RARA-AVIS: Re: RARA-AVIS Digest V4 #423

From: Marianne Macdonald ( marianne.macdonald@lineone.net)
Date: 28 Jul 2002


On Sunday, July 28, 2002, at 08:00 AM, RARA-AVIS Digest wrote:

> THERSITES Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk:
> thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.
> PATROCLUS Male varlet, you rogue! what's that?
> THERSITES Why, his masculine whore. -
>
> (TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, William Shakespeare)

Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights were familiar often at second hand with the classical sources, but not especially with the sociological and philosophical background of what they found there. You are quoting a purely Tudor piece of dialogue - and my prettyfarofftopic response should be read with the footnote that I'll shut up on this one now.

Marianne

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