Foe Yay/Theatre

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Foe Yay in Theatre include:

  • Shakespeare's tragedies are rife with this trope... Tybalt and Romeo? Check. Cassius and Caesar? Check. Iago and Othello? Check. Coriolanus and Aufidius? Check. Antonio and Shylock? Check. And in this case, people with fancy degrees actually spend too much of their time researching and writing about it.
    • In cases like Tybalt and Romeo, it's much more obvious when a female is cast as Tybalt; the results are very interesting...
      • Tybalt and Romeo? What about Tybalt and Mercutio!?
      • Or Romeo and Mercutio?!?
    • The comedies aren't free, either. Valentine and Proteus, anyone?
    • Nor are the histories, which give us Hal and Hotspur and Richard II and Bolingbroke.
    • Especially Iago and Othello. Some of his lines even seem jealous of Desdemona and homoerotic enough to suggest that Iago really is deluded enough to imagine a (completely one-sided) romantic relationship with him and Othello. Somehow, this seems a bit more plausible than his whole motivation being jealous over Cassio's promotion.
  • Jean Valjean and the original Inspector Javert from Les Misérables. Hey, the woman whose child you've sworn to raise as your own has just died from an STD? No problem -- just sing a song with your sworn nemesis!

I swear to you- I will be there...

    • Let the record show that the song in question named "The confrontation" Is about how Valjean is vowing to go and save the child immediately, and Javert's desire to stop him, leading to Valjean even claiming he will kill Javert if he has to.
    • It doesn't help that during the "One Day More" song at the 10th Anniversary Concert where each "group" shares a microphone (Marius and Cosette, the Amis de l'ABC, while Eponine and Gavroche are alone) Valjean and Javert sing on the same mike.
  • Billy Budd, also the book, but especially the opera. I mean WTF. Claggart has a crush on Billy who's too naive to notice it. And he sings a long aria about the boy's beauty and how he "cannot enter" where "love stills lives and grows strong" and therefore he must destroy Billy. It's not even subtext, it's clearly slashy. Not to mention he steals Billy's scarf and pervs over it. And runs around with a phallic symbol.
  • Depends on the production, but Puccini's Tosca sometimes has this between Tosca and Scarpia.
  • It isn't evident (or at least it isn't as obvious)in the novel The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but the musical adaptation contains several hints of foe yay. The best example is the song Confrontation. During the song, Jekyll and Hyde are fighting for dominance and it becomes a Fight Club-like Mind Game Ship. It is more prominent in this production, which decided to portray Jekyll and Hyde as two different actors. Note at 2:13, when Hyde pounces onto Jekyll and flips him over, how Jekyll is sprawled on the floor and thrusts his hips upward.
  • From Wicked: "My pulse it rushing, my head is reeling, what is this feeling, fervid as a flame - does it have a name? YES! It's loathing!" Clearly loathing. Totally not lust or anything. Of course, Elphie and Galinda later develop a Romantic Two-Girl Friendship, and they got the Word of Gay treatment, so...

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