00:03:11.200Yeah. So, Mary, explain who the Dark Lady is.1.00
00:03:17.260So the Dark Lady is the sort of muse of Shakespeare's sonnets. The sonnets themselves,
00:03:25.660when you read them in order, which not a lot of people do, they tell a story. The ending sonnets
00:03:32.900are all about this woman named, who scholars call the Dark Lady. And the sonnets are often
00:03:40.280taught like these are really romantic sonnets that, um, Shakespeare was very much in love with
00:03:48.200her. Um, and he was kind of writing these sonnets against the popular love sonnets at the time that
00:03:54.200idealized this, um, fair standoffish, cool woman. Um, and he was writing to this woman who was
00:04:04.080sort of the antithesis of that. You know, she had dark hair, dark eyes, skin that was darker than
00:04:12.280this idealized woman. And the way I was taught to read them growing up was that he was romanticizing
00:04:19.700her. But when I was reading the sonnets, as I grew a little bit older, I noticed that there were some
00:04:26.660lines in them that seemed rather suspect and they weren't as kind as the way that I had been taught
00:04:32.640to read them. When you read them in order and when you read them all together, you find out that
00:04:37.980there's like jokes that she gave him and the fair youth, the other muse in the sonnet,
00:04:44.900venereal disease. There are lots of comparisons of women's bodies to hell in them. And there's0.84
00:04:53.460sort of all this stuff is sort of in the subtext. And for a long, long time, scholars were just sort
00:04:58.680of explaining all of that away and saying, oh no, you know, these are great sonnets. And some of
00:05:03.820them are romantic, but others of them kind of read like the, um, the dark lady in my book calls
00:05:10.980them the spew of a jealous lover as if they had a terrible fight. And he's kind of like writing
00:05:16.360off these really angry poems about her. Um, so the more that I read them, the more that I wanted to
00:05:23.220I wanted to know if this was a real woman, what would her story be? What would she say about all
00:05:30.500this from her perspective? And that over, over time, I looked more closely and I thought of
00:05:38.460this character, this woman who wanted to do this expose against Shakespeare and what he was really
00:05:44.780like and that's what your book is like it was by any other name is her name is rose and um she is
00:05:52.440telling her side of the story yes and so and this is all really and you talk about this in your um
00:06:00.500i think it's in the afterward in your book just kind of the the history that this is based on but
00:06:05.320it's a lot based on the sonnets themselves like you're pulling information from there
00:06:09.120to build up this character so what was that like like going through the sun is just trying to find
00:06:13.420any hint of like, oh, she, she plays this instrument or like, what was that like, like
00:06:18.940forensically examining them to, to build a character? I really had a great time with that.
00:06:24.900You know, I'm a, I'm an English major and, um, the, I have a sort of love hate relationship with
00:06:30.640the sonnets. Like, like I said, some of them are pretty beautiful, um, but they're kind of paired
00:06:36.060with these other ones. So I went through, I read the sonnets in order, uh, about three times and
00:06:42.340I was sort of taking notes on, on who she might be. And I would like write the notes about what
00:06:49.300he said. And then I would like jot down notes about like what the truth would be.
00:06:55.540And that was a lot of fun. The, the, the book was conceived sort of like an angry correction.
00:07:02.460It was a lot of fun to write. So there's a lot of humor to it, but it was actually the,
00:07:11.000the most delightful thing that I've ever written because I got to play a lot you know like I would
00:07:16.620take the details like one of the first sonnets talks about her playing the virginal and the
00:07:22.940speaker wishing that he could be the keys beneath her fingers because he wants her to touch him so
00:07:27.840badly another one that everyone sort of knows is my mistress eyes are nothing like the sun and in
00:07:33.480that when we get the physical, her physical description. And then they also tell a story
00:07:39.720as a whole. Um, and I wanted to work that into the structure of the novel and only about 25,
00:07:50.340a little over 25 sonnets are about her and the rest are about this, the fair youth, um, who is
00:07:56.780the Shakespeare's other muse. And I wanted the novel to be sort of like that where about
00:08:03.280you know most of it was telling rose's story and then shakespeare played this sort of
00:08:08.220smaller role that she's like subtly and then more obviously taking him down um so it was
00:08:16.020sort of like a a subversion it was super fun rose is a super fun character too well and talk about
00:08:23.020rose and the whole witchcraft plot that actually comes from a line in the sonnets and also like
00:08:30.940all of the references to hell in the sonnets um but there's this one line that he asks oh from
00:08:38.200what power hast thou this powerful might and he's talking about like her control over him and that
00:08:44.740sort of gave me the idea along with all the reference to to witchcraft and shakespeare um to
00:08:50.180sort of play with the ideas of about witchcraft that were uh popular during elizabethan time or
00:08:59.040that were popularly understood not really popular yeah can you talk about what um because this comes
00:09:04.820up in your book like how witches were you know like shakespeare writes them in this play and
00:09:10.100it's like oh this is like creepy and sexy but in real life if someone was accused of witchcraft
00:09:14.800like what was the what was that like so the elizabethan era they had uh lots of conceptions
00:09:24.240of magic, but witchcraft was one of the most reviled. And it wasn't the most dangerous time
00:09:31.720to be accused of witchcraft, but there were laws against witchcraft at that time and you could be
00:09:39.980imprisoned for it. And oftentimes the people who were accused of witchcraft, not just in Britain,
00:09:46.520but all across Europe were people who didn't fit into society and people who a lot of times they
00:09:52.860were widows who didn't have the protection of a husband and maybe like the family wanted the land
00:09:58.180back that the widow had control of or they would be people with differences that people didn't
00:10:05.700understand and they would be accused or they might be maybe there were unexplained deaths there was
00:10:12.280like a sickness that played cattle and then a woman who was unpopular in the town or maybe
00:10:18.780someone who was um being supported by the church or or by the town they would um accuse someone
00:10:25.180like that of it kind of scapegoat her the penalty was um was death but it didn't often happen
00:10:33.400at that time like it was possible but it wasn't the most there were other periods in time where
00:10:40.280people were constantly being burned and hanged um yeah no like that sort of came later scotland
00:10:45.020under James. Um, but what I found really interesting about that, and this like comes
00:10:50.640across really strongly in your book is there's kind of this sort of like witchcraft is illegal
00:10:54.080and whatever, but like everyone's into astrology. Like the queen, Queen Elizabeth has a official
00:10:59.500astrologer and your book has like so much astrology in it. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, the way
00:11:05.600that I like to write my books, they're, they're historical fiction, but they have speculative
00:11:11.480elements. There's sort of like light speculative elements that become more prevalent as the novel
00:11:17.840wears on. And I always write the magic as the beliefs of the period come to life. And so,
00:11:26.300you know, in my first book, it was in medieval Germany in the 12th century. And so the witchcraft
00:11:33.120that people believe in then is the way that people would have believed it at the time.
00:11:39.340So when I first got the contract for this book, I was told that I was, I proposed that I would write a retelling of the sonnets from the perspective of the Dark Lady. And my publisher put in the contract, magic infused story behind Shakespeare's sonnets from the perspective of the Dark Lady.
00:12:00.220And so I had to figure out how to infuse the book with magic. And it was actually pretty
00:12:06.440intimidating because there are so many different forms of magic during the Elizabethan era that
00:12:12.460people believed in. So there's astrology, there's alchemy, there's herbalism, there's
00:12:18.780flower magic. They even sort of believed in music as being like magic. So I wanted to try to figure
00:12:28.420out a way to incorporate all of that. And I had to read about like the history of magic to try to
00:12:36.580figure that out. Um, and it turns out that astrology is like the umbrella sort of magic
00:12:42.900behind all of that. Um, you know, um, alchemy is based on awakening elements in metals that like,
00:12:51.320or in, in minerals, all these different parts of in, in elements that, uh, are controlled in some
00:12:57.900way by the stars that are in, they have larger influence of some stars than others. Um, and of
00:13:03.940course there's astrology and there's summoning magic, which would also be more fortunate at
00:13:10.680certain times in, in the heavenly year than others. Um, and then even herbalism was based on these
00:13:19.700sort of, um, elements within plants that were, you know, one, one plant would be more, um,
00:13:26.620um, Martian and the other would be like influenced by Venus. Um, so I just tried to incorporate all
00:13:33.880of that in the book and, uh, you know, in a subtle way. And that was, that was a lot of fun too.
00:13:40.260Yeah. Like you, were you looking at like star charts and things like of the time?
00:13:46.920Yes. Okay. So I really nerded out with star charts. Every single star chart in the book is true.
00:13:54.220there's a um an online astrolabe that you can use to like back calculate what the stars were
00:14:03.200in any period so when rose uh casts horoscopes it's actually based on um like she casts one
00:14:11.160for henry risley the um earl of southampton who is the the the candidate for the fair youth that
00:14:18.100i went with in the book and that is actually based on his birth date and on his um the place
00:14:24.260where he was born um it also references her chart she has a real you know in my head she has a real
00:14:30.500birth date and that is her real chart and her character is based off of the chart too shakespeare's
00:14:38.820character is based off of his chart henry's character really matched with his chart but i
00:14:43.780didn't plan that well that's why it was all meant to be the charts are all true yeah surely yeah it
00:14:50.460was a it was that's one of the parts of the book that was so much fun um I wasn't like I'd been
00:14:56.140um interested in in astrology like the history I'm very interested in the history of magic and
00:15:01.760so I was interested in it but like to learn to read star charts in the old-fashioned way like
00:15:07.640it was super fun with an ephemeris and um all of that so i just want to say because this episode
00:15:14.000is coming out you know and it's like lead up to a time when people are buying a lot of books as
00:15:17.820presents there's so many astrology people out there and i feel like this would be a great gift
00:15:22.840for those people because they could then like double check your readings you know and like
00:15:27.460the the fact that you're not just making it up that you like did that research i think would
00:15:31.300appeal to a lot of people who are into that yeah yeah it was it was probably not necessary
00:15:36.780but it was so much fun that's how i roll so in terms of astrology too so um and like your book
00:15:47.120is very much like this is rosa's story shakespeare is kind of there it's not like her and him and
00:15:52.300lockstep for the whole book like he shows up for you later on but also in the same sort of way
00:15:56.560you're subverting um there's the character of john d who i've never talked about on this podcast but
00:16:02.620I know our mutual friend Alison Epstein is a big fan. And in here you're talking about John D,
00:16:07.060but also John D's wife. So I guess first can you tell people if they don't know who John D is,
00:16:11.560like who is that and why was he cool? So John D was the official astrologer who did elective
00:16:20.960astrology to help Queen Elizabeth choose the date of her coronation. He was also an alchemist,
00:16:28.360also a mathematician he he did a lot he he did he was very famous during his period
00:16:35.000there are there are classical paintings of him you know in a uh black cap and long black robe
00:16:42.680at his home casting um alchemical experiments does he have like a long a long beard as well
00:16:50.220yeah yeah he's like he's like merlin vibes he looks like merlin yeah in the paintings he does
00:16:56.360you know, who knows what he was really like. Um, but he was, uh, you know, long black robes
00:17:01.700doing an experiment, you know, he's dropping, um, some sort of powder, there's fire beneath
00:17:07.100it and the court is looking on like, this is the legend of John D. Um, and the truth
00:17:12.860of his life was that he was, astrology was really popular at the beginning of Elizabeth's
00:17:19.060reign, but as fear of witchcraft and fear of the queen's life and different kinds of
00:17:25.640magic um became more and more prevalent um his fortunes in england waned um and there's a point
00:17:34.160at which he was sort of um stopped getting as much money from the queen and had to do other things
00:17:41.460there and even traveled across the sea to europe with his uh sort of grifter scryer edward kelly
00:17:48.940to go try to entrance other rulers of countries
00:24:12.420And I wanted to write it from her perspective.
00:24:14.540So I wrote John D actually, Rose is an astrologer.1.00
00:24:19.020She casts horoscopes for people and she does rituals that are healing both.0.99
00:24:25.280They're, you know, they're both physical things that her mother does to heal ailments.
00:24:31.180But then Rose and her mother also do this ritual that helps women overcome hurt.
00:24:38.520And so Jane hears about that, and she comes to Rose, and I show her explaining what happened, and then, you know, Rose and her mother helping her start to heal from it with a ritual.
00:24:52.840And now for a quick advertising break.
00:24:55.940Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks, cards, turns.
00:25:00.900That instinct to trade didn't disappear.
00:27:17.760another aspect of your book like i appreciate that like the main the way that the elevator
00:27:27.460picture of your book is like who was like what's the dark lady what would her story be and like
00:27:31.480shakespeare again is in this book but this is not like the love story of shakespeare and rose like
00:27:35.700he's very much he shows up quite late in the book the love story is a different love story
00:27:39.500it's a sapphic love story and you talk about that love story but also what research you did about
00:27:45.780like queer people in this era yeah because shakespeare like the whole fair youth like
00:27:52.920people speculate that that was him in a male male relationship too for a long time so i'll talk
00:27:58.800about the fair youth sonnets first there's a sequence of sonnets there's three sections of
00:28:03.480them the first um 18 17 sonnets are like the speaker trying to convince this fair youth to
00:28:13.040um, get married and have children. Um, and there's a lot of speculation around those being a
00:28:19.140commission that were paid by someone. And then something happens at Sonnet 18 and it really
00:28:25.100turns from this very formal, um, in argument to try to convince this youth something, uh, to get
00:28:33.500married and have children. Uh, it turns to being really a love, a love story. Um, and it's a, the
00:28:42.480sonnet 18 is this is a really beautiful sonnet it's um shall i compare thee to a son summer's
00:28:48.380day and i love the way that first sonnet is like a question you know shall i compare thee to a
00:28:54.760summer's day almost like he's very tentative about asking like can i do this right um and then from
00:29:01.340there uh the sonnets show things like the speaker kind of staring at the ceiling at night like
00:29:07.440wishing that he was around the fair youth like just longing for him others of them show this
00:29:14.560jealous relationship between the fair youth and the dark lady and so just like people for a long
00:29:20.880time tried to say the dark lady sonnets were romantic people try to say for a long time that
00:29:26.040the fair youth was just a friend because there is the word the use the word friend like does appear
00:29:32.200a few times in the sonnets, but when you read all of them, it's very clear that like the speaker is
00:29:37.580falling deeper and deeper in love. And the sonnets as a sequence are definitely a bisexual0.69
00:29:44.560sequence of sonnets. And so because of that, I, you know, I definitely wanted to write Shakespeare0.77
00:29:53.640as bisexual. There's a lot of play with gender in his, in his plays and sexuality. And that was
00:30:02.040something that, um, I was definitely drawn to. Um, so in order to write that story, um, and in
00:30:08.420order to write Rose's story, like I wanted to portray queer people in Elizabethan England.
00:30:15.340And, um, I wanted to let Rose have a romance of her own that was, you know, similar to the
00:30:23.920fair youth where she was struggling with falling in love with someone of the same sex. Um, and so
00:30:30.220from that I created the idea of Cecily who is the main love interest in the book and sort of the
00:30:37.620person um who Rose is having a healthy relationship with um it's based on true love as opposed to
00:30:46.960this really rocky intense and at times toxic relationship with with Shakespeare that that
00:30:53.820happens later like um I wanted to write him as I wanted their relationship to be sexy but I
00:31:00.080wanted it to be deeply problematic. So Cecily is Rose's respite and true love, even though
00:31:09.620it takes a while for them to admit their feelings and be together. So in order to write both of
00:31:18.460those love stories, both Shakespeare and the Fair Youth and Rose and Cecily, I did need to research
00:31:24.920queer people in the elizabethan era and there's a whole lot about homosexual relationships you
00:31:32.280know love between men and sex between men um there are law there were laws on the books that
00:31:37.740that was illegal um there were um people who were in prison for it um but there aren't a lot of
00:31:46.780references to lesbian relationships at the time. So I had to dig into feminist and queer scholarship
00:31:56.540to find references to it in letters where one woman would write to another and you could
00:32:03.100definitely tell that they were in love. And again, there weren't a lot of references. There
00:32:10.660weren't any laws on the books yeah i've i'm trying to remember i forget what time period it was but
00:32:17.120we've talked about this in the podcast before where it's like people writing the laws they
00:32:22.580didn't want young women to get pregnant out of wedlock basically but they wouldn't have thought
00:32:29.320that a woman and another woman would have sex so they wouldn't make a law about it because that0.83
00:32:35.020would not that would presumably generally not result in a child outside of wedlock so it's kind
00:32:40.940of like who cares yeah yeah i mean or our mutual friend alice and she doesn't think people could0.92
00:32:47.760conceive of sex without a penis yeah so they just so there's not which is not to say that0.94
00:32:56.440these relationships didn't happen but like the the male stuff like there's so many like there's1.00
00:33:00.700laws and writings about that but women is just kind of like like exactly exactly like if people1.00
00:33:06.360just can't conceive sex without a penis then it's just like well so there's not a lot but then it's0.93
00:33:11.720not written about but we know it was happening so yeah so you just had to kind of dive into what0.97
00:33:17.820was that like i had to read between the lines and letters and sort of get the idea and there
