February
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0153 Wednesday, 18 February 1998. From: Mike LoMonico <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 18 Feb 1998 10:54:14 -0500 Subject: Call for Manuscripts Announcement and Call for Manuscripts: Getting through a Shakespeare play can sometimes be a daunting task for a teacher and a reluctant class. Over the past fifteen years, many excellent new approaches have surfaced in the United States, Canada, and England. However, finding these ideas and sorting through them can at times be even more daunting. In response to requests from our readers around the world, Shakespeare Magazine launched its Teaching Resource section at http://www.shakespearemag.com on Friday, February 13. At present, this section contains twenty carefully selected teaching ideas for various plays, but the editors plan to add many more and make it the definitive location for quality Shakespeare lessons. Martha Harris and Sheri Maeda, both experienced teachers who have served as Master Teachers at the Folger Library's Teaching Shakespeare Institute, will serve as editors for this section. They both have a keen eye for what works and what is a quality lesson. They are presently calling for submissions of original lessons, teaching ideas, or approaches. All lessons, ideas, or questions should be sent to the editors atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0152 Wednesday, 18 February 1998. From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesdayy, 18 Feb 1998 10:29:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: Mr. Magoo and MND I was surprised and delighted last night to stumble across a Mr. Magoo feature film on the Disney channel last night, which concluded with *A Midsummer Night's Dream*. Mr. Magoo played Puck, and the story was amazingly intact, even including much original text as its dialog. My impression was that, as animations go, it was not very funny, but that may have been because my awareness of it was focused on comparing it to the original as it progressed. The producers didn't yuck it up for yucks' sake; it was pretty much Shakespeare, only very streamlined. My 9-year-old son, who played one of the forest's denizens in our production last fall, constantly corrected their paraphrases and marveled at the amount they left out; I explained that this was for "little kids." Has anyone else seen this wonder? I had been totally unaware of its existence. Dale Lyles Newnan Community Theatre Company http://shenandoah.peachnet.edu/nctc/
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0151 Wednesday, 18 February 1998. From: Karen E. Bruhn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 18 Feb 1998 08:43:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: Religious Imagery in Measure for Measure I'm revising and updating a seminar paper on religious imagery in MfM into a chapter of my dissertation. "The Shakespeare person" on my committee is incommunicado (I'm in Religious Studies) and I need some guidance on updating my bibliography. I wrote the seminar paper in '93, so I have the "classics" but would appreciate any advice/comments on newer stuff. I have every intention of doing an MLA search; that well may be all I need. I post this at the request of my advisor, who is a worrywart. Thanks in advance, Karen Bruhn
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0150 Wednesday, 18 February 1998. [1] From: Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 10:45:20 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0133 Re: Anti-Semitism [2] From: Sean Kevin Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 10:27:33 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0145 Re: Anti-Semitism [3] From: Stevie Simkin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 22:23:41 -0000 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0145 Re: Anti-Semitism [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 10:45:20 -0500 Subject: 9.0133 Re: Anti-Semitism Comment: Re: SHK 9.0133 Re: Anti-Semitism Although Wesker originally called his play The Merchant, he now calls it Shylock. His recently-published diary of the ill-starred Broadway production explains all this and more. Its title is: The Birth of Shylock and the Death of Zero Mostel. So far, it's available only in England. It's a damned good read. [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Kevin Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 10:27:33 -0800 Subject: 9.0145 Re: Anti-Semitism Comment: Re: SHK 9.0145 Re: Anti-Semitism Dear all, Larry Weiss's suggestion that the 'hath not a Jew eyes' speech might be read ironically ties in with an idea I've been entertaining for a while. Has anyone seen Shylock played as a Nazi? Of course, this is an offensive reversal of victim and victimizer, but offensiveness isn't always a bad thing in theatre, and such a production might also tend towards making Shylock a bad man, rather than just an Elizabethan stereotype. In fact, it could call into question many of our own stereotypes, both of Jews as victims and as Nazis as evil. This isn't to say that such a questioning will lead to political progressiveness, but subversiveness and leftiness aren't as inseparable as some people like to think. The parallel could work fairly well, I think. After all, Shylock is embittered by his treatment at the hands of his peers, much like the Germans were embittered at their treatment by Versailles, and unleashes a holocaust of suffering all around by way of asserting himself. The victim becomes victimizer, in turn. In fact, the themes of victimization being passed on, or of reasonably likable people being turned by their appropriation of their own treatment at the hands of others into bloodthirsty monsters might offer some larger issues and more genuinely productive self-reflection than the Shakespeare-as-holocaust-film reading, in which MoV is just an object lesson in the depravity of the past. Cheers, Sean Lawrence. [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stevie Simkin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 22:23:41 -0000 Subject: 9.0145 Re: Anti-Semitism Comment: Re: SHK 9.0145 Re: Anti-Semitism Larry Weiss discusses the "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech and concludes that "Shylock argues that Jews are human. Solanio and Salerio (and the audience) never denied that. Their point was that Shylock and other Jews in Venice (and, by extension, all Jews) were inhumane, not non-human. (Shylock, of course, confirms that point, at least to the satisfaction of the original audience.) Viewed in this fashion, the speech was intended to be funny and was probably received as such." I have also felt uncomfortable about the standard reading of the speech which takes it as a plea for tolerance, as a claim that Jews are just as human as Christians. There are many ways the speech could be read, perhaps, but when I saw the recent RSC production what struck me was the conclusion of that speech ("will we not revenge") - if we see the speech as culminating in this threat, it becomes NOT an attempt at justifying not Jewish humanity, but rather a justification of the savage vengeance he has in mind. If you work backwards from the speech's climax, it is a much less cosy speech. I agree with Larry that we shouldn't give up studying the play on account of its anti-Semitism. And as I've said before, it's not as if we can really "blame" Shakespeare for being anti-Semitic. But the worst thing we can do is try and claim for Shakespeare a PC-ness 400 years ahead of his time and pretend the anti-Semitism isn't there at all.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0149 Wednesday, 18 February 1998. [1] From: Ted Nellen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 11:20:56 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England [2] From: Franklin J. Hildy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 14:27:43 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England [3] From: Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 21:52:16 +0000 Subj: SHK 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ted Nellen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 11:20:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England Comment: Re: SHK 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford is great. Get a room and go. Being in Stratford, hobnobbing, dropping in on lectures, using the libraries there, seeing the theaters etc etc will be studying enough. Just get a room in Stratford and go. Good luck, Ted [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Franklin J. Hildy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 14:27:43 -0500 Subject: 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England Comment: Re: SHK 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England Yes, The Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance course at the International Shakespeare Globe Center runs July 5-July 25 and it is ideal for High School Teachers. Your local English Speaking Union offers scholarships. Since you are in the eastern region, contact Jason Rosenbaum atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 16 Feb 1998 21:52:16 +0000 Subject: Q: Shakespeare Study in England Comment: SHK 9.0143 Q: Shakespeare Study in England In answer to request about Shakespeare study, try the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon, an outreach for Birmingham University. BUT they don't have accommodation facilities