Casting is often the most glaring of these. After a while, their laudable efforts become repetitive. But the real stumbling block is the modern sensibility that film makers usually want to tease from older plots. Almost always, they want to tell of manners and convention, their cruel limitations. Period pictures often track a single character who rebels against the strictures of the time, who achieves premature liberation.
Modern norms sound a dissonant note in the feasts of authenticity.
They shut down the complex emotional life of narratives of the past. The following is a compilation of suggestions made by listswains on the Patrick O'Brian and Searoom mailing lists for actors to play characters in the Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian, were they to be adapted to the silver screen. Items added on or after 7 December 1996 appear in boldface type.