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Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 83. Thursday, 14 Mar 1991. (1) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1991 07:43:00 -0500 (9 lines) From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: RE: SHK 2.0081 Videos in the Classroom (2) Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1991 17:30:00 -0500 (34 lines) From: [Stanley D. McKenzie]This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: SHAKSPER: Flannagan Exam (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1991 07:43:00 -0500 From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: 2.0081 Videos in the Classroom Comment: RE: SHK 2.0081 Videos in the Classroom Quick apology and clarification: while the tape Herb Coursen sent me does have some Nunnery stuff on it, its main focus is on "Now might I do it pat." Skip Shand (2) --------------------------------------------------------------61---- Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1991 17:30:00 -0500 From: [Stanley D. McKenzie]This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: SHAKSPER: Flannagan Exam I was delighted with Roy Flannagan's posting his final exam for comments and may well "borrow" some of his questions for my own future exams. All of my own Shakespeare exams (for undergraduate engineering, technology, science, and applied arts students) are currently open-book and open-notes, with short essays on specific passages from each of the plays being tested, plus a longer global essay question. What most struck me, however, in reading Prof. Flannagan's medium and long answer questions was how difficult a time I would have answering some of them (despite regularly teaching these plays for the past 23 years) WITHOUT HAVING PARTICIPATED IN THE SPECIFIC CLASS being tested. Not only would the answers vary among different schools of criticism, but even within a given critical approach I could imagine constructing (and indeed having read within the published criticism) quite contrary arguments within the framework of these questions. This led me to ponder for my own courses what exactly we should be testing as a "Final Exam" on Shakespeare: how well the students have absorbed what we have presented in the course? how well the students can apply on their own the critical approach(es) to which we have exposed them? the students' ability to express in writing their own interactions with a text? I suspect that in practice I actually grade toward the first of these, while liking to think that I am testing toward the second; I am increasingly inclined to want to "test" toward the third, but have no idea how I would go about assigning distinguishing grades beyond "composition" criteria.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 82. Tuesday, 12 Mar 1991. (1) Date: 11 March 1991, 18:29:45 EST (10 lines) From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: ["Shog"] (2) Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 23:38:44 EST (33 lines) From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: "Shog" (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 March 1991, 18:29:45 EST From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: ["Shog"] One more note for any developing "shog" fans: the instance I mentioned in *Henry V* is the first recorded (3.b) in the OED, meaning not "jog off" but "begone," according to the editors. Has anybody seen it anywhere else? When did "sod off" start usage, and isn't it connected with Sodomites and "bugger off?" Roy Flannagan (2) --------------------------------------------------------------37---- Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 23:38:44 EST From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: "Shog" It would indeed appear that Shakespeare uses the verb "shog" only twice, as follows: *<S {Nym}.> Will you shogge off? I would haue you solus. *<S {Pist}.> Solus, egregious dog? O Viper vile . . . (Henry 5 (F1) 2.1:43) *<S {Nim}.> Shall wee shogg? the King will be gone from Southampton. (Henry 5 (F1) 2.3:43) This gives us a little context, although it hardly explains the word. Strangely, Eric Partridge (*Shakespeare's Bawdy*, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968) fails to mention "shog" in any form, nor does he deal with "sod" (DOS backwards?), but he offers the following for "sodden": sodden. Heavy and dull and stupefied. Bawd, in reference to her grossly overworked harlots: "The stuff we have, a strong wind will blow it to pieces, they are so pitifully sodden," *Pericles* 4.2.18-9. Cf. rotten -- OE soden, ex seothan (whence our seethe), "to boil; hence to cook." Cf. *LLL*'s "bis coctus... twice sod simplicity!" (from memory). None of this defines "shog," of course -- but it looks like a rather different word to me. Ken Steele University of Toronto
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 81. Tuesday, 12 Mar 1991. Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1991 07:10:00 -0500 From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: 2.0079 Cornmarket CE in Class Comment: RE: SHK 2.0079 Cornmarket CE in Class Re: "comparative videotapes"--a couple of years ago at an SAA session, Herb Coursen demonstrated a tape he uses. It brings together a number of Nunnery Scenes on one tape for comparison, and is very revealing. He has been very generous with that tape in the past, willingly dubbing it for Shakespeare teachers who send him a blank videocassette. And the address is: H. R. Coursen Bowdoin College Brunswick, ME 04011
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 80. Tuesday, 12 Mar 1991. Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 10:44:09 EST From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: SHAKSPER: The First Eight Months and Beyond... Dear Fellow SHAKSPEReans; As many of you may already know, SHAKSPER was originally conceived as an electronic mail network for members of the Shakespeare Association of America, to facilitate communications before and after the annual SAA conferences. A global electronic conference could accelerate administrative and scholarly communications, and ultimately incorporate members of the International Shakespeare Association and other Shakespearean institutions and projects throughout the world. In Philadelphia for the April 1990 SAA conference, and encouraged by members of Camille Williams' seminar on computer applications (among others), I submitted a brief written proposal to the SAA executive. It soon became clear, however, that to those who have never experienced the "new medium," electronic mail is truly uncharted territory. Some kind of demonstration was clearly required, both for the executive and for the general membership, at the next annual meeting. Furthermore, it became clear to me that some kind of "working model" would be necessary for any such demonstration, and hence SHAKSPER was launched in July 1990. The project has already become much more than a mere experiment, of course, with more than 130 members at 113 institutions in 9 countries, and with a wide variety of on-line resources and some quite stimulating discussions. In a real sense, then, SHAKSPER already exists, but despite its considerable growth and activity in the past eight months it seems still more remarkable to me for its unlimited potential than for its accomplishments thus far. I believe that, with the endorsement or affiliation of the Shakespeare Association, SHAKSPER could grow to many times its current membership, and offer still more resources to still more Shakespearean scholars. Discussions prompted by multiple conference sessions could continue in parallel on SHAKSPER, journal editors and contributors could communicate electronically, and collaboration or cooperation could take place both more widely and more effectively. Membership growth has a snowballing effect: the more Shakespeareans and resources SHAKSPER can offer, the more Shakespeareans and resources it will attract. Interest in SHAKSPER has already been expressed by the International Shakespeare Globe Centre Project, the Shakespeare DataBank, the Shakespeare Bulletin, and the Shakespeare Newsletter. Ultimately, a large enough network of Shakespearean scholars might even attract future electronic resources from Shakespeare Quarterly, the Folger Library, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and beyond! I believe that SHAKSPER is already a most remarkable and rare bird, but it is also still a fledgling with the capabilities and aspirations to soar far higher. I am in the process of preparing a computer simulation, paper brochure, display, and sample diskettes for the Vancouver SAA meeting later this month, and I hope that the paragraphs above explain the importance of this to the future direction of SHAKSPER. Suggestions for the various presentation materials will be most warmly received, and I invite any comments, suggestions, or testimonials, publicly or privately, as to SHAKSPER's current and/or potential value to Shakespearean scholars and students. The draft SHAKSPER flyer includes information about electronic mail in general, SHAKSPER's on-line resources (the Fileserver, the Quarto/Folio Textbase, and discussion logbooks), and SHAKSPER's daily operations, as well as technical information and instructions for becoming a member. I also believe that a complete or partial listing of members will provide important evidence of SHAKSPER's current geographical range and the scholarly professionalism of its members, and ask anyone who might object to the use of their name in this cause to contact me privately. As always, I would also like to encourage you all to recommend SHAKSPER to interested colleagues, both at home and in Vancouver. Unfortunately I can't transmit copies of the brochure via Bitnet itself (just wait a few years, though...), but you are all welcome to pick up a copy in Vancouver and post it in your departments. Thank you again to all of you, who have supported this project from its conception a year ago until now, and who have patiently endured the occasional technical difficulty and conversational "dry spell," confident that the concept of SHAKSPER and its potential will ultimately make it all worthwhile. Yours, Ken Steele University of Toronto <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 2, No. 79. Monday, 11 Mar 1991. Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1991 20:14:40 -0500 From: Steve Urkowitz <SURCC@CUNYVM> Subject: 2.0057 Etext of Cornmarket *Comedy of Errors* Comment: Re: SHK 2.0057 Etext of Cornmarket *Comedy of Errors* This is a delayed response to the Cornmarket appearance CE in Etext: Every once in a while I have students who prefer not to buy their own texts show up in class with one of the Cornmarket facsimiles. Wow! Talk about learning differences. But as with any variant reading or misreading, the alternatives offer opportunities to understand text, transmission, interpretation, and theatrical "relativity of values." Do you know the technique of "comparative videotapes" that Mike Mullin uses? He'll take a two minute chunk of one KING LEAR tape, f'rinstance, show it, ask students to write everything they "notice." Then they all read out their list. Then he shows the same passage again, and he asks what they see this time through, re-viewing and sensitized by classmates' observations. THEN he jumps (pops into the vcr) to the next equivalent passage from a different videoparoduction. And he repeats the viewing and reviewing. The only real technical demand on the teacher is to find juicy equivalent moments. Now to you and the Cornmarket facsimiles. Find a variant that tickles you; then reproduce the 18th-century text and alternative Quarto, folio, and modern versions of the equivalent passage. Hand them out one by one. Try staging or straight discussing or maybe do prosodic analysis or cultural materialism or whatever's your pleasure. But do it several times and do it on several texts. Now, this isn't a way to run a whole course, but it does introduce students to the delights and terrors of textual relativity. (Come to think of it, last Tuesday I did the same kind of thing with the opening speeches of each of the plays we've studied thus far this term. But I did it as a professorial display of ingenuity rather than as an exercise for the class. Damn, I keep forgetting that the big flaw in lecturing and in Socratic questioning is that the lecturer or Socrates is the one who experiences real learning. The note taker and the responder-to-questions stays passive. Hmmm. So that's my agenda for next week . . . . Thanks for offering that ETEXT. Cordially, Steve Urkowitz SURCC@CUNYVM