We went over Macbeth in class today. There’s a part that says “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown/ And put a barren scepter in my grip,”
Macbeth can’t have kids, you guys.
His scepter is barren. HIS SCEPTER IS BROKEN. Shakespeare just made a dick joke you guys. The entire class was in tears of laughter.
Yeah it’s a dick joke but it’s also kind of sad — YMMV, especially if you think the Macbeths have previously had children, but the reality is that they have no children during the play. Macbeth has no one to pass his crown to, and because Banquo was prophesied as the father to kings though he would never be king himself, this is why Macbeth is threatened by Banquo and his son Fleance. It’s one of the things that feeds his paranoia.
(Of course historically speaking by tanistry standards Macbeth arguable had the better claim to the throne anyway, and it doesn’t seem like Banquo and his family were in line at all, but if you take the throne by force I think you’re likely to be paranoid that someone will take it from you by force.)
I would argue that this isn’t a “dick joke” at all, not in the sense that it’s not about dicks because it obviously is about dicks, but in the sense that it’s not really funny. It’s a penis reference, yes, but it’s not there to make you laugh so much as to underscore Macbeth’s status as a dynastic dead end. After all, his anxieties about posterity are going to lead him to commission the murders of his friend and his friend’s young son (Fleance’s age isn’t specified but he’s young enough to be called “boy”) directly after the end of this speech.
David Ramsey and John Barrowman being utter dorks
Hard to see, but look on right side. John jumped in David’s arms.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
i’ve just been sitting here for like the past 10 minutes laughing at the mental image of jim at the end of the pool scene in tgg walking into a janitor’s closet and sighing heavily like ‘well dang now i gotta blow shit up’
and then he spends a few minutes just standing in the closet surrounded by like mops and bottles of pool chemicals with his ear to the door waiting for the right time to attempt to save face and fuck shit up
pulls out his phone with a text from his bf thats all ‘whats up babe’ he’s like ‘nm nm waitin on my dramatic entrance, u’
and the bf up in the second story of the pool atrium holding the sniper rifle texts back like “boss u walked into a closet dont even try to put a spin on this”
John Barrowman signing a picture for @merindab
Here’s the video. Look how many time he says awesome
🙂
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
