October
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 69. Wednesday, 3 Oct 1990. Date: Mon, 01 Oct 90 18:01:42 EDT From: Willard McCarty <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: new electronic seminar Ficino: a new electronic seminar and bulletin-board for Renaissance and Reformation studies The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS), at Victoria University in the University of Toronto, takes great pleasure in announcing the creation of Ficino, an international electronic seminar and bulletin-board devoted to all aspects of the Renaissance and Reformation. The aim of Ficino is to further lively discussion and rapid exchange of information amongst scholars with an interest in its subject areas. Although focussed on these areas, Ficino is meant to be radically inclusive. Students of both Northern and Southern European cultures are equally welcome, as are those in distant or adjacent periods who wish to contribute their knowledge and skills to the subject matter of the seminar. All approaches and disciplines are equally relevant, but Ficino particularly encourages the interdisciplinary breadth of learning appropriate to Renaissance humanism. As with SHAKSPER, membership is open to anyone who submits a biographical statement of background and interests. A form for this purpose is appended below. My thanks to Steve DeRose for the original from which it was taken. Ficino has been named after Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), a Florentine Platonist, man of letters and prolific letter-writer, in order to suggest not only the historical period on which it focuses but also its intended manner. As you may know, Ficino himself was preoccupied by intellectual communication, the ideal form of which he found in the Platonic convivium. Thus he wrote to Bernardo Bembo that, `The convivium ... rebuilds limbs, revives humours, restores spirit, delights senses, fosters and awakens reason. The convivium is rest from labours, release from cares and nourishment of genius; it is the demonstration of love and splendour, the food of good will, the seasoning of friendship, the leavening of grace and the solace of life.' Our seminar is designed to provide an electronic analogue of Ficino's ideal institution; experience suggests that the new medium holds great promise for our success. Like SHAKSPER as well, Ficino also uses ListServ to provide a kind of `bulletin-board' or fileserver for various materials of a less dynamic nature. Plans are in progress to make available on the server the International Directory of Renaissance and Reformation Associations and Institutes (Toronto: CRRS, 1990); the Occasional Publications of the CRRS that deal with its holdings; other bibliographies; calls for papers, announcements for conferences and projects, and job postings; electronic texts; information about relevant software; and so forth. The CRRS also warmly encourages contributions to the archive from its members. A biography recycled from Humanist is acceptable, although it may have to be revised to place greater emphasis on interests in the Renaissance or Reformation. It should follow the format below as closely as possible. - - - - - -- - - - Please fill in and mail to the editor - - - - - (Any long item can be continued on following lines) *NAME: *INSTITUTION: *DEPARTMENT: *TITLE: *EMAIL: *PHONE: *ADDRESS: *POSTAL CODE: *COUNTRY: *PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS: *BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (ca. 100-500 words) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Thank you. Willard McCarty, editor Senior Fellow Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Victoria University in the University of TorontoThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. William Bowen, associate editor Chair, Publications Committee Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Victoria University in the University of TorontoThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 68. Tuesday, 2 Oct 1990. (1) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 90 22:32:07 EDT (150 lines) From: [Tom Clayton <TSC@UMNACVX>] Subject: [Single-Volume Shakespeares] (2) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 16:07:44 EDT (16 lines) From: Jonah Sinowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: Re: SHK 1.0067 Expensive Collections (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 02 Oct 90 22:32:07 EDT From: [Tom Clayton <TSC@UMNACVX>] Subject: [Single-Volume Shakespeares] Hardy Cook's communication (SHK 1.0066 Single-Volume Shakespeares (77)) prompts me to wonder publically when it is appropriate to respond privately to an individual (as directly to him), when to air one's views over the network (as here, for a third time but I hope not often or soon if ever again), and when to hold one's peace, an option with the merits that it costs no effort, clutters no airwaves, and ruffles no feathers (of those perched on the party line, especially). 1 In the case of the ideological implications of editions, there are basically two questions: (1) editions as editions for reading and use, and (2) editions as the embodiment of overt, covert, or unconscious ideological projects--a question that interests me "academically"; that is, not very often, not very much, and not theoretically, since it usually involves merely the propagation of foregone ideological conclusions. And the usual answer to such a backward show of indifference as mine to Matters of such Contemporary Magnitude and Moment--that "ALL is ideology and those who deny that are the most ideological(ly self- deceived) of all"--seems to me tantamount to "there is nothing save opinion, and opinion be damned." I leave such discourse to those who profess it and/or enjoy it otherwise. I do not neces- sarily invite others to come and do likewise, but I certainly welcome the company of those who do. The question which edition to use can be sensibly and prag- matically entertained, and answered in various sensible and prag- matic ways, favoring now individual editions, now collected works, now both, none of these perfect, any more than the teacher of any is likely to be perfect, except by relatively simple criteria like political (or editorial) "correctness." Some edi- tions, teachers, teachings, and miscellaneous projects may be more politically "correct" than others, but that, again, is a question for those for whom the question of political correctness is prior to all others. In such cases, I am often reminded of Dr. Johnson's observation about "the cant of those who judge by prin- ciples rather than perceptions." A dangerous person, Dr. Johnson, because he is ever thought-provoking and readily understood by any literate undergraduate. Editionswise (or foolish), I have sometimes used collected works, which CAN cost little if any more than a certain number of individual-play paperbacks, depending upon the edition; but I more often use individual editions, mainly because they are likely to be carried about more freely, read more regularly and readily, marked up more because the paper is thicker and there is relatively more margin (and I think marking up a good thing, not a bad), and generally used in a way and to an extent that col- lected editions very seldom are, in our mobile culture. I use different individual editions for different kinds of course (in one course, this term, New Arden, New Cambridge, and Oxford- individual by turns, for purposes of--incidental--comparison). It is good for most students to have a collected works, and I can sympathize with my own Alexandrian teachers who thought that every student should have a collected Shakespeare on the shelf-- because it just might come down, now and again, and there are not many books better taken down, even if "Shakespeare" (as he is fashionably depreciated by quotation marks, at present) were merely the creature of imperialist cultural mythography that any literate reader can see he is not. One of the more sensible as well as short comparative evalua- tions of Shakespeare texts that still has value, partly because it extrapolates, is "the Shakespeare section" by Karl Haffenref- fer in F. W. Bateson and Harrison T. Meserole's *Guide to English and American Literature,* 3rd ed. (London and New York: Longman, 1976): 78-85. These few pages will merely exercise boa deconstructors and others for whom all assertion is grist for the discourse mill, but for the few otherwise-minded remaining (and fewer still forthcoming), they have their value. Whatever the edition, where it is wrong, and one knows it is, one corrects. (To the gratification of every ego, this happens all the time: we all know SOMETHING that genuinely matters which no one else knows, one of the proper satisfactions of responsible teaching, modestly deployed.) Where one disagrees with one aspect or another of any part of an edition that is not a case of right or wrong in matters of fact or historical probability, one explains the grounds of disagreement--not necessarily at excruciating length. Disagreement is part of scholarship and part of life (but of course not of ideology, where happily there is only one correct answer, even if it varies from quarter to quarter, and year to year). To my way of thinking, it is more interesting in relation to particular cases than to the theoreti- cal or ideological sub- or superstructures that interpretations proceed from or imply as operational whether consciously entertained or not. In other words, an interest in literary or dramatic works qua works, writings, scripts tends to entail the practice of literary and dramatic criticism. The entailments of ideology and theory come from elsewhere and have their own destinations. 2 A few quotations from Mr. Cook's e-letter will show some assured "sites of contestation," if he and I, or others so dif- ferently minded, were to enter the same field. 1. "I would . . . prefer that my students *want* to have copies of all the plays for themselves RATHER THAN owning them because I compelled them to purchase a one-volume collection." Where is it that one can one COMPEL students to purchase ANY- THING? Not anywhere I have taught or studied. More to the point, by what logic is a text that is REQUIRED, by the same token NOT WANTED? In my experience, students are often very pleased to own books they would never have thought of acquiring had those books not been "required." (They can be read on Reserve in the library, after all.) 2. "If I now want to approach the plays as dynamic scripts, does not requiring a one-volume edition tend to enshrine them as something else?" ANSWER: NO. In any case, the "tendency" of any edition can be "exposed"--or noted--by the teacher. 3. "I am very conscious of the politics of bardolatry"--which I would take to mean: "I have been told and come to agree that there is such a thing as 'the politics of bardolatry,' and there- fore 'I am very conscious of 'it.'" This is the position of the true (dis)believer; skeptics and empirics tend to think other- wise, and that probably includes the majority of dramatists. 4. The Globe "edition was meant to be taken to the far reaches of the empire." This is a sweeping interpretative asser- tion, not a statement of "fact" by any stretch of the reasonable imagination, and not a fact even with the reading of the iconography of the title page. "The Globe of the title was not that 'wooden O' in which the plays were performed -- it was 'this solid globe' itself [as 'great' in *the Tempest*?] . On the title page, one finds a globe surrounded by hands clasping, upon whose arms is written 'One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.'" This is an emblem of international affinity before it is one of conquest, surely, or must the "real" meaning be covert because the one desired is not overt? The one-world ideal has been vari- ously desiderated and expressed over the centuries, and is still sought by the best as well as the worst, and not every such "design" is a case of "Heute England, morgen die Welt." I would even venture to suggest that Shakespeare's works have brought more together by shared enthusiasm (leading to mutual understanding) than by imperialism and colonization. In my EXPE- RIENCE, that is a fact. Best wishes, Tom (2) --------------------------------------------------------------25---- Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 16:07:44 EDT From: Jonah Sinowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: 1.0067 Expensive Collections Comment: Re: SHK 1.0067 Expensive Collections Question: I am a student at Rutgers University. I have been using the Riverside for quite a while and the binding is starting to break. I have decided that I must take it to a book binder or... buy a new book. Will getting the book bound solve my problems ??? I am attached to it - but I know another one ($45 at Rutgers) is well worth the investment. ???, JonahThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 67. Tuesday, 2 Oct 1990. (1) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 14:21:00 EDT (18 lines) From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: Re: SHK 1.0066 Single-Volume Shakespeares (2) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 90 15:36:18 EDT (72 lines) From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: "Th'expense and waste of his revenues..." (KL 2.1.100) or, "O reason not the need!" (KL 2.4.264) (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 14:21:00 EDT From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: 1.0066 Single-Volume Shakespeares Comment: Re: SHK 1.0066 Single-Volume Shakespeares I am teaching a tutorial section of the third year Shakespeare as my teaching assistantship in the Ph.D programme, and the required text is the Riverside Shakespeare. Its main advantage is that we can cross-reference material, referring back to plays we have already done in class, and glancing at material we will be looking at or perhaps are skipping over. Its BIG disadvantage is its size. There are days when carting what seems like a couple of tons of book from one building to another is annoying. I have on occasion cheated and brought my Arden instead. But I must admit that my students are, on the whole, quite stoic about it. And having all the plays at hand outweighs (bad pun) any other problem. Stephen Matsuba York University (2) --------------------------------------------------------------71---- Date: Tue, 02 Oct 90 15:36:18 EDT From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: "Th'expense and waste of his revenues..." (KL 2.1.100) or, "O reason not the need!" (KL 2.4.264) The current selling price of the *Riverside Shakespeare* at the University of Toronto Bookshop is $59.95 Can. (probably something less than $45 in the United States). Such a price does indeed put a burden on an undergraduate's budget, but the reading lists for some other English literature courses are much more expensive! In particular, I remember buying two hardcover anthologies for an undergraduate course in 17th Century English: the Hughes Milton ($32.95) and the Witherspoon & Warnke anthology ($37.75) brought the total to over $70, and this was about eight or nine years ago when a Shakespeare collected works would have been far less. The most expensive English courses I can recall have been novel courses, in which paperbacks for well over $10 each added up to hundreds of dollars per course (not to mention hours spent searching for the texts!). Obviously electronic texts and portable computers may provide an eventual escape from this expense -- but not yet. Shakespeare is certainly not the most expensive text in the store -- computer science courses, for example, require the purchase of software and manuals well over $100. And some students, I would wager, spend more on alcohol in a month than on textbooks. By the end of their degree, English majors will have purchased the collected works of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare at least -- and one could easily argue that any liberally-educated person should have bought and/or read them. Putting all three on a first-year introductory course booklist is obviously excessive, but each is perfectly reasonable for dedicated second-year courses. To make the required texts for a Shakespeare course a series of seven or eight paperbacks, soon to be discarded or destroyed (and whose prices might well ultimately add up to $50 or $70 anyway), would do students a great disservice -- exercising neither the muscles in their arms or in their heads. Accessibility to higher education is an important issue, but the cost of books and even tuition is a *minor* factor -- here in Toronto, monthly rents exceed annual tuition fees for most students. (Average rent is in the neighbourhood of $800, while tuition can be as low as $700 per annum.) The real cost of an education, the reason which discourages so many potential students, is not the cost of tuition and books, but the postponement of four years' income. In comparison, a $50 book is negligible. The real value of a collected works is that it gives the student access to general introductory material, background, and most importantly, the complete corpus of Shakespeare's work. One cannot truly understand *A Midsummer Night's Dream* without reading *Romeo and Juliet* first; *1 Henry IV* has meaning primarily in the context of the entire Henriad; the Sonnets and poetry shed important light on every word Shakespeare wrote. Naturally, the less ambitious and less motivated students won't read more than they are forced to -- in fact, most students will come to class without having read so much! But the better students, the curious students, will have the works of Shakespeare placed within their grasp, and may well make use of the entire volume, either during the course or later. (Exceptional students would probably seek out the other works regardless of the required texts.) And for students suffering real financial restraints, used bookstores and libraries can often lessen the hardship. Obviously no-one would put the Oxford English Dictionary, the Norton Facsimile of the First Folio, or the Oxford Textual Companion on undergraduate text lists -- each is well over $100 in its cheapest form. But *Shakespeare* they really should have in convenient form, at home, as a lifelong alternative to television. Whether they major in English or Engineering. Ken Steele University of Toronto
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 66. Tuesday, 2 Oct 1990. Date: Mon, 1 Oct 90 19:57 EDT From: "Hardy M. Cook" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: Thoughts About One-Volume Editions of the Plays I would like to thank John Dorenkamp for responding to my inquiry about the merits of individual paperback copies of Shakespeare's plays versus a one-volume collected edition. I too believe English majors ought to own all the plays of Shakespeare; I myself own at least a dozen *complete* works, including the Riverside (one-volume and electronic editions), the Oxford, the BBC TV Shakespeare, the Alexander, the Bevington (Scott Foresman and Bantam editions), and several from the 19th century. I would, however, prefer that my students *want* to have copies of all the plays for themselves rather than owning them because I compelled them to purchase a one-volume collection. Steve Wright asks what I meant by "the theoretical and political implications" of using a one-volume edition. Ken Steele wonders if I meant "expense," "the monumentality of a collected volume in terms of the reformulation of the canon," and the "editorial implications of one approach or the other." My answer to Ken is "yes, these and more." In part, I was fishing to see what others thought. I begin a project this summer on the reception of Shakespeare's sonnets. I first turned to their transmission, finding that for the 17th century the site of contestation was the text itself. As I moved to the 19th century, I became more and more interested in not simply the reception of the sonnets but in their appropriation -- the focus I am now investigating. This work on appropriation (and my reading of current theory and criticism) has led me to question many of my earlier positions. For example, if I now want to approach the plays as dynamic scripts, does not requiring a one-volume edition tend to enshrine them as something else. I am very conscious of the politics of bardolatry -- how the deification of Shakespeare has so often been for motives other than the appreciation of the plays. In 1864, Clark and Wright published *The Globe Edition: The Works of William Shakespeare.* This one-volume, 5" x 7" edition was meant to be taken to the far reaches of the empire. It contained no footnotes but was the first edition to number "the lines of each scene for convenience of reference." The Globe of the title was not that "wooden O" in which the plays were performed -- it was "this solid globe" itself. On the titlepage, one finds a globe surrounded by hands clasping, upon whose arms is written "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." If this were not enough, note the concluding paragraph of Clark and Wright's Preface: We trust that the title which has been chosen for the present edition will neither be thought presumptuous nor be found inappropriate. It seems indeed safe to predict that any volume which presents in a convenient form, with clear type and at a moderate cost, the complete works of the foremost man in all literature, the greatest master of the language most widely spoken among men, will make its way to the remotest corners of the habitable globe. My concern then involves what are we saying by word and deed to our students when we require them to purchase one of the (if not *the*) most expensive textbook/s in the bookstore to study ten to twelve plays in a semester when all our students want is a book that is easy to bring to class and that they can read in bed. Hardy M. Cook Bowie State University