I know this is (very much) a side thought, but I was fascinated by what someone brought up in class today about Shakesperean/Middletonian ideas about what we today would consider homosexuality. I hadn't before considered the possibility that homosexuality as an identity hasn't always been a widely-accept social norm for ages, and it might be interesting to explore how that's represented in the literature that we read. (Or not, since it's so straightforward.)
On another note, it's also always startling to me that the comedies we read don't consider the keeping of an ingle to be child abuse - was there no conception of consent on the part of women, children, or people of a lower class?
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Kat, those are both pretty interesting! You made me curious about the ingles, too - apparently, England passed a law in 1548 to protect boys against sodomy (presumably ingles), and then in 1576 another law was passed prohibiting rape of girls under 10.
Of course, there's no way to know whether those laws were enforced or taken secretly. It seems like the taboo against incestuous abuse was a lot stronger.
That's rather comforting, I think?
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