Today is Ovid's birthday! Author of Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, and Apollo and Daphne within the Metamorphoses, and the Amores...

I really want to see this happen:

Pyramus falls desperately in love with Cleopatra. Romeo does too. Anthony, meanwhile, is entranced by Juliet. Juliet, feeling slighted and affronted, forms an alliance with Thisbe. Thisbe disguises herself as a man and challenges Anthony to a deul. Cleopatra acts magnificently unconcerned with her suitors. Romeo and Pyramus deul, and, during this, Cleopatra slips off to find Anthony. Anthony kills Thisbe, who is revealed to be a maiden after she dies, and Anthony suddenly falls in grieving love with her beauty and kills himself. Cleopatra arrives at this moment and is killed by Juliet with Anthony's dagger. Juliet flees to find Romeo. Meanwhile, Pyramus has killed Romeo and has departed in search of Thisbe. When he arrives on the scene, he falls weeping onto Thisbe's corpse, then kills himself by drinking from a flask of poison hidden in her bodice that Juliet and Thisbe had meant to use on Cleopatra. Juliet finds Romeo dead in the throne room and then kills herself by being bitten in the breast by an asp.

That was intensely entertaining to come up with. I thought Romeo and Cleopatra and Anthony and Juliet sounded intriguing when I got the idea a few days ago. Then decided to throw Pyramus and Thisbe in. Whee!

I also like "Romeo and Julianne," as my Latin class came up with.

~ ToM