October
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 696. Sunday, 31 October 1993. From: William Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 1993 22:59:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 4.0691 Re: Shakespeare and Educational Establishments Comment: Re: SHK 4.0691 Re: Shakespeare and Educational Establishments One of my students, Melina Daly, from Argentina was educated in the afternoons (she says) at an English school. Each year they studied one or two Shakespeare plays in depth. She claims that Shakespeare was central to her study of English. Anecdotal, yeah, but maybe suggestive? Yours, Bill Godshalk
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 695. Sunday, 31 October 1993. From: William Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 1993 22:49:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Authorative Texts Jason Hoblit has, I think, misunderstood my point about texts. I don't think I used the words "standard" or "authorative." Nor was I arguing that directors should not cut scripts, or that innovative customing and staging are anathema. No, I was merely pointing out that an adaptation like Dryden's ALL FOR LOVE should not be considered Shakespeare's ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. I take it that Cary Mazer would not agree. Apparently Kemble and Olivier should be seen in historical context, and Shakespeare should not. I'm certainly not agruing that Shakespeare can't be appropriated. Terence Hawkes proves that he (or at least his plays) can. Certain people consciously appropriate Shakespeare for various reasons. Hawkes and Vickers among others are very interested in the processes of appropriation. In "The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text," Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybras (SQ 44 - current issue) exaggerate the problems of recovering historical texts. They set up an ideal of recoverability (if I may use that word), and prove that that ideal can not be obtained. Of course we can't recover the past and live in it. That's why we write history, and argue about what it must have been like in an early modern printing house. And as Grace Ioppolo, REVISING SHAKESPEARE, has emphasized along with Steve Urkowitz and others, Shakespeare was a reviser. Fifty years ago, teachers of English told their students that Shakespeare never blotted a line, never revised. Now some scholars claim that we have three distinct texts of HAMLET. Which one may be called standard or authoritative? Q1 is still hotly contested, but Q2 and Folio are not. But weren't Shakespeare's texts copied, and edited, and revised, etc.? Well, aren't contemporary texts also subject to editing, to readers who demand changes, to printers who make errors that are not caught? When we read Rick Powers' latest novel, do we say, "This really isn't his work. It's been edited, and I'll bet some of his friends read the book in manuscript and suggested changes, etc."? I don't because I expect editing and revision and a certain number of proofing errors. In working with Shakespeare's texts, we do the best we can. Standards change, and so do editing procedures. Nevertheless, Tom Stoppard is not Will Shakespeare, but then neither was the 17th Earl of Oxford. Yours in flux, Bill Godshalk
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 694. Sunday, 31 October 1993. From: Joan Hartwig <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 93 10:54:03 EDT Subject: 4.0690 Re: *Hamlet* on CBC Radio Comment: Re: SHK 4.0690 Re: *Hamlet* on CBC Radio Kenneth Branagh's audio *Hamlet* was on sale for 15 pounds at the Barbican when I was in London last January. It is on four audio cassettes and the package says to write to Random Century Audiobooks, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA for information on titles. This must be the same production that the CBC is broadcasting=original radio recording BBC 1992. Playing time approx 3 1/2 hours.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 693. Sunday, 31 October 1993. (1) From: Nancy W Miller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 93 8:50:10 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0692 Q: A SHAKSPER FAQ (2) From: Vint Cerf <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 93 13:16 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0692 Q: A SHAKSPER FAQ (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nancy W Miller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 93 8:50:10 EDT Subject: 4.0692 Q: A SHAKSPER FAQ Comment: Re: SHK 4.0692 Q: A SHAKSPER FAQ I second Michael Sharpston's motion to start up an FAQ. As a new Shakesperean, I (for one) would find such an endeavor very useful. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Vint Cerf <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 93 13:16 GMT Subject: 4.0692 Q: A SHAKSPER FAQ Comment: Re: SHK 4.0692 Q: A SHAKSPER FAQ Michael, et al, I think a SHAKSPER FAQ might be quite helpful - I imagine, however, that if it is not indexed by WAIS or organized by gopher, it may be a rather tedious document to peruse. Have you given some thought to how the potentially large quantity of information contained in such an FAQ might be organized? Vint CerfThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 692. Saturday, 30 October 1993. From: Michael Sharpston <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 1993 12:16:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: How About a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)? It has been on my mind for some time to ask my electronic colleagues whether or not it would be appropriate to have a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for SHAKSPER. This would be very much in the Internet tradition, and could be most helpful, particularly but not exclusively for new SHAKSPERians. I do realize that there are libraries full of books about Shakespeare and that the selection process for a FAQ would be a great challenge. But it could be rewarding. For example, I suspect I missed some of the texture of the Shakespeare and Politics debate by being so politically uncorrect that certain references passed me by. (At the same time, whoever might do an FAQ, PLEASE be dispassionate not partisan about the controversies you mention!). My belief this could be worthwhile was great enhanced by reading Bill Loos (Harvard) and his FAQ for the Tolkien group on LISTSERV @JHUVM.HCF.JHU.EDU -- this is of course a more august, academically serious forum, but perhaps the idea is still worth consideration. Even a well-considered rejection could, in the process, shed interesting light on how the traditions of Shakespearian scholarship and of Internet should intermingle. Michael SharpstonThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.