#romiet

What I’m saying is that I kind of feel that “A Tale of Two Cities” lifts quite a lot from Shakespeare. For example, in both ATOTC and “Romeo and Juliet”, we have a story about two factions (the two countries of England and France in Dickens’ novel and the two noble houses of Montague and Capulet in Shakespeare’s play) who have been at each other’s throats for so long they don’t even quite remember why they’re at each other’s throats in the first place and what happens when two members of these respective factions (Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay in “A Tale of Two Cities” and Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet in “Romeo and Juliet”) meet and become close to each other. And of course, both stories end with a desperate person sacrificing themselves for the one that they love with said sacrifice being less a noble and definitive ending to the story and more an act of desperation in the face of impending death (Carton takes Darnay’s place on the guillotine in a desperate attempt to buy Darnay, Lucie, and their daughter time to escape back to London while Juliet commits suicide in what is very likely a desperate attempt to escape from what she still sees as her impending arranged marriage to Count Paris). There’s also a strong parallel between the main character trio in “A Tale of Two Cities” and the main character trio in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, I.E…

•Both Viola and Charles Darnay are sweet, sensitive young nobles who find themselves living in a new land and assume new names in order to avoid suspicion and end up in a relationship they didn’t expect with the second character of the main trio.

•Both Olivia and Lucie Manette are smart, pious young women living in mourning for a dead or at least severely traumatised loved one and end up falling in love with the disguised protagonist while fending off the attentions of an annoying suitor (Malvolio for Olivia and Stryver for Lucie).

•Orsino and Sydney Carton are both the depressed young men uncertain of their purpose in life who become acquainted with Viola/Darnay while also being in love with Olivia/Lucie.

Where am I going with all this, by the way? Well basically, I’m kind of suggesting that there being queer subtext between Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay might actually have been intentional on Dickens’ part. However, because queerness was so verboten and punishable by prison or death in the 1850s, Dickens had to cloak all of this in ambiguity and subtext, using these allusions to classic Shakespeare plays as a way of coding/broadcasting his true intent to the audience who would know what he was doing.

ASIA TOUR 2019 is coming! You know what that means...

THREE MONTHS OF NEARLY EVERYDAY RetJ CONTENT!! One of which days is my birthday 😁

I just checked the official website, and it seems the cast is the exact same as the Moscow tour cast earlier this year. Phew, thank God. I really do think the current cast is some of the best French casts since 2001. I'm kind of hoping for another full bootleg, but I'm quite sure we'll get our annual horde of professional quality pictures from Weibo as always. Or at least, I'll most certainly check each day, it's worth it.

All aboard the hype train, long live Roméo and Juliette!

they make me happy (ignore the low quality and shit art)