Pyramus and Thisbe, Alex and Henry
OKAY yâall; itâs time. I need to use my English Major Brainâ˘; letâs chat about Pyramus and Thisbe.Â
You know that note Henry leaves in the pocket of Alexâs kimono? The one that references an Ancient Greek myth about lovers who almost made it but died? Iâve got a lot of thoughts and feelings about it so letâs chat.
(TW for a mention of suicide in the original myth; feel free to skip the end of the first paragraph if you need to.)
So. The basic myth is that Pyramus and Thisbe are lovers, but as their families forbid them from being together, they have to talk through a crack in the wall that joins their houses. They agree to run away and be together and arrange to meet in a cave near their homes, but Thisbe arrives first and finds a lion. She runs away, dropping her veil in the process. When Pyramus arrives, he finds the veil in the lionâs mouth and assumes that the lion has eaten Thisbe. He fights the lion to avenge her, and he kills it, but he dies either during or shortly after the fight. Thisbe comes back, finds him dead, and kills herself.Â
Whatâs interesting about this myth to me, though, is the layers of interpretation/translation that itâs been through to get to us. Itâs set in Babylon, which means that it might have originally been a Babylonian story. If thatâs the case, it would predate what we typically think of as ancient (Hellenistic) Greece. There were trade routes between Babylon and Mycenaeic Greece (or Ancient Ancient Greece), so the story (or at least portions of it) could have traveled along those routes. Either way, it was an established Greek myth, BUT we donât get it from Ancient Greece. The most complete version of the story we have is from Ovid, who was a Roman poet writing at least 100 years after the fall of Ancient Greece.Â
(Then, lots of folks study it as part of studying Shakespeareâs A Midsummer Nightâs Dream, which adds an entirely new layer of interpretation to the story. There are also parallels to Romeo and Juliet, but thatâs a different story with an entirely different cultural context/connotation and not the story that Henry references, so weâre not going to talk about that here.)
SO, now that weâve discussed all that, letâs chat about Alex and Henry.Â
Henry writes:
âThisbe,Â
I wish there wasnât a wall.
Love, Pyramusâ
He places himself in the role of Pyramus, of the character who fought so hard. He gave everything he had for love, but it wasnât enough to make that love work. If we ignore the massive systemic issues that keep them apart, it is Pyramusâs choice to fight the lion that brings both characters to their deaths. Henry casts himself as the figure who fights and fails, as the character who dies first, dragging his lover down to an early grave alongside him.Â
Alex, then, is Thisbe, the woman who did everything right, but loved so much that it consumed her, making her loverâs death her own. On the other hand, Thisbe is the woman who ran, who saw the danger in waiting for Pyramus and left. She didnât fight for the relationship, she didnât try to hide and wait for him or find a way to make things work, she didnât even leave a message. She just ran, so perhaps she deserves a share of the blame as well.
So thatâs a whole load of emotions right there, that Henry sees himself as someone who will make a decision that dooms them both, inadvertently casting Alex as someone who ran from the relationship at the first hint of danger. But moving past it, letâs talk about the actual message. âI wish there wasnât a wallâ. Not âI wish it could have workedâ, not âI wish the world were betterâ. âI wish there wasnât a wallâ.Â
In the long run, the wall isnât the thing keeping Pyramus and Thisbe apart; its their familiesâ hatred of each other and the systems in place in the world they live in. But, if the wall werenât there, they would have a space that belonged to them. They had to talk in secret, which means that without the wall, they would have had a private, secret place to meet and be together.
So this note isnât saying âI wish we could go publicâ. Itâs not saying âI wish no one cared about us being togetherâ. Itâs saying something simpler; something so much quieter: âI wish we could be togetherâ. Henry wrote this note after that night in LA, the night they went to the gay bar and got the chance to actually act like they were openly dating for once in their lives. Itâs a night when heâs completely open, when his walls are down and he can be himself. When theyâve gotten as close as they can to being openly together. But itâs followed by a morning when they wake up together, when get ready for the day in the same time zone, when Alex watches him build Prince Henry for the day. Itâs a morning when there isnât an ocean-sized, five hour long wall between them, when they get the privilege of simply existing together. So Henryâs note isnât about the night before, itâs about the morning, the desperate desire to simply love and exist with his partner in peace.
But what about all that extra history stuff? Iâm so glad you asked. This is why itâs so important that the story referenced is Pyramus and Thisbe rather than Romeo and Juliet: because so much of this book is about legacy and layers, interpretation and history and leaving a mark. The history theme is most obvious in Red, White and Royal Blue, so weâll talk about that first. The Pyramus and Thisbe myth carries with it the fingerprints of each of the people groups who told it before Ovid wrote it down. The setting is Babylonian, the violence in Ovidâs telling is Roman, and there are culturally Greek elements scattered throughout. Then, itâs retold again and again in pieces like Romeo and Juliet, which carry a whole host of their own cultural contexts and influences.
The bits of each cultureâs history embedded in the myth are super important to Henryâs use of it, because he would be aware of these layers. I researched this myth for like ten minutes when I read Midsummer last semester and found all of them. And in looking at this myth, I canât help but think about their letters and Henry wanting any legacy for him to be true. Those letters carry with them the fingerprints of every place and person who shaped them and made the world that they live in. Henryâs references to Greek mythology, the quotes from historical lovers, the mentions of their lives now and the ways their lives used to be and the history that surrounds them both in their ancient houses and their modern lives. Theyâre packed full of the same history that Ovidâs version of this myth is.
On the other hand, those layers of history reflect the ways that their emails would face the same treatment of this myth. You canât tell me that Fox News and The Washington Post and my local college paper would all share the same pieces of those emails. All Henry wants is to be able to share himself with the world, a version of himself that is as true as it can be. And, like Pyramus and Thisbe, that chance is stolen from him. His story, like theirs, is retold so many times that the original is lost, getting to readers with only the bare bones of the truth, smoothed over and changed each time itâs retold.Â
Then thereâs the simple fact of the layers of telling and re-telling in this myth. It mirrors Henry that way, too. When we first meet him (through Alex), Henry seems pretty basic: heâs a prince, heâs stuck up, thatâs it. Heâs like this myth in a lot of ways because heâs set up as a standard story weâve heard a million times. But heâs not; heâs so incredibly special and wonderful. Just like this myth, he has all of these things happening under the surface, and everything that Alex learns makes him want to learn more. This myth is the kind of thing that you could spend a lifetime studying and translating and learning about, and Henry is the exact same way.Â
I donât know if I was going anywhere with this; I just have a lot of feelings about the use of this myth in particular in the context of this book.
(also, shoutout to @star04525 for sending me a picture of this passage while I was at work the other day so I could draft most of this)
