a_t_rain: (ravenclaw)
So, I am still here, and have been writing a bunch of stuff, I just forget to post about what I'm writing in the moment! Histories Ficathon XV reveals were today, so this seems like a good time to do a roundup. But first, thanks to MossGrownTowers for my awesome giftfic, Shakespeare & Co.. Yay for fic about the Lord Chamberlain's Men hanging out and being creative!

I also wrote a couple of stories for the ficathon: Remember Everything I Told You (Northumberland and Kate after Hotspur's death), andk as a palate cleanser after all that angst, Quoth the Starling, "Mortimer!". (In which Hotspur actually follows through on his threat to train a starling to say nothing but "Mortimer" and sends it to the king.)

(In case it's not obvious, I was really feeling the Kate Percy love. She is SUCH a Shxian comedy girl, and it's her bad luck she got stuck in the wrong cycle of plays, and on the wrong side of a losing war.)

Other new-ish stuff:

Genesis, a prequel to my own ever-growing Lord Chamberlain's Men / King's Men saga, set in the 1580s and covering John Heminges's theatrical origin story and first meetings with future wife Rebecca and future friend Will Shakespeare. Also, there's a camel, because apparently the grocer's guild kept their own camel?! Who knew?

Legacy, because after all these years I finally wrote a new HP fic. Minerva McGonagall and Madame Pince's replacement, gen.

The Chatbot's Tale, Canterbury Tales crackfic inspired by reading way too many AI-generated papers.
a_t_rain: (Default)
So, I wrote Henry VI fic about Cade's rebellion, because I think I'm going to take my first shot at teaching (3/4 of) the first tetralogy this fall, and apparently fanfic is one of the ways I think through things before teaching them? At any rate, it's stunning how timely that bit feels. I think I went in thinking "oh, this is going to feel really different after 1/6, and thank God I never published my dissertation, because twentysomething-me was way too much of a Cade apologist." Which I was, but it's also layered in ways that I hadn't anticipated -- Lord Say pretty much says the most tone-deaf things possible without having the least idea they're tone-deaf, in ways that feel uncomfortably familiar if you're a red-state academic who spends a lot of time cringing at blue-state academics.

These are really good plays. I remember being surprised by that when I first read them in my MA program, and I was surpised again upon re-reading. I haven't come back to them that often, in part because they feel so unrelentingly bleak, and one of the things I usually like the most about (older) Shakespeare is how redemptive his vision of people tends to be, how even the characters who do deeply horrible things aren't usually reduced to those things. And you see glimmers of that in 2 and 3 H6, maybe in Eleanor and Queen Margaret in particular, but it's mostly not quite there yet.

Another random thing that surprised me was just how different the rebellion scenes were in the Quarto. I didn't look up the current scholarly consensus on how they relate to each other, but they both "feel" plausibly Shxian to me, like we might be looking at revision-over-time, maybe different versions for different casts? There are a lot of names, and the editors of the Norton Shakespeare seem to think they might be actor-names rather than character-names in some cases, and I actually suspect they may be both / and? At any rate, it turns out that the character who is "Smith the Weaver" in the Folio text is simply "Will" in the Quarto, where he's also described as having courted a woman named Nan -- which is, naturally, where my imagination started running away with me, as in, "oh wow, did Shakespeare actually write himself IN as the play's most vocally anti-intellectual character?" Which would be awesome, if true.
a_t_rain: (Default)
So, I'm supposed to be writing a sober article about the medieval / Renaissance dice game of hazard (as depicted in The Canterbury Tales specifically). Apparently what I do end up writing, under those circumstances, is semi-Shakespeare fic, semi-historical RPF about the game of hazard, Antony and Cleopatra, metatheatricality, and, um, seventeenth-century ideas about chance, gaming, and probability, but definitely not anything to do with The Canterbury Tales whatsoever.

FWIW, I recommend scrolling past the character and fandom tags without reading them if you really want the full roller coaster ride on this one. It's short.

Hazard.
a_t_rain: (Default)
I'm alive! I see that I haven't posted here in two years, which is kind of wild, but I simply haven't been doing a lot of fandom stuff, and that tends to be what this journal is for. Anyway, that has abruptly changed, because a few weeks ago I woke up at 3 a.m. with, I swear, the voice of Richard Burbage's ghost in my head and an urge to write early modern literature RPF. I don't actually know if there is an audience for early modern literature RPF, particularly if it has a) no sex; b) almost no Christopher Marlowe; c) definitely nobody having sex WITH Christopher Marlowe. But I figured if there was an audience, it would most likely be people who know me here, rather than people randomly stumbling upon it on AO3.

