January
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 5, No. 0012. Thursday, 6 January 1994. From: David Richman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 5 Jan 1994 9:41:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: Shakespeare's Illness It is interesting and disturbing to learn of Shakespeare's possible Parkinson's disease. I suppose this is one of the many things about the playwright that we will never know with certainty. Eugene O'Neill did suffer from Parkinson's disease, and he was physically unable to write during the last ten years of his life. His last play, *A Moon for the Misbegotten*, was completed in 1943, and he died in 1953. His letters wrench the heart (at least, they wrenched my heart) in their description of the mental and spiritual agony his condition caused him. Might Shakespeare have known something of the same agony? David Richman
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 5, No. 0011. Wednesday, 5 January 1994. From: Phyllis Rackin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 4 Jan 1994 12:34:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: The Renaissance Bookshelf (Was Sh and Ancient World) Dear Mr. McKenna, Of course, what you say makes good sense. I'm sorry if my response seemed dismissive: I think it had more to do with my congenital aversion to what Allon White called "The Dismal Sacred Word" than to anything you wrote. Have you seen White's essay? The full title is "'The Dismal Sacred Word':Academic Language and the Social Reproduction of Seriousness," and it's reprinted in *Carnival, Hysteria, and Writing* (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1993). On the question of the likely levels of literacy/illiteracy among the playgoers, have you seen Andrew Gurr's discussion on pp. 54-56 in the 1988 paperback edition of *Playgoing in Shakespeare's London*? And his Appendix I, "Playgoers 1567-1642"? Happy new year! Phyllis Rackin
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 5, No. 0010. Wednesday, 5 January 1994. From: Jon Enriquez <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 04 Jan 1994 11:26:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: 4.0972 E-Mail: A Thin Communication Medium? Comment: Re: SHK 4.0972 E-Mail: A Thin Communication Medium? Regarding Michael Sharpton's comment about E-mail as a thin communication medium: Yes, e-mail is thinner than, say, conversation. But irony, which he cites as an example of something that can't be indicated electronically, is about the worst possible example. There *is* a way to indicate irony; it is :). I prefer ;) because it is sassier and easier (slightly) to type. There are of course many other examples of emotional expression: :( unhappiness :P disgust :-< disapproval Anyway. E-mail users have developed conventions for expressing emotions because they felt the need to do so. My use of asterisks in the previous paragraph is another example of an e-mail idiom. If people wish to communicate with a limited set of characters, they find a way to do so. While I'm unfamiliar with masque, I suggest that if it is a thin medium and if practitioners want to make it thicker (which is debatable), they would adopt conventions as we have in e-mail, or for that matter spoken and written language. Some might argue that Shakespeare limited himself too much by using the rigidity of blank verse for the bulk of his dialogue; I would respond that in using that form to evoke a variety of emotions and effects, he did rather well. :) Jon Enriquez The Graduate School Georgetown University ENRIQUEZJ@guvax (Bitnet)This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Internet)
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 5, No. 0009. Tuesday, 4 January 1994. From: James McKenna <MCKENNJI@UCBEH> Date: Monday, 03 Jan 1994 22:47:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: The Renaissance Bookshelf Dear Ms. Rackin, Touche--though Ann Jennalie Cook's PRIVILEGED PLAYGOERS makes the argument that quite a few of them would have had the means to afford books. Whether they actually did have them, well, how can we know? My comment, however, refered to writers, not readers, and came especially in reference to Ben Jonson. Jonson's obsession with the classics is an extreme case, but I still think it's not out of line to presume that the *educated* Elizabethan bought and bound and studied works that were the currency of educated and priveleged discourse. Do I presume too much? (Loved your STAGES OF HISTORY, by the way.) Yours, James McKennaThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 5, No. 0008. Tuesday, 4 January 1994. From: Hirch Schipper <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 03 Jan 94 21:12:16 EST Subject: SHAKESPEARE'S ILLNESS Thanks to William Godshalk for calling attention to Levin's book in regards to Syhlock and the Christian society. Indeed the origin of and the stimulus for my writing stemmed from the Merchant. However, I have just finished Ian Wilson's "Shakespeare : The Evidence" and would not have ended the article as I did. From consideration of Shakespeare's signatures on the Belott-Mountjoie deposition, the Blackfriars Gatehouse conveyance and mortgage, and his will, the deduction is made that he suffered of scrivener's palsy or writer's cramp. As a physician, I know something about that condition which is psychosomatic and occurs in younger persons. To me the writing appears to be of a person suffering of Parkinson's disease. This condition is much more common than writer's palsy, is a progressive degenerative neurological disease, occuring often in persons of late middle age, and also determines a blank facies as we see on Shakespeare's mortuary sculpture. The condition is slowly and unrelentingly progressive, is subjective in that patients know that they are ill, and thus are often impressed to make their wills. The illness could well have started to afflict Shakespeare before he wrote his last play, Henry VIII, in association with John Fletcher, perhaps to releive him of the difficulties of writing. Shakespeare's diagnosis was immersed in the general category of senility and debility. It makes no difference whether he had writer's cramp or Parkinson's, although the former would not affect his general condition. Still, it is sad to contemplate that possibly Shakespeare's life was cut short at the height of his abilities by Parkinson's disease. Happy new year Hirsh