I do see it can be done. What I don't buy is the idea that Sam's love is founded on the wish to get into Frodo's pants. 'Cause I see Sam's devotion as being all about what he can give, rather than what he can take.

I do kind of think that desire is selfish, and that love is selfless; and that one can love a person without desiring them, and desire a person without loving them, but that being in love is a combination of the two. (The gods are looking down upon me pontificating here, and they are reviewing my flimsy lovelife to date, and they are pissing themselves laughing at me. But it's what I think. Um. It may be nonsense. I'm probably a bit naive about this.)

I may be on crack here.

cereal

the people of the time would have seen sex as something Romeo did to Juliet, not something they did together.

Definitely? Because my understanding is that Tudor ladies had pretty lively sex lives - Kathryn Howard, afiak, had a good number of liaisons prior to marrying Henry VIII (including noisy sex with one of the servants, iirc - possibly a music teacher, I forget) and it's not that much later than Chaucer was writing about the Wife of Bath and the Miller's tale and so forth.

thinks

And Venus in Venus and Adonis is pretty thoroughly sexually aggressive. "[She] like a bold fac'd suter ginnes to woo [Adonis]" and makes Cordy's Connor-oost look positively tame.

Fay, don't mind me - my views on both Hamlet and the Scots play are a tad off-centre. I think Macbeth is less about an antihero and more about the best example of passive-aggresive marital nonsense ever written.

And since I have never once found anything in Hamlet to make me think that the prince has the faintest use for any woman his except his mama, my take on the play, early on, was skewed to view it as one Shakespeare's few with deep subtext, whether or not he meant to include the subtext. So I was never able to believe in either of Polonius' as having any clue about why they, themselves, acted as they did.

And everything about the obsessiveness of both kids screams "YOU DON'T LOVE ME!", but I think the obsessions is aimed away from the people with whom they were actually obssessed.

Yes, I'm an Elizabethan heretic.