Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/370

 "Leander, thou art made for amorous play: "Why art thou not in love, and loved of all? "Though thou be fair, yet be not thine own thrall."

Openly pederastic, in the same poem by Marlowe, is the passion of Neptune to possess the swimming Leander. Neptune supposes that so beautiful a mortal must be Ganymede, and determines to "enjoy him". The-god swims beside Leander, eager to rape the lad in the very waters:

The opening of Marlowe's tragedy "Dido", presents to us "Jupiter dandling Ganymede upon his knee, and Hermes lying asleep", with the exclamation from Jupiter:

—continued by a dialogue in which the boy bargains his favours to Jove like a knavish young harlot; his final demand being—

In the English drama of the Elizabethan quality and epoch, occur certain catch-words and sobriquets, some of them of Anglo-Saxon, some of other derivation, that refer to homosexual characters and passions. Such are however more intelligible to philologists than to less erudite readers, being largely obsolete in the language to-day.