So: a story. This isn't the Burbage fic, because that one started off as a short, snarky buddy comedy set in the Elizabethan theater, with a slightly more serious undercurrent about ambition, and somehow morphed into a novella-length monster with death and ghosts and envy and proto-feminism and lots of random musings about specific plays, and about the nature of artistic partnership, and about exactly how one manages stage business like biting out one's tongue. I thought for about half a minute that it might be publishable for real, and then I realized that it was not only exceptionally self-indulgent even by fanfic standards, but it had no plot other than "a couple of guys really like each other and their jobs." So AO3 it will be, whenever I finish it and think of a better title than Dick.

Meantime, here's a very short side story featuring Ben Jonson and a young Lady Mary Wroth:

Equals.
a_t_rain: (Default)
It may be the most-niche-interest sort of thing I have ever written, viz., Antony and Cleopatra fic, from the point of view of one of the servants, about the characters hanging out and playing historical board games. Nevertheless, here it is: In the House of Beauty.
a_t_rain: (Default)
... because if there's one thing I can't resist, it's making up new ways to save Hamlet. Special thanks to whoever it was on my f-list who wondered, years ago, why Bernardo and Marcellus seem to think Horatio's status as a scholar gives him special expertise in how to speak to ghosts.

Graduate Seminar in Practical Necromancy; or, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead
a_t_rain: (janeshore)
This is all the fault of [livejournal.com profile] lareinenoire, who asked whether the Friar Laurence in Two Gentlemen was the same as the one in R&J, and if so, what was he doing there. (Per the play, he was wandering in penance through the forest -- which seems to explain a remarkable number of things.)

The Second Time as Farce )
a_t_rain: (titus)
Now that Histories Ficathon author reveals are over, I can claim credit for The Lord Who Doesn't Lie, possibly the only fic about medieval demandes d'amour games anywhere on AO3. Hotspur / Kate, mostly fluff.
a_t_rain: (janeshore)
Dance of Death

I. In his last days, the Cardinal supposed death to be the end; he had long since lost faith in anything else. He is not ready for what comes after: his mistress, as pretty and lively and vain and covetous as she was in life.

For a moment, her face is reassuringly familiar. Then she bends to kiss him, and the poison on her lips burns like one material fire.

II. Antonio had hoped to see his wife face to face, in that other world; but when he sees Cariola first, he understands that it is fitting. They were good friends. They also, without meaning to, betrayed one another. He does not know what to say to her. You would have lived to marry, he thinks, if I had not. He is glad that she does not seem angry.

She takes him by the hand, and he rises. Come, I will bring you where your lady is.

III. Their small hands will not be still, even in death, and they will not let him lie still either. They grab and tug at him, importunate, in the way of children demanding to play with a favorite uncle.

I never meant to sin against you, Ferdinand thinks, I hated you only because you might have been mine. Why am I to be punished with you for eternity?

IV. He hoped, so many times, that Lord Ferdinand would not send him to her again. Now, after all, he would like to speak to her: Let me explain, I tried to give you justice, I meant to save your husband’s life, but it was all too late, too soon, all wrong, and I suppose this must be the road to hell because you know what they say about good intentions, but you must believe me when I say I tried to send you to heaven. But the dead do not, precisely, speak; and the only word that fills Bosola’s soul is Mercy?

She lays her hand upon the wound that Ferdinand gave him, and he is healed. Mercy.
a_t_rain: (janeshore)
So I guess I wrote, um, RPF? It was meant to be a light-hearted story about William Shakespeare and his teenaged daughters reading bad 16th-century angstfic together, but somehow it went all religious, so I figured this would be a good day to post it.

Italicized passages are quotes from either the Geneva Bible, or Nicholas Breton's The Miseries of Mavillia (it should be obvious which is which); I've also borrowed heavily from the Geneva phrasing of the parable of the talents. Breton, by the way, would have fit right in with Anne of Green Gables and her Story Club.

This is maybe a little early for Will to be living with the Mountjoy family, but I figure he played around with historical timelines all the time, so why can't I?

Lent )
a_t_rain: (ravenclaw)
I'm afraid this is more of a short epilogue than a proper chapter, but at least I finished it! Prior installments can be found here.

Act 5: Explanations )
a_t_rain: (wereflamingo)
Finally got back to this (not coincidentally, I'm teaching R&J at the moment and feeling the need to give them a happy ending). Prior installments of the Half-Blood Prince of Denmark saga are here.

