Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

[cahn]

Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

Comments

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[selenak]

Without being an expert; I think going down on one knee was not yet a thing, though I could be wrong. Ototh, you have enough Elizabethan plays to provide some useful data for marriage proposals. To name the most obvious example: Romeo and Juliet. It is actually Juliet who proposes in that she says if Romeo‘s love is honorably minded, where should she send her woman to meet him while he arranges for them to get married. (I.e. finds a priest.)

Romances: depending on when in Elizabethan times, they would be familiar with sonnets (note that Romeo and Juliet‘s first conversation while dancing with each other takes the form of a sonnet). Sonnets were increasingly popular, and reading them together, with or without being inspired to add one‘s own attempts, would be something I could see young lovers doing.
Sonnet-writing folk during Henry VIIII‘s time: Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Earl of Sussex.
Later Elizabethans: Philip Sidney, Walter Raleigh, and good old Will Shakespeare, of course.

Prose: depending on their state of education (are we talking English reading only or also French? Italian?) , they might be reading the Decameron (by Boccachio). According to its wiki article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron - (, an English translation exists as early as 1526, and it was a far more contemporary bestseller and way to get romances - including Arthurian romances - from than Le Morte D‘Arthur.

(Other possibilities include the Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre.)

Re: Sixteenth-century question about proposing

[cahn]

Oh duuuuuuh, Elizabethan plays! Of course! Thank you :D (This would in fact be for Mary/very early Elizabeth, but eh, for my not-extraordinarily-accurate purposes I'm willing to use later Elizabethans as sources (for me, obviously not for them) as well.)

Hm, interesting, I believe only English is referred to, but really I don't see why they couldn't read the Decameron, or even if not I'd expect them to have access to those tropes even if they hadn't personally read it.

Thank you! <3