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.

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.)

No, I think that's lovely, though I can hardly argue that I'm the queen of lovelives either.

Women didn't officially have a sexuality so they could get away with more! (Or something.)

Actually, IIRC the idea of women not having (much of a) sexual appetite is of relatively recent origin--as in, didn't get going until sometime post-Renaissance, and didn't reach its full flowering until the Victorian era. Anyone who knows more about this, please feel free to clarify or shoot me down as needed, but from what I've read, the rationale behind keeping women oppressed changed over time. In the Middle Ages, it was "Women are corrupt and sexually insatiable, therefore guard them well so you can be sure your heirs are yours." By the 19th century, it had become, "Women are pure and good, the angels of the home, but are weaker physically and mentally, so we protect them for their own good." Of course, I'm both paraphrasing and generalizing quite broadly here.

Either way, women get the shaft. And not in the good way, either.

...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.

Angus - can you exand on this please? I thought it was a hetrosexual love story - though not neccesarily one favorable to love. Part of the Elisibethan morality was that you married as a business deal, and took lovers on the side for sex (except for the lower who classes who married as a business deal that included sex; i.e. lower classes probably wouldn't have a great many chances for lovers on the side - so you were supposed to marry someone you were sexually compatible with.) Love, especially love that ignored the business side of marriage was a madness and a tragedy. Of course R&J has additional layers of irony - because if the M's and C's had not been so busy pursing their crazy feud, they would have seen a Romeo/Juliet marriage as a good business deal, and a chance to end the really insane war.

I thought the pseudo hip-hop/rock Romeo and Juliet that was tried a few years ago actually had a good concept. It was unfortunately executed like crap and with poor direction , and (IMO) a really bad choice of cast - but I think the idea was a good one - not just the rival families as American Gangs (after all that goes back to West Side Story) but the idea of this as a small madness within a large madness; I really think that was faithful to the orginal.

Yes, I pretty much thought it was a heterosexual love story too. t /naive

I also liked Lurman's R&J. And I thought the cast was good. Although I was sorry the Nurse's best lines got cut.

Oh, I just assumed he meant it was a fucked up and crazy "love" story! Not that the het-ness was in question. Angus?