November
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1146. Friday, 14 November 1997. [1] From: John McWilliams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 15:02:12 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1141 Re: Complete Works [2] From: Stephanie Cowell <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 16:22:12 -0500 Subj: Complete Works, and A.L. Rowse [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: John McWilliams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 15:02:12 +0100 Subject: 8.1141 Re: Complete Works Comment: Re: SHK 8.1141 Re: Complete Works > Surely, this must be a joke: the NEXT definitive edition? Why from an > author long since dead, we should demand a brand new definitive edition > every year! > > What is the matter, can't you just ENJOY? Dear P.H., It wasn't meant to be a joke... The Riverside has been the definitive edition for a long time (not just a year) - by definitive, I mean the one agreed to be the standard by scholars. Like the Margoliouth edition of Marvell - anyone 'seriously' (sorry to use the word) interested in Marvell knows that edition. I'm aware of textual difficulties with Shakespeare and perhaps the idea of a standard edition is indeed out of date, or was always an impossibility. I was hoping perhaps to raise some discussion on this topic if anyone was interested - I think it's an interesting topic, anyway. Also, I want to buy a complete edition and can't afford more than one - I was just asking advice as a few have been published very recently, it's a tough decision and I thought the list-folk might help. Of course I enjoy Shakespeare (I just finished re-reading Henry IV Part I and it's fantastic - very funny and really quite gripping). But JUST enjoy... you're kidding, I'm a would-be academic - you can't expect me to be that hedonistic, can you? Cheers, John [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephanie Cowell <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 16:22:12 -0500 Subject: Complete Works, and A.L. Rowse This is my first response to the data base. My heart leapt up at John McWilliam*s letter re the plethora of Shakespeare editions and his words *Can't you just enjoy?* I am a historical novelist (*The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare,* out last spring from W. W. Norton) and I just recently joined the Electronic Shakespeare. I am quite fascinated by what everyone has to say in all the e-mails I receive daily, but my main interest and passion is reading the work itself. I want to let the words and characters wash over me, I swim in them, and simply love them. Now and then I've begun to wonder what's the matter with me that I don't want to hunch over five editions comparing them. I simply want to be with WS's words and characters and through them, the sense I get of the man, an emotional rather than a pedantic response. Does that make me a lightweight Shakespearean? But I guess each fan to his own methods of loving the writer and his work, the production and purchase of new editions being one....my own, which is to try to make him come alive in fiction, is scandalous enough to some! By the way, for anyone interested, I have a little article in the next Shakespeare Newsletter about the late Dr. Rowse whom I knew and who was my historical mentor and, to me, a kind, humorous, and generous man. Does my affection and admiration for him make me persona non grata with many scholars? Hope not!
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1145. Friday, 14 November 1997. [1] From: Narrelle Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 22:01:10 +0800 Subj: Re: RIII and Anne [2] From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 12:53:15 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1139 Re: Seduction of Lady Anne [3] From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 13:31:59 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1139 Re: Seduction of Lady Anne [4] From: Bonnie Melchior <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 15:12:47 CST6CDT Subj: The Beautiful Anne [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Narrelle Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 22:01:10 +0800 Subject: Re: RIII and Anne Matthew Gretzinger said: > If Anne is so soul-less, so >lacking in will, what obstacle will be overcome in wooing her? What >triumph will Richard win sufficient to allow him such gloating? The >same problem occurs in the McKellen _Richard_. Kristin Scott Thomas >takes the Bloom approach a step further. Bloom, "very grievous sick and >like to die," looked drugged and detached in her final scenes. Thomas >is literally an addict. I didn't read the Scott-Thomas portrayal this way. I thought she was a strong woman who, despite herself, was moved by Richard's eloquent wooing, and became fascinated by him. I thought this scene worked very well, as I've often not quite believed others I've seen. Her later drug addiction I felt came from having married a man she finally realises doesn't particularly care for her. She has broken her own soul and spirit by believing his protestations of love and discovering that she has betrayed her self and her husband and son. Narrelle Harris [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 12:53:15 -0500 Subject: 8.1139 Re: Seduction of Lady Anne Comment: Re: SHK 8.1139 Re: Seduction of Lady Anne Surely the moment on which the scene turns is the moment when Richard offers her the sword and his vulnerable breast: pure power hanging between them. When she cannot seize it, it passes ineluctably to him. Not that it doesn't belong to him from the outset. A long time ago somebody proposed that Richard was first played by Edward Alleyn, a giant of a man (helping to account for that group of larger-than-life protagonists-Tamburlane, Faustus, Hieronimo). Dave Evett [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 13:31:59 -0500 Subject: 8.1139 Re: Seduction of Lady Anne Comment: Re: SHK 8.1139 Re: Seduction of Lady Anne With so much emotional speech in this scene, and in a play that so mangles the real history it alludes to, I don't think any strictly political "explanation" can be satisfying. The scene reads as an impossible seduction, not a beaten woman's shrewd career move. I suggest this: that the deformed man arouses compassion as well as revulsion, and that Richard uses his pitiability to his advantage, playing meek and even a bit simpleminded when it suits his purpose. So He that bereft thee lady of thy husband Did it to help thee to a better husband and such don't come off like a deliberately macabre amorous policy but the sincere confused pleas of a love-struck halfwit. Clearly Richard's strategy is to depict the murders as evidence of the intensity of his devotion, and because this is a demented idea, it behooves him to show a pitiable dementia. This is just a suggestion for performance without much scholarly backup, but isn't it conspicuous that this wooing success comes almost on the heels of a soliloquy saying "because I'm deformed I can't woo" (evidence against the popular truth-in-soliloquies theory), and isn't it proper dramatic irony then for the deformity itself to clinch the seduction? [4]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bonnie Melchior <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 15:12:47 CST6CDT Subject: The Beautiful Anne On the question of whether Anne should be beautiful, in my humble opinion yes she should, because that beauty is emblematic in an oppositional way. The play as a whole seems to present ugliness as a manifest emblem of evil, but the kind of evil associated with the "virtues" of effective action in the political world (qualities represented by the Italian *virtu*). Richard's ugliness is constantly emphasized (he is for instance a "bunchbacked toad"-I don't have my text here to look up the exact quote). Beauty, on the other hand, is associated with goodness and is interpreted by Richard as a kind of contemptible weakness and passivity. Witness his opening statement that "grim-visaged War" has been co-opted into capering to the lascivious warblings of a lute. Richard says that he is too "deformed" and "unfinished" to court an "amorous looking glass," so he will exert himself toward casting a shadow in this "weak and piping time of peace." Wooing and winning the beautiful Anne signals his success (and he again brings up looking in a mirror). (Incidentally, I don't mean to say that the "goodness" in the play is not problematized by being associated with self-interest and sometimes stupidity.) Bonnie Melchior University of Central Arkansas
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1144. Thursday, 13 November 1997. From: Victoria Burke <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 07:55:11 -0500 Subject: The Perdita Project and Trinity/Trent Colloquium [Editor's Note: These announcements appeared yesterday on FICINO Discussion - Renaissance and Reformation Studies" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .] Please excuse cross postings. THE PERDITA PROJECT: EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S MANUSCRIPT COMPILATIONS at Nottingham Trent University, England We would like to announce The Perdita Project: Early Modern Women's Manuscript Compilations. Perdita will be a comprehensive guide to over 400 manuscripts compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Perdita was established at Nottingham Trent University in January 1997, and will produce a database and guide to be published on the Internet. The manuscripts which will be described are poetic miscellanies, commonplace books, medical and cookery recipe books, autobiographical writing, religious material, and account books. Each manuscript will be described in two short articles, which will offer a detailed description of the contents of the manuscript and a biography of its compiler(s). Information such as names, dates, places, authors of transcribed material, and a first- and last-line poetry index will be available in a list format. Please visit our web site for further information (http://human.ntu.ac.uk/foh/ems/perdita.html). ---------------------------------------------------------------- TRINITY/TRENT COLLOQUIUM Michaelmas 1997: Trinity College, Cambridge Saturday November 29th 1.30- 6.00 p.m. Speakers include: Jane Stevenson, University of Warwick ("Women, Writing, and Scribal Publication in the Sixteenth Century") Elizabeth Clarke and Victoria Burke, Nottingham Trent University ("The Perdita Project: Early Modern Women's Manuscript Compilations") Sarah Ross, St. Hilda's College, Oxford ("Katherine Austen's "Book M," 1664-1668") Please contact Jeremy Maule at Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ to book a place at the Colloquium and to receive further details. E-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The Trinity/Trent Colloquium is a series of three half-day conferences to bring together those interested in or working on early modern women's manuscripts, in a variety of different disciplines. The next colloquium will be on March 11th at Mansfield College, Oxford. For further information see the Perdita web site, and click on "seminars." (http://human.ntu.ac.uk/foh/ems/perdita.html) Victoria Burke and Elizabeth Clarke The Perdita Project Faculty of Humanities Nottingham Trent University Clifton Lane Nottingham NG11 8NS England e-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1143. Thursday, 13 November 1997. [1] From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 15:50:38 -0500 (EST) Subj: Advice to the Actors -- Research Question [2] From: Joanne Gates <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 17:14:41 -0600 (CST) Subj: Does Macbeth sell cars? [3] From: Mark Lawhorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 13:45:25 -1000 Subj: Query re: Henry Fitzroy and Thomas Winter [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 15:50:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: Advice to the Actors -- Research Question I've recently come across a scenario for a Byzantine Mystery Play (well, there's some controversy about its being Byzantine, but ...)-- the thing that struck me, comparing its notes about the actors, along with a parallel scenario written for the Jeu D'Adam, was its similarity to the advice Hamlet gives the Players. The usual stuff-suiting the action to the word, etc.-are there, along with a few extras, like 'make sure they can read', which makes one wonder how on earth they thought they could do without literate actors ... But that's aside from the point. I'm wondering if any studies have been done on the evolution of the Advice to Actors, from the medieval period to the time of Shakespeare. It seems that there was some standard warning given to directors of Mysteries, and I was hoping someone had written or speculated on its evolution. Anybody help me on this one? Andy White Arlington, VA [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joanne Gates <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 17:14:41 -0600 (CST) Subject: Does Macbeth sell cars? As I listened yet again to the ad for the new Lexus, I heard Linda Hunt's voice say, Crystal water turns to dark Boiling currents turn to drums When something wicked this way comes There seem to be two visual variants; one has the car coming out of the mud and being unstrapped from the amphibious landing vehicle. (subliminal flash of somewhat seductive woman's legs) I take it that the first two lines are "made up"? I did a quick search of my hard copy Bartlett's Q, no matches for these lines. Nothing close in on-line search of the complete Shakespeare texts for boiling or crystal, but presumably the ad people have invented their own version of the witches' brew. Joanne Gates [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark Lawhorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 13:45:25 -1000 Subject: Query re: Henry Fitzroy and Thomas Winter I would be grateful if someone could point me to sources that include information regarding Henry VIII's illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, and/or Wolsey's illegitimate son, Thomas Winter. I know that these children received "various preferments" during their lifetimes, such as Fitzroy's being named Duke of Richmond and Lord High Admiral and Winter's eventual appointment as Archdeacon of Cornwall (despite the Church of England's bar against the ordination of bastards). Who tutored these children? What sort of contact did their respective fathers maintain with them? On what basis did rumors circulate that Fitzroy was poisoned by Anne Boleyn and her brother? Please reply directly to me at either of the e-mail addresses listed below. Many thanks. Mark Mark H. Lawhorn English Dept. UH Manoa
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1142. Thursday, 13 November 1997. [1] From: David M Richman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 09:54:12 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1133 Q: Casting Err [2] From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 10:26:49 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1137 Angelo's Sexuality [3] From: Abigail Quart <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 22:10:44 -0500 Subj: Genital Conception [4] From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 11:50:47 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1138 No Matter [5] From: Naomi Liebler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 18:12:56 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1137 Re: Cleopatra [6] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 00:52:49 +0 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1126 Running [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David M Richman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 09:54:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.1133 Q: Casting Err Comment: Re: SHK 8.1133 Q: Casting Err On double casting Comedy of Errors: We used puppets for the final scene. Each puppet was made to resemble closely his human twin. Each human actor ran he appropriate puppet. The effect worked quite well-eliciting gasps and ovations. Another production made inventive use of mirrors: each twin speaking and being answered by his reflection in the glass. David Richman [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 10:26:49 -0500 Subject: 8.1137 Angelo's Sexuality Comment: Re: SHK 8.1137 Angelo's Sexuality >"Conception" does not have its modern genital meaning. It means in >context my idea of her or my fantasy of her. (Sh's word for our genital >"conception" is "engendering".) > >What the carrion does in the sun is rot, surely. Swelling is from >gasses trapped in a rotting corpse. The physical language of this play >is quite strong and sometimes repellent. >John Velz, I can't find "carrion" in MM, so I think you might be referring to Hamlet's "For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter? . . . Let her not walk i'th' sun: conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. . . ." But surely conception means engendering here, since the sun's propensity for breeding is what Ophelia needs protection from. Scott Shepherd [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Abigail Quart <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 22:10:44 -0500 Subject: Genital Conception Hamlet: Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive--friend, look to it. He was warning Polonius not to let Ophelia THINK? [4]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 11:50:47 -0500 Subject: 8.1138 No Matter Comment: Re: SHK 8.1138 No Matter Certainly "no matter" and "it is no matter" meant then what "it doesn't matter" means now, but combinations with the phrase are limited (in Shakespeare) to no matter FOR something (e.g. "it is no matter for that") no matter WHAT/WHERE/WHITHER/HOW/WHO no matter IF I find only 2 no matter ifs, in 2G and 2H4, but that might support a reading like mere words, no matter [if] from the heart but the if not actually being in the text makes this a bit of a stretch, even for an under meaning. Also it's impossible to read the Troilus line without thinking of Hamlet's "Words words words" to which Polonius responds "What is the matter my lord?" which pretty clearly suggests that words:matter::text:meaning (or something like that), and that these terms, while perhaps not quite technical, had particular connotations when talking about (written) language. [5]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Naomi Liebler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Nov 1997 18:12:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 8.1137 Re: Cleopatra Comment: Re: SHK 8.1137 Re: Cleopatra Mike Sirofchuk writes in defense of Cleopatra, "Lest we forget-much of what we readily know of Cleopatra was written by the victors, and they are known for telling history to suit themselves." You might want to take another look at what SHAKESPEARE readily knew of Cleopatra-in North's Plutarch's _Life of Antony_. Cleo gets approximately half of that narrative, and it's a much more favorable account than anything Plutarch has to say about what's-his-name. Moreover, the narrative makes all of the points about Cleopatra's erudition, her diplomacy, her regal dignity, etc., that Mike offers. And Plutarch, of course, was a Greek (Theban, actually) who ultimately went to live among, but never was one of, "the victors." Cheers, Naomi Liebler [6]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 13 Nov 1997 00:52:49 +0 Subject: 8.1126 Running Comment: Re: SHK 8.1126 Running John Velz wrote > Syd Kasten's suggested staging for Isabella's entrance in MM > 4.1 is interesting, but we must remember that she is a > would-be nun to whom eternity is more real than time. She's not a nun, surely, but a nun-to-be. And one who's unhappy about the restrictions: ISABELLA And have you nuns no father privileges? FRANCESCA Are these not large enough? ISABELLA Yes, truly. I speak not as desiring more, But rather wishing a more strict restraint Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of St Clare. (1.4.1-5) I don't know about you, but when I feel I've betrayed my thoughts by incautious probing, I say something like "Yes, truly. I speak not as desiring more..." I think Bernice Kliman argued that Isabella and Claudio are recently orphaned, and that the former's entry into the order is reluctant. Gabriel Egan