00:33:24.840are books that i read about this just to sort of get a feel for how the relationships would have
00:33:30.420taken place and how they would have been received at the time well and i'm almost thinking like
00:33:36.940i'm thinking of shakespeare's plays and like you mentioned before like there's so much gender play
00:33:41.520and stuff in those but you know like in twelfth night there's the sequence where viola is in
00:33:45.820disguise as a man and then olivia falls in love with her and she's like oh no she's like there's
00:33:51.220like and that's too well it would have been a man playing both roles in shakespeare's time
00:33:56.140which adds a whole other level of things to it but like there is the fact that those plays were
00:34:01.860popular like the audience was aware that same-sex attraction could occur because that's part of the
00:34:08.360humor of the plays yeah yeah oh absolutely the one for a really long time my favorite play was
00:34:14.640as you like it and the the names uh one of the things i tried to do with the book was uh pull
00:34:21.860things from Shakespeare's plays. I know as a writer, for me, I do not, you know, I write
00:34:26.880fiction. I do not write novels that are true. I'm not my main characters, but I always draw
00:34:32.840inspiration for my life. And, um, I wanted this story to, to kind of show like what the
00:34:39.500inspiration for certain aspects of Shakespeare's plays might be. Um, and as you like it has, um,
00:34:46.480Rosalind and, um, Celia. Um, and that is sort of, they're, they're one of the most famous, um,
00:34:55.460bisexual characters in Shakespeare's plays. Um, and that, um, or potentially bisexual or through
00:35:03.400subtext bisexual, however you want to look at it. Um, and that's where I drew, um, Rose and
00:35:09.760cecily's names um and yeah they're portrayed as cousins in the in the book but there's lines
00:35:18.460there's a line about them being as close as juno's swans which you know adds a whole layer there
00:35:25.880yeah and so i i do want to emphasize for everybody that your book has got astrology
00:35:33.720very well researched astrology your book has got like queer stuff in it your book has got a sapphic
00:35:40.240love story and also shakespeare stuff so i feel like those are a lot of the listeners are like
00:35:45.100those are their three main things so this is like the perfect book to be talking about on this
00:35:50.920podcast and it came out how long ago did it come out over the summer it came out this summer yeah
00:35:55.920in july and have you heard from readers like how they've responded to it yeah yeah i mean um
00:36:02.940People were really excited about the fact that I was portraying Shakespeare in a way that was more realistic and less glorified than a lot of people have done.
00:36:14.860There's an apocryphal story about Shakespeare that someone wrote down in his time that he basically stole one of Richard Burbage's groupies in a way that was pretty roguish.
00:36:31.500roguish and people like that. Um, you know, Shakespeare is sort of, I'm trying to think of
00:36:40.100how to explain it. You show Shakespeare being sort of like a dirt bag instead of like a great
00:36:46.120man of history. And I appreciate that too, because I think he was, and to pretend that he was this
00:36:52.120like fantastical, legendary, iconic person. It's like, no, he was a shitty person. Like so many0.99
00:36:58.480people like we all are in ways but i mean like he had a wife but that didn't stop him from fucking0.84
00:37:04.360around with lots of people but that doesn't mean he didn't write good plays like yeah yeah yeah so
00:37:11.120um yeah and his his early plays are really um problematic in the way they portray women i think
00:37:16.780he gets better at portraying women as his his life goes on but this is taking place at that time and
00:37:22.640he really had to be a dirtbag in order to write these sonnets and people are excited about the
00:37:28.620idea that that the book focuses on her you know that it's it's not it's not um her like you said
00:37:37.840it's not her story of her love story with Shakespeare it is her own story and how she
00:37:44.940got to the place where he wrote this story down in the in the poems well you know there's this
00:37:49.860whole I'm sure you know there's this whole sort of genre of fiction that's like the wife of so
00:37:54.640and so the like daughter of so and so where it's just like taking a famous man in history and then
00:37:59.560writing a novel that's like but what was his wife like and so I like that your book sort of isn't
00:38:04.780that it's not called like I don't know his muse or whatever it's just kind of like well who is she
00:38:11.100as a person and her involvement with Shakespeare was not the defining function of her life and I
00:38:16.280appreciate that. Yeah. Yes, definitely. I think at one point in recent history, those books were
00:38:24.020like a good way to get us started talking about women in history. And like, thank goodness we've
00:38:31.860come further than that now. And we can talk about, you know, the lives of women, the secret love
00:38:38.700lives of women, the ambitions of women. And that's another thing that people are really excited about
00:38:44.560with the book um rose wants more than anything to be a musician um and that's the reason she goes0.57
00:38:50.480well there are other i won't spoil it but there are other reasons she goes to london but that's
00:38:55.320her that's why she has a dream of going to london is that she wants to be a musician
00:38:59.760she wants to um to be known for her art and she has her own drive i also appreciate the way that
00:39:07.800you're the g the rose that you portray her very upfront about her sexuality there's been this i
00:39:13.820don't know by the time this episode comes out there's been an ongoing discussion that i've
