History, Allegedly

History, Allegedly

The Library

The plays make things up. This shelf doesn't. Every book answers one question a play raises: did she really say it, did it really happen, who started the rumor. Each one carries a verdict and its receipts.

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Reel I · The Scissor Queen

Was Marie Antoinette stripped of her Austrian clothes and her dog at the French border?Did Louis XVI write “Rien” in his diary on his wedding day?Did Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette really take seven years to consummate their marriage?Did Louis XVI really have a locksmith’s workshop?What did Marie Antoinette finally say to Madame du Barry?Did the Princesse de Lamballe faint at the sight of a lobster?Did Marie Antoinette say “Let them eat cake”?Are Maine Coon cats descended from Marie Antoinette’s cats?Were Marie Antoinette’s last words an apology to her executioner?Did Marie Antoinette order the diamond necklace?

Reel II · The Queen Bee

Did Cleopatra really arrive rolled in a carpet?Did Cleopatra dissolve a pearl in vinegar to win a bet with Mark Antony?Did Cleopatra die from the bite of an asp?Was Cleopatra famously beautiful?Did Cleopatra have a big nose? Where does ‘Cleopatra’s nose’ come from?Did Cleopatra speak many languages?Was Caesarion really Julius Caesar’s son?Did Cleopatra and Mark Antony really have a drinking club?Did Cleopatra invent the vibrator with a gourd full of bees?

Reel III · The Pomegranate Society

Did Anne Boleyn have six fingers?Did Henry VIII call Anne of Cleves a “Flanders mare”?Did Henry VIII divorce two of his wives, as the rhyme says?Was Henry VIII knocked out in a jousting accident?Which of his wives is Henry VIII buried with?Did Catherine Howard really write a love letter to Thomas Culpeper?Did Catherine Howard say “I die a queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpeper”?Did Catherine Parr outlive Henry VIII?Which of the six wives lived the longest?

Reel IV · All the Empress’s Men

Did Catherine the Great die having sex with a horse?Were the “Potemkin villages” really fake?Did Catherine the Great seize the throne in a borrowed military uniform?Did Peter III really court-martial and hang a rat?Did Catherine’s husband play with toy soldiers in bed?Did Catherine the Great have her husband Peter III killed?Did Catherine the Great buy Voltaire’s library?Was Catherine the Great really a German princess named Sophie?

Reel V · Fart Proudly

Did Benjamin Franklin really write an essay about farting?Did Franklin send his fart essay to Joseph Priestley?Did Benjamin Franklin take naked “air baths”?Did Benjamin Franklin actually fly a kite in a thunderstorm?Did Benjamin Franklin want the turkey to be the national bird?Did Benjamin Franklin propose marriage to Madame Helvétius?Did Franklin really wear a fur cap in Paris?Did Franklin and John Adams argue about an open window while sharing a bed?Why is the painting of the Treaty of Paris unfinished?

Reel VI · The Roommate

Did Lincoln really move into Joshua Speed’s bed because he could not afford seventeen dollars of bedding?Was it normal for two men to share a bed in the 1830s?What happened on Lincoln’s “fatal first of January” 1841?Did Lincoln really call himself “the most miserable man living”?Did Lincoln visit Joshua Speed’s family plantation in Kentucky?Did Lincoln write that he was jealous when Speed got married?Did Lincoln ask Speed whether marriage was worth it, a month before his own wedding?Did Lincoln call his marriage “a matter of profound wonder”?Were Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed lovers?