Dialogue is from Act 5, Scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet, except where it isn't. Also, Romeo totally needs a sassy lesbian friend.

Act Four: Graves, Yawn and Yield Your Dead )
a_t_rain: (wereflamingo)
At last. See here if you want to catch up on past events. Plus, this installment has bonus Hamlet / Ophelia!

Act Three: The Watchers )
a_t_rain: (wereflamingo)
In which Severus and Helena begin to investigate Juliet's death, and discover some interesting things about Friar Laurence. See here for the first installment of "Four Funerals and a Wedding," and here for the entire saga.

Act Two: The Nurse and the Friar )
a_t_rain: (wereflamingo)
At last, the long-delayed third installment of the Daftest Crossover Ever. Parts One and Two are here. Basically, what you need to know is that a young Severus Snape has drunk a Plothole-Plugging Potion, landed in the sixteenth century, and is now happily wandering around Europe saving characters in various Shakespeare plays from themselves. In the last installment, he met Helena, a young French witch who is now definitely NOT in love with Bertram, and Diana, a Florentine who invited him along to Verona for her cousin Juliet's wedding.

Summary: Snape meets Romeo and Juliet. (Almost) everybody lives.

Four Funerals and a Wedding, Act One )
a_t_rain: (HarrietEdit)
Because [livejournal.com profile] lareinenoire and [livejournal.com profile] angevin2 reminded me last month that I'd never actually finished this thing. I don't have any good excuse, except to note that faux-Elizabethan court entertainments, even very bad ones, are incredibly hard to write, and I now have renewed respect for anyone who managed to write a good one.

Prior installments are here, just in case you're not in the habit of remembering the plot of other people's WIPs for two and a half years.

Act V: The Right Promethean Fire )
a_t_rain: (wereflamingo)
OK, guys, remember the Hamlet-runs-away-with-the-players fic? I finished it. YES, I have been seriously remiss. But the last seven months or so have been seriously insane IRL.

For those who would like a quick refresher, Hamlet has just written Hamlet and traded a copy to William Shakespeare in exchange for one of the comedies, and Horatio and Ophelia (cleverly disguised as a page boy named Oliver) have decided to attend a performance.

Chapter Six: And By Their Show, You Shall Know All That You Are Like To Know )
a_t_rain: (HarrietEdit)
So, two chapters for edited collections: DONE, at least until I get the reviewers' reports. Which is excellent, as I leave for Europe in three days, and have been frantically trying to finish up all the writing-related odds and ends. Sadly, I think the Hamlet AU doesn't get finished until I get back, but this bit of silliness has been hanging out on my hard drive for ages (ever since I found out there was a seventeenth-century puppet show about "the siege of Babylon, with the humors of Sir Andrew Aguecheek") and I think it's high time I posted it.

The story of Evilmerodoch comes from William Caxton's The Game and Playe of the Chesse. I haven't made any of it up at all, except for the name-changing part and, of course, involving Sir Andrew.

Beau Jest; or, the Countess of Babylotion )
a_t_rain: (Default)
In which some plot threads finally start to converge. Parts 1-4 are here.

Author’s Notes: I have used names or spellings from the First Quarto of Hamlet or from Saxo Grammaticus for most of the characters in The Tragedy of Amleth as I wanted to differentiate them from the canonical Hamlet characters. (In any case, I suspect that even Hamlet would not be crazy enough to name his principal characters Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius, nor would the players let him get away with it if he did!) The names of Horatio and a few minor characters have been left intact, as my sources did not offer other versions, and it seemed plausible enough that Hamlet might pay tribute to his friend by using his name in the play. The text itself is not meant to be FirstQuarto!Hamlet.

In case anyone is curious, Judit's full cast list is under the cut.

How to perform Hamlet with six men, two boys, and a bit of illicit help )

Chapter Five: What, A Play Towards? )
a_t_rain: (HarrietEdit)
... Yeah. Sorry I've been so bad at updating the Hamlet-fic. I have been crazy busy, and I've been feeling pretty tapped out. However, one of my former students stopped me in the hall a few weeks ago to ask me if I had seen Anonymous and told me it was sooo good, and I thought, "DID I TEACH YOU NOTHING?" so that gave me a bit of a push.

Parts 1-3 are here. If you're wondering what the heck the English players are talking about, see here for a brief account of Essex's rebellion.

Chapter Four: The Actors Are Come Hither )

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