April
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0432. Tuesday, 8 April 1997. From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 1997 20:56:31 -0400 Subject: Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival's Love's Labour's Lost Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival's production of <italic>Love's Labour's Lost</italic> opened at the Aronoff Center in downtown Cincinnati on March 28 and closes April 20. Shows begin at 8:00 PM, and there are Saturday matinees at 2:00. For more information, call 513.559.0642. I saw the show last Saturday afternoon, and the audience loved it. The show was peppered with spontaneous laughter and applause. The audience generally seemed to understand the jokes, though Dull's comment on not understanding a word (5.1.147 Bevington) got the loudest laugh. The stage is shaped like a chevron, and runs diagonally across the auditorium-north and south. On the north end of the stage is a gate made of books, closed with an insubstantial chain, at the south end a flower-decorated swing. In the middle, at either side of the stage, are two benches made of books. The time is vaguely in the 1920s, though I had originally thought "Edwardian." The show begins when the three reprobate lords, William Sweeney (Longaville), Richard Kelly (Dumain), and Nicholas Rose (Berowne), begin to put away their toys and vices. Charles Scheeren (Navarre) enters like a prissy schoolmaster-and the fun begins. Berowne is especially powerful-and the audience loved him. Jim Stump as Dull is the locale sheriff, and Costard (Colby Codding) is a college student who has much to learn-in this production. Chris Reeder, the tallest member of the cast, plays a Don Quixote-like Armado, while Moth is played by Marni Penning-perhaps the shortest member of the cast. They are an excellent team. Kristin Chase is perfect as Jaquenetta-sexy and parodic. (She later doubles as Mercade.) She can do what the girls of France cannot do-leap at whatever man she wants. And in this production she does this literally. The girls of France (Toni Brotons as the Princess, Nicole Franklin-Kern as Maria, Lisa Penning as Katharine, and Regina Cerimele as Rosaline) are dressed as fashionable Parisian beauties should be-and the audience does not have to suspend disbelief when the boys of Navarre fall in love with them immediately. Boyet (Jim Stump again) is the officious man-about-court. Dan Kenny is Holofernes (and provides the music as court musician) and Khris Lewin plays a dottering Nathaniel. They are perfect. This show has really come together. I loved it, and I recommend it to anyone. Yours, Bill Godshalk
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0431. Tuesday, 8 April 1997. [1] From: Gregory McSweeney <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 7 Apr 1997 15:32:08 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Speech Prefixes in "Lear" [2] From: Fran Teague <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 97 16:36:12 EDT Subj: Teaching with the New Folger [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gregory McSweeney <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 7 Apr 1997 15:32:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Speech Prefixes in "Lear" I enjoyed Robert Marks's discussion of the discrepancies in speech attributions in "Lear" Q and F, especially since it's always bothered me that the Fool drops out the way he does: sans glory, sans thanks, sans any acknowledgment of the crucial palliation he's provided the king's downward spiral. I think the Fool is a better "child" to Lear than Cordelia can bring herself to be; her reticence in the early play to declare her love completely - if not as fulsomely as her sisters do, strikes me as a sort of standing on principle at the expense of the filial relationship. It's a conscious decision on Cordelia's part to showcase her own superior morality over that of her siblings. Her father's emotional needs at this point are excessive and exasperating, to be sure, but Cordelia is unwilling here to humour the old guy, for fear that she might be perceived as sycophantic or greedy. In other words, her opinion of herself must be preserved and published, that her innate nobility may be known to all and sundry - and domestic and political stability be damned. So I've never been very satisfied with the notion that she and the Fool were doubled; that may very well have been the case, but the Fool's support of Lear is manifestly based on ego-less love, where Cordelia's is contingent on her father's learning some mysterious moral lesson of which she is long since the smug graduate. I still think she benefits greatly from not being an only child; if Regan and Goneril weren't such absolute murderous bitches she'd come across as rather self-congratulatory and grandiose in her modesty. Something I've found interesting in the difference in attribution in Q and F, however, is in 1:4, where the king asks, "Does anyone here know me? Does Lear walk thus," etc. The Quarto has Lear asking, "Who is it that can tell me who I am? Lear's shadow?" The Folio indicates that after the king asks who can tell him who he is, the retort "Lear's shadow" is given to the Fool. The implications are hardly earth-shattering; Q would indicate a nascent realization on the king's part of his own deterioration; F is utterly true to the character and honesty of the Fool, in his lack of reluctance to report unflattering truths to his master - and yet in the latter utterance Cordelia's judgmentalism can be clearly heard. It's as though the things she implies through her pretentious silence are ventriloquized through the Fool's less invested voice. Whatever the original attributions, I find it fascinating that some degree of the authenticity of what we codify as definitive text comes to us from transcriptions of performances. It would obviously have been more important to jot down the content than the attributions; some inaccuracy would have been inevitable. But in "Lear" the blurring of the identities of Lear and the Fool, and the Fool and Cordelia seem liberating to me. All three are on an approximate axis in terms of victimization, audience identification, and morality - that others like Edgar and Kent simply aren't - though these latter two are more unproblematically 'good,' nor can their psychologies be considered less developed than those of the first-tier characters. Go figure. Greg McSweeney [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Fran Teague <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 97 16:36:12 EDT Subject: Teaching with the New Folger This past winter term I taught using the Folger editions, which my students and I generally liked. Specifically, the students valued the features of facing page notes, frequent illustrations, and top of scene summaries. I did find that my usual class on the text of _Hamlet_ had to be re-thought because the edition gave no indication of the Q1 text for "To be or not to be-ay, there's the point" or of the scene between Horatio and Gertrude before Hamlet's return. Whether these passages are good, bad, or indifferent, they serve as an excellent device to make students think about the way we treat Shakespeare as a secular saint or how the character of Gertrude is developed. I'd like to have those texts available with some explanation so that I may teach with them. I was also baffled to see that the "How all occasions" soliloquy was not marked with the sort of brackets that might indicate it occurs in Q2 alone. I'm sure that there's a good reason for that, but I couldn't figure it out. Speaking of "How all occasions," I'm surprised more of the folks on this list have not complained bitterly about its handling in the recent Branagh _Hamlet_. Though I liked very much the treatment of Fortinbras (and not everyone did, I gather), I was grumpy at the overblown shouting and the clunky background that went with "How all occasions."
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0430. Tuesday, 8 April 1997. From: Lars Engle <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 7 Apr 1997 13:57:15 -0400 Subject: Replacement position: please post and forward The Department of English at the University of Tulsa seeks a qualified Ph.D. or A.B.D. with broad interests in Early Modern British literature to teach in Fall 1997. Immediate needs are for three courses: a survey course in British literature to 1800 for sophomore English majors, a course in Shakespeare for general education students, and a course in Milton for senior English majors. Relevant teaching experience, publications and interest in women's literature a plus. Please submit a letter, vita, and dossier for full consideration. We will begin screening applications in mid-April and will hope to fill the position by the end of the month. Please direct inquiries or applications to: Professor Lars Engle Department of English The University of Tulsa Tulsa, OK 74104 918-631-2557This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0429. Tuesday, 8 April 1997. [1] From: Billy Houck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 7 Apr 1997 11:58:55 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0418 Re: Shakespeare and Modern Music [2] From: Georgianna Ziegler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 97 12:19:00 PDT Subj: Music [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Billy Houck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 7 Apr 1997 11:58:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 8.0418 Re: Shakespeare and Modern Music Comment: Re: SHK 8.0418 Re: Shakespeare and Modern Music Elton John's THE KING MUST DIE is about Shakespeare and Hamlet. and I have vivid memories of David Bowie singing to Yorrick's skull when he did CRACKED ACTOR on the DIAMOND DOGS tour. Still wearing platform shoes, Billy Houck [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Georgianna Ziegler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 97 12:19:00 PDT Subject: Music Many Thanks!! to all of you who contributed so enthusiastically to the list of Shakespearean references in modern music. I have forwarded your thoughts to Angela Norris, a high school student in Golden, Colorado who wrote us a letter and who, I am sure, will be quite overwhelmed by the response! Georgianna Ziegler
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0428. Tuesday, 8 April 1997. [1] From: Bill McRae <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 1997 10:22:24 -0500 (CDT) Subj: Shakespeare as Model = [2] From: Gabriel Wasserman" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 1997 16:41:27 -0400 Subj: New Variorum; Davenant; weird sisters [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill McRae <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 1997 10:22:24 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Shakespeare as Model What are the book-length studies of Shakespeare's texts as models for subsequent literature? I.e., say from _All for Love_ through _Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead_, as well as non-dramatic reinscriptions of Shakespeare? = [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Wasserman" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 07 Apr 1997 16:41:27 -0400 Subject: New Variorum; Davenant; we=EFrd sisters I have a question. What happened to *The New Variorum Shakespeare* after 1955, when *Richard II* was published. In *The Reader's Guide to Shakespeare*, it says that "now" (1966) *Titus Andronicus* and *The Comedy of Errors* were being prepared. I've never seen any volume later than Ric. II. Was Will D'Avenant the son of Will Shakespeare? Tell me about the spelling and pronunciation of "weyward sisters" or "weyard sisters" or "weird sisters" Gabriel Z. Wasserman P.S.: The Chandos portrait