00:39:17.320been reading on social media talking about the how women sometimes in historical i guess especially1.00
00:39:23.880historical romance which your book is not but in historical fiction showing like oh women
00:39:28.240inaccurately showing like oh like women didn't know what sex was women were so sheltered like
00:39:34.380and shouldn't we go back to that today is like the terrible conversation where your book is just like
00:39:40.200no, people had sex. People knew this stuff. Women, like all people's story were not the same. There
00:39:46.340were some people who might not have known stuff, but I like the portrayal of Rose as somebody who
00:39:49.860just like is sexually active and she's unapologetic about it. And she's just like going out there
00:39:53.740doing her thing. Like a lot of women will have been throughout all of history. And I appreciated
00:39:58.520that. Yeah. Yeah. To, to say that there weren't women who were unabashedly sexual, um, is a very
00:40:09.040strange way of looking at history and to say that, you know, I don't, I don't understand that at all
00:40:16.560because people are people, you know, like, um, there's so much evidence, um, people, you know,
00:40:23.860women have sex drives and there's, there's even, even in the period, there was a debate over like
00:40:30.000the unhealthy, strong sex drive of some women. Um, and there was even, there were even astrological
00:40:37.640explanations for, for why some women were that way that their humors were out of balance. Um,1.00
00:40:44.280but, but obviously that was all very natural. And, um, yeah, that was one of the reasons that
00:40:50.780Rose was a lot of fun to write. She does a lot of things that are subversive and she doesn't0.99
00:40:55.260apologize for it. Um, and she's complicated and she has flaws. And, um, I loved writing a woman1.00
00:41:02.900like that in a historical piece yeah absolutely and i think that that is so like it's just funny
00:41:08.740we're talking about this because i was just reading this this discussion yesterday i think
00:41:11.960courtney milan milan the romance novelist was just sort of explaining that like women in history have
00:41:19.540not always been pure delicate flowers and it's weird to presume that of every like there's certain
00:41:26.700tropes in romance novels that people lean into and that's fine but like if one of the points that
00:41:32.700she made that i think we've talked about in this podcast before too is like if women were inherently
00:41:36.700supposed to be like submissive and non-sexual that's like well then why are there so many laws1.00
00:41:42.660forcing women to be like that like if that was naturally how women were why would there have to0.66
00:41:47.300be laws yeah they're forcing that right there are even um so many jokes in shakespeare's plays about1.00
00:41:55.300called Goldry you know about and then there's Taming of the Shrew which I really once upon a
00:42:04.800time this is this is the story of my life with Shakespeare's stuff like I love Taming of the
00:42:10.100Shrew as a young person because like oh my god strong woman but then as a much older I had to
00:42:18.380go back and reread it because that's the I one of the things I played with is that
00:42:23.420um, Katerina is sort of the inspiration for, um, Rose's mother. Um, there's like a few things that,
00:42:32.360and Rose is also part of the inspiration, um, for her as well. And, um, I had to go back and
00:42:38.560read Taming of the Shrew and, um, parts of it are really funny. And the relationship between
00:42:46.080katarina and petruchio is at times i hate like i hate to admit it it's almost compelling like
00:42:53.620their banter is really witty and there's like a magnetic attraction between them that's fun to
00:42:58.260read um but when you get to act four it is like um a primer in gaslighting like it is so disturbing
00:43:07.400to read act four in you know in the year of our lord 2024 like oh my god that is like a scary
00:43:15.740thing to read yeah um and but the but again in that play um katarina is this strong woman and
00:43:23.000there's a lot of like i think we were talking about sex um and i sort of went off the subject
00:43:28.680but uh no yeah yeah so i don't know it's so so it's interesting to think about um like with
00:43:36.100shakespeare's plays like they're so widely discussed they're so widely read but what like
00:43:39.220you mentioned so for instance like in the sonnets like you can see the changing relationships between
00:43:44.580him and the fair youth between him and the dark lady if those were in fact his experiences and
00:43:48.820not like a meta narrative that he was experimentally doing but in his plays like you said
00:43:53.120like you can see the female characters he starts writing better female characters if you look
00:43:58.420chronologically at the plays that he's writing and so it makes sense to presume like maybe he had
00:44:04.600more interactions with different kinds of women and he found inspiration in that he's like oh
00:44:08.100women can be different kinds of people and so like that's kind of a bit of what he gets from
00:44:11.640the relationship with rose in your book as well which is funny to me the reverse
00:44:16.420i'm very familiar with the movie shakespeare and love which is like a very different shakespeare
00:44:22.920love story right right with a very blonde person but um it's funny to think like how he finds
00:44:29.620inspiration in that and then in your book it's a much more like down to earth how he finds
00:44:34.180inspiration and yeah not just in this like pure beautiful love story but it's kind of like talks
00:44:41.620weird, messed up love story. Yeah. Yeah. That was, they meet in a brothel.
00:44:49.760She is, she is playing at a brothel and they meet there. And it is a,
00:44:55.300one of the things that I tried to write, like, was that like strangely compelling,
00:45:00.020but sexy relationship between, um, Kater, but, but also disturbing relationship between
00:45:07.120petruchio and katarina like i wanted to show like how they could be attracted to each other
00:45:12.060at first um but then like it slowly goes awry yeah yeah like like so many relationships do in
00:45:19.940life right um so um your book is called a rose by any other name and it's available all over the
00:45:28.440place actually do you know like a lot of people listening are in like u.s and canada is it is it
00:45:34.060in other countries too, or do you know? Yeah, it is, um, in North America and there's a world
00:45:40.940English version as well. So you can get it in Great Britain. There's in the, that version is
00:45:47.860also published in Australia. So you really should be able to find it anywhere. In all kinds of
00:45:52.440different places. And where can people find you? Are you online at all? I am. Yes. Um, I am very
00:45:58.880easy to find i am at mary mcman.com and then on all the social media and then i am on um i am
00:46:06.140just at mary mcman and i'm on instagram threads and old school i'm on facebook i was once on x
00:46:14.360but no no longer and um i am a very text-based person so i am not on tiktok
00:46:21.340i respect that heartily i tried tiktok for a minute it was not for me
00:46:27.980yeah um but all love and all respect to people for whom yeah yeah yeah for real yeah it's just me
00:46:35.520it's it's that's perfect well thank you so much for talking um with me today about your book
00:46:40.980thank you so much for having me it was a real pleasure
00:46:43.180so as mary said you can find a copy of this book in most all question mark english-speaking
00:46:55.200countries. Um, so you should pick up a copy for yourself and, or as a present for whoever you
00:47:01.280love the most or your enemy, this gift giving season, because it's just such a good book and
00:47:07.260everybody should read it. And yeah. So next week on the podcast on vulgar history, we're going to
00:47:16.540be having our annual holiday special episode for the holidays. I, if you've been listening for a
00:47:22.420while. I've fallen into a tradition where we do a historical biography episode around the holidays,
00:47:31.240and it's somebody whose life is not super depressing. It's a story that is. I think
00:47:38.120you're going to be excited by who my guest is next week, and you're going to be really excited
00:47:42.660about the story. And it's just kind of like, I know that this is a time that some people
00:47:45.800are stressed out. Some people are feeling lots of other emotions. And so Vulgar History is here for
00:47:51.740with a story of somebody who, um, overcame all of life's problems. And, um, also next week,
00:48:00.020um, it's a person who did a lot of stabbing and I think you're going to like that.
00:48:03.960So in the meantime, um, in the terms of like gift giving season, um, there's lots of vulgar
00:48:10.140history things that you can ask to be given by people who are giving you gifts or that you can
00:48:15.100give to people who are fans of the podcast, or if you just want to confuse somebody who's not yet
00:48:19.600a fan of the podcast. And so some things you can consider are, so I do have a sub stack,
00:48:26.740which first of all, you can join for free. Like I just post free newsletters. That's cool. That's
00:48:31.400fine. You can do that. We're at vulgarhistory.substack.com. So I post kind of like
00:48:35.760feminist rants and biographies, women in history and stuff like that. And, or if you want to get
00:48:41.580a paid membership to that, you can. And actually if you get a paid membership right now, the annual
00:48:47.000membership is 50% off, which works out to something like $4 a month. If you want to support me and the
00:48:52.700podcast and my newsletter in that way, or if you want to gift that to somebody, what a nice gift
00:48:56.660that would be. You can also support the podcast on Patreon. First of all, for free, I'm posting
00:49:03.240content there for all the free members. Like I see you, I respect you. I love having you there.
00:49:08.280Like I post sort of value added content from the episodes, like pictures of the people that we're
00:49:12.820talking about and stuff like that poll questions um just like links to interesting articles you
00:49:18.340would like that's all available to all the free members at patreon.com and foster writer and then
00:49:23.740if you want to um buy yourself um a paid membership guess what it's 30 off if you want to become a
00:49:31.060paid member of the podcast of the patreon so um one dollar less 30 a month you get early ad free
00:49:40.420access to all episodes um and then for five dollars less 30 percent um you get access to0.86
00:49:46.480the bonus episodes as well so that's vulgar peace theater um so this asshole and also the after show0.86
00:49:51.820which i've just posted a new episode of the after show where i'm talking with friend of the podcast0.86
00:49:56.720allison epstein about a movie that she and i both had to excitedly yell about to each other it's the
00:50:03.840movie Conclave about the elderly men in the Vatican scheming to be who's going to be the
00:50:10.720new Pope. It's such a good movie. Anyway, if you want to hear me and Alison talking about that,
00:50:14.280that's available to all members of the Patreon at the $5 a month or more level.
00:50:18.680So I know I'm throwing a lot of information at you right now, but basically go to patreon.com
00:50:23.680slash Anne Foster writer. If you want to join for free, you can. If you want to get a free
00:50:28.260seven day trial you can if you want to subscribe for the annual thing you use code vulgar v-u-l-g-a-r
00:50:35.900to get 30 off your annual subscription to um my patreon and also at that five dollars or more a
00:50:42.720month level that's where you get to join the community discord which is where tits up brigade
00:50:46.800members are providing emotional support for each other sharing pictures of our cats and our dogs
00:50:52.960and our other pets um recommending books and movies and stuff it's just like a giant group
00:50:57.620chat, and that's available to anybody at the $5 a month or more level. And you can also gift
00:51:02.920a Patreon membership to somebody. So you can ask your loved ones to give you a gift subscription
00:51:10.260to Vulgar History. And that's the thing you can do. You go to patreon.com slash Anne Foster
00:51:15.680Writers slash gift, and that takes you to the thing to get a gift subscription. And also our
00:51:21.660brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, an amazing company that I love supporting. I'm really excited
00:51:26.840to continue working with them. And actually, Tori, the owner, she's got some really exciting
00:51:32.040new designs coming out next year. And I'm really excited for when we get to tell you about those.
00:51:37.160So Common Year Jewelry is a small business. It's a woman-owned business that makes beautiful
00:51:41.800heirloom jewelry pieces inspired by classical history, classical mythology,
00:51:46.460and where we connect with them. The most is women from history. And so their collection includes
00:51:53.400pieces with women from mythology like Artemis is there, Clytemnestra, Hecate, Medusa. I think she
00:52:02.220was recently posting that ever since the results of the recent American election, there's been a
00:52:06.160real uptake in people getting Medusa-inspired pieces, which I like that energy. I like that.
00:52:11.520Let's just turn some people into stone with our snake hair energy. Also, there's real women from1.00
00:52:18.540history who we've talked about on this podcast, like Hatshepsut is there, Anne Boleyn, Agrippina,
00:52:24.100Cleopatra, Boudicca, and their pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more
00:52:29.040affordable gold vermeil. And if you're buying something for yourself, or if you're putting
00:52:33.160this on your wishlist for someone to buy it for you, make sure they know that you can get 15% off
00:52:38.160your order from Common Era by going to commonera.com slash vulgar or using code vulgar at
00:52:44.220checkout at commonera.com and then of course for the tits out brigade member in your life and maybe
00:52:49.460that person is you there's vulgar history merchandise which is available for americans
00:52:54.520at vulgarhistory.com slash store or if you're outside the u.s go to vulgarhistory.redbubble.com
00:53:00.280we're talking about the friend hath need of this or whatever that saying is we have that on like
00:53:05.540tote bags on t-shirts we have the peg plunkett's pub we have the beautiful vulgar history i'm not
00:53:12.240taking history seriously since 2019 um crew neck like varsity style shirt um we have francis0.98
00:53:20.300howard titties outies we have john knox the ghost of john knox saying whores it's just lots of0.77
00:53:27.360inside jokes oh and then also the um the holiday design by our friend karen moynihan that says0.99
00:53:32.560tits the season and it looks like an embroidered jumper um and the design are lots of little0.50
00:53:39.480breast imagery. Anyway, vulgar history merch, you can get it at vulgarhistory.com slash store in
00:53:45.480America and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com in elsewhere. And if you want to get in touch with
00:53:51.220me, please do, especially if you go on holiday somewhere and you see a picture of a thing that
00:53:57.520has to do with someone we've talked about on the podcast. We've covered so many people in America.
00:54:01.860I just wanted to mention for a long time, we hadn't talked about America, but now we have,
00:54:06.420And I'm excited that people are sending me pictures who live around some of the places where, um, any of those people hung out.
00:54:13.940Um, if you're in, you know, Shippensburg, um, Pennsylvania, where Peggy Shippen's family is from or whatever, send me a picture of a sign because it delights me.
00:54:23.160And I like, I like seeing these places.
00:54:26.880Um, you can get in touch with me if you go to vulgarhistory.com.
00:54:30.220My email address is there, or you just like fill the form and it sends an email to me, the little form.
00:54:35.740You can also keep up with me on social media.
00:54:38.880I'm on Instagram and I'm on Blue Sky and I'm on threads all at vulgarhistorypod.