October
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1082. Tuesday, 28 October 1997. [1] From: Steve Sohmer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 10:04:20 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1072 Qs: Macbeth / Children [2] From: Billy Houck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 10:33:12 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1077 Re: Macbeth / Children [3] From: Ronald Moyer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 09:44:25 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1072 Q: Macbeth / Children [4] From: Skip Nicholson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 17:28:33 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1077 Re: Macbeth / Children [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Sohmer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 10:04:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.1072 Qs: Macbeth / Children Comment: Re: SHK 8.1072 Qs: Macbeth / Children Dear Friends, Macbeth, a former friend once told me, is Shakespeare's play about the difficulty of founding an hereditary monarchy. Stuart Manger rightly detects the play's curiosity about the place (and function) of boys in this scheme. It has become a scholarly commonplace to note that James VI of Scotland (James I of England after 3/1603) was descended from Banquo, and that Shakespeare sanitizes the historical (murderous) Banquo for the purpose. It's also thought Lady M's claim "I have given suck" is immaterial (cf. "How many children had Lady Macbeth?" etc.). However, Macbeth as "tanaise" may have had a legitimate claim to succeed Duncan, and one of Lady M's children was in fact called (briefly) to the Scottish throne. James could trace his claim to the title of Scotland through the female line back to Duncan, and to the throne of England via the female line to Malcolm, who married Margaret, the granddaughter of King Edmund II of England, thereby uniting the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon crowns. Considering the basis of James' claim to the throne of England in 1603, any descent of title along the female line could hardly be dismissed as irrelevant. Three of Malcolm's sons by Margaret held the Scottish throne: Edgar (1097-1107), Alexander I (1107-24), and David I (1124-5). These boys were the legitimate heirs to the throne of England, too, which had been usurped by William the Conqueror in 1066. William was aware of this, and arranged the marriage Malcolm's daughter, Matilda, to his son Henry I of England. Malcolm may have also played a decisive role in the Norman conquest. It's thought he intrigued with Tostig and Harald Haardrade and abetted their campaign against King Harold, who had succeeded to the English throne (1/1066) on the death of Edward the Confessor. King Harold whipped and killed Tostig and Harald H at Stamford Bridge ca. 25 September 1066 while Malcolm sat discreetly on the sidelines in Scotland. Harold's weary and diminished forces lost a narrow defeat to William at Hastings three weeks later. In a way, Malcolm was the Benedict Arnold of Anglo-Saxon England. I expect English schoolboys knew some of this. Not incidentally, it was Malcolm's wife, *not* his mother who "Oft'ner upon her knees than on her feet, Died every day she liv'd." Margaret became Saint Margaret of Scotland. No minor saint, she was named Patron Saint of Scotland after Shakespeare's time. But the papal inquiry into her life and miracles occurred before 1250. Her body (and Malcolm's) were conspicuously removed to Spain during the Reformation, and her head went to the Jesuits at Douai. (Her son David also made sainthood.) So when Macduff chides Malcolm about his saintly "mother" there's another game afoot. Generally, the received wisdom about "Macbeth" needs to be received with skepticism. Hope this is useful. Steve Sohmer [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Billy Houck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 10:33:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.1077 Re: Macbeth / Children Comment: Re: SHK 8.1077 Re: Macbeth / Children If your primary source of visions of butchery is from the Polanski film, it must be remembered that his pregnant wife had been butchered by Charles Manson about a year earlier. His pain is evident in every frame of that film. Billy Houck Arroyo Grande High School [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ronald Moyer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 09:44:25 -0600 (CST) Subject: 8.1072 Q: Macbeth / Children Comment: Re: SHK 8.1072 Q: Macbeth / Children Mr. Manger, Heirless Macbeth makes war on children, on heirs, and is tortured by his "fruitlesse Crowne," "barren Scepter," and "vnlineall Hand." Perhaps explicable by Eliz. pronunciation and/or the vagaries of Eliz. spelling (or, more wonderfully, an anachronistic "Freudian slip" by author or typesetter on behalf of character), but I've always enjoyed the F1 reading of Macb.'s response to the Witches' prophecies: "If good? why do I yeeld to that suggestion,/Whose horrid Image doth vnfixe my Heire" (TLS245-6). Best, Ron Moyer [4]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Skip Nicholson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 17:28:33 -0800 Subject: 8.1077 Re: Macbeth / Children Comment: Re: SHK 8.1077 Re: Macbeth / Children As Abigail Quart points out, "This play does seem to be all about heirs, inheritance, no one to carry on." That's true of all the tragedies, isn't it? Part of what makes them tragic to us (and, as she points out, maybe even more so to an Elizabethan audience) is the snuffing out of the entire line. Caesar (or Brutus, if you prefer), Othello and Macbeth are childless. Hamlet, Juliet and Romeo are only children. Lear's daughters all die. So the personal or political tragedy is always the tragedy of the end of a family as well. Skip Nicholson
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1081. Tuesday, 28 October 1997. [1] From: Daniel Traister <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 09:52:54 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania [2] From: Lila Geller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 08:12:16 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania [3] From: Sara Vandenberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 08:40:23 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania [4] From: Maria Concolato <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 19:08:49 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Daniel Traister <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 09:52:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania Comment: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania David Schalwyk asks "whether the promised edition of Mary Wroth's Urania has been published yet, or how and where people at the extremities of the world might get to read it?" Is this a moment to mention that MANY library catalogs (both union catalogs, such as-in North America-OCLC and RLIN, and individual library catalogs) are available online, so that (*even* for people at the round earth's imagined corners) to search such catalogs is almost immediately to find, e.g. (from the RLIN database), AUTHOR: Wroth, Mary, Lady, ca. 1586-ca. 1640. TITLE: [Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania. Part 1] The first part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania / by Lady Mary Wroth ; edited by Josephine A. Roberts. PUBLISHED: Binghamton, N.Y. : Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1995. PHYSICAL DETAILS: cxx, 821 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. SERIES: Medieval & Renaissance texts & studies ; v. 140. OTHER AUTHORS: Roberts, Josephine A. SUBJECTS: Romances--Adaptations. Women--Fiction. NOTES: Includes bibliographical references and indexes. LC CALL NUMBER: PR2399.W7 C68 1995 DDC: 823/.3 LCCN: 95-2654 ISBN: 0-86698-176-4 (acid-free paper) In addition, Ashgate Scolar now makes available a facsimile edition, also edited by the late Josephine Roberts [ISBN 185928101X] for US$99.50; but you might, at present, have to search their website to know about this. An enormous amount of basic bibliographical information is now readily available for anyone who has (as many academics *do* have) access to the web. To discover it requires a bare minimum of "search sophistication." While many of the highly-touted benefits of the web have yet to be real-ized, and the amount of sheer garbage that it makes available is (more or less literally) stunning, *this* sort of information at least tends to be vast, reliable, and accessible. It may even, now and again, be useful. Daniel Traister, Department of Special Collections Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lila Geller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 08:12:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania Comment: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania by Lady Mary Wroth has been edited by Josephine A Roberts and published by the Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies , Binghamton, New York, 1995. You can probably send an order to Mario A. DiCesare at SUNY Binghamton. Lila Geller California State U Dominguez Hills Carson, CA [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sara Vandenberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 08:40:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania Comment: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery's Urania, edited by the late Josephine A. Roberts, is available as vol. 140 of Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, from the Renaissance English Texts Society, ISBN 0-86698-176-4. The cost is $60, and worth it. Sara van den Berg University of Washington [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Maria Concolato <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 19:08:49 +0100 Subject: 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania Comment: Re: SHK 8.1079 Q: Mary Wroth's Urania As far as I know there is no complete edition of this work. A chapter of Mary Wroth's 'Urania' is included in 'An Anthology of Seventeenth Century Fiction' (ed. by P.Salzman, Oxford, O.U.P., 1991); the whole text (STC 26051) is available, however, in microfilm (UMI). Maria Concolato
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1080. Tuesday, 28 October 1997. [1] From: David Skeele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 12:13:57 -0500 Subj: Re: Eliz. Accents [2] From: Juul Muller-van Santen" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 19:09:10 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents [3] From: Mike Sirofchuck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 03:58:00 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1073 Re: Elizabethan Accents [4] From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 13:54:51 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents [5] From: Ronald Moyer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 14:51:37 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents [6] From: Mary Jane Miller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 16:12:39 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents [7] From: Robin P. Newbegin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 16:47:34 -0500 Subj: ELIZABETHAN ACCENTS [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Skeele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 12:13:57 -0500 Subject: Re: Eliz. Accents Though it is of course impossible to know what the Elizabethan accent sounded like, there are some who are regarded as experts on the subject. John Barton has made an extensive study, and has concluded that the accent mixed elements of Southern-ish "American" and Scottish brogue. On one Playing Shakespeare video, he actually speaks a soliloquy in this hypothetical accent (I can't remember which tape or which soliloquy at the moment). Others insist that a straight Appalachian dialect is truest, arguing that their almost complete isolation has kept their accent "pure" for centuries. The truth is probably that, given the influx of people from around the globe, there were a number of variants on the Elizabethan accent, and no one "true" accent. One thing we KNOW, however, is that no one went around speaking like David Niven (barring, of course, some fantastic linguistic coincidence). Anyone who insists that Shakespeare must be spoken with an aristocratic English accent is being patently absurd. This attitude stems from the worship of some dim idea of Victorian Shakespeare, the same attitude which insists, against all evidence and logic, that Shakespeare must be produced with pedagogic attention to historical detail, because "that's the way Shakespeare did it." David Skeele Slippery Rock University [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juul Muller-van Santen" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 19:09:10 Subject: 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents Comment: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents Yes, some people do try to reproduce Elizabethan accents. I confine this to the classroom, as I teach. My students are interested, to an extent. It's nice to see that people link this to period instruments. In fact, the Dutch Early Music Movement got me interested. Dutch Baroque vocal groups now ask me to help with the pronunciation of 16-17-18th C English when anything from Dowland to Handel is being performed. Undoubtedly some of the things I do are wrong, but most of what I have learned comes from E.J.Dobson, >English Pronunciation 1500-1700< Oxford U.P., second ed. last printed in 1985, as far as I know. This is a two-volume work, with Volume I containing a survey of the (orthoepist) sources and Volume II Dobson's sound-by-sound discussion. Fascinating stuff! Julia Muller, Amsterdam [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Sirofchuck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 03:58:00 -0800 Subject: 8.1073 Re: Elizabethan Accents Comment: Re: SHK 8.1073 Re: Elizabethan Accents In regard to Elizabethan accents, check out Program 2 "Mother Tongue" of The Story Of English video series that was on PBS a while ago and is available commercially. There are clips of native Brits and Americans speaking in similar accents that are supposed to be similar to the Elizabethan accent. Mike Sirofchuck Kodiak High School P.S. I sent a post giving a source for obtaining the C-Span Trial of Hamlet. If you need that phone number, send me a note. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 13:54:51 -0500 Subject: 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents Comment: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents >I remember from forty years ago, Helge K:okeritz' book on Shakespearean >pronunciation. He was a historical linguist (Yale), and his work was >then regarded as definitive. Has he been disproved, or simply >forgotten? As I practiced the sounds he described, they came out as an >Irish (not Scottish) brogue. No, Norm, Kokeritz hasn't been forgotten. But any reconstruction of accents from 500 years ago has to be conjectural. If you recall my question about "th" some weeks ago, in F <italic>Troilus and Cressida</italic> Antenor/Anthenor appears in both forms. Antenor appears early in the script, and Anthenor later-and Anthenor appears more often. Did Shakespeare prefer the "th" form? And, if he did, how did he vocalize the "th"? Obviously any answer to these questions must be based on argument rather than voice recordings from the 16th century. And the shift in spelling may be compositorial (or scribal) rather than au"th"orial. Yours, Bill Godshalk [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ronald Moyer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 14:51:37 -0600 (CST) Subject: 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents Comment: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents Mr. Burt, Hypothetical examples of Elizabethan accents are available from a variety of sources, including _The Story of English_ (Peter Hall, as I recall) and John Barton's _Playing Shakespeare_ videos. While there is a wonderful richness to the sound-a hint could usefully add relish to a modern production, I think most audiences would find it curious and, perhaps, a bit humorous and off-putting. Regarding use of British accents, there seems no good reason for a production in the USA to do so-except possibly playing with varieties of accents in the histories (notably the mixture in H5). Certainly an American production adopting modern RP for Rome or Illyria seems wrong-headed. John Barton notes that Elizabethan pronunciation seems to be "a funny mixture of West Country, Ireland, a bit of American," and goes on to suggest, "I think that American is actually closer to Elizabethan English than our current English speech. That's ironic, because American actors are often worried about not speaking what they call Standard English, yet they're actually doing it closer to Shakespeare's way than we are" (_Playing Shakespeare_, 53; the "Language and Character" video). Best, Ron Moyer [6]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mary Jane Miller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 16:12:39 -0500 Subject: 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents Comment: Re: SHK 8.1076 Re: Elizabethan Accents As I recall, Tyrone Guthrie said that he wanted the Canadian actors at Stratford Ont. to use their own accents not some fake English or mid Atlantic accent (common in the 50's) because he thought their delivery was closer to the Elizabethan originals than mid 20th century English accents were. Of course that also made the plays more accessible to the audience - and did not particularly create problems when those accents were played against those of Alec Guiness, Irene Worth or even the strange mix that was James Mason's. Jason Robards, on the other hand, sounded very American indeed but when I look back that may also have been playing style. [7]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robin P. Newbegin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 16:47:34 -0500 Subject: ELIZABETHAN ACCENTS Dear All, Although I have no books or readings to suggest to the posed question on the effects of differing accents in Shakespeare, I do however have some feedback on the subject. I recently watched a video version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in which Puck was portrayed as having an extremely cockneyed accent (and not to mention a very evil and frightening nature too.) Despite my distaste for this version of Puck, I found myself very intrigued by his accent and felt that it added greatly to the overall effect of his character. I also recently watched a South African version of "Othello" that was both filmed in and portrayed by South African actors. With the over bearing issue of racial tension and discrimination in South Africa, I felt that to portray the characters with a S.A. accent was extremely effective. after recently studying in South Africa and witnessing first hand the on-going racial tension there, I felt the accent made for an even more powerful effect in respect to the build up of tension between the characters in the play. -Sincerely, Robin
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1079. Monday, 27 October 1997. From: David Schalkwyk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Oct 1997 13:38:13 SAST-2 Subject: Mary Wroth's Urania Does anyone know whether the promised edition of Mary Wroth's Urania has been published yet, or how and where people at the extremities of the world might get to read it? David Schalkwyk English Department University of Cape Town
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1078. Monday, 27 October 1997. From: Stephen Pender <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Oct 1997 16:45:03 -0400 Subject: CRRS History and Literature Conference [Editor's Note: This Call for Papers appeared on Ficino.} `Motives, pretexts, speeches and events': literature, history and the use of the past in early modern Europe _________________________________________ An interdisciplinary conference at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, 12 and 13 March 1998 CALL FOR PAPERS The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies is pleased to announce `Motives, pretexts, speeches and events,' a conference that will focus on the relationship between history and literature in early modern Europe. We welcome abstracts and papers that address this relationship in the early modern period or in current academic inquiry. `Case studies' are also welcome. Please send abstracts (300-500 words) or completed papers (20 minutes speaking time; approximately 10-12 double-spaced pages), by 1 December 1997, to Stephen Pender, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, 71 Queen's Park Crescent, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1K7. Electronic submissions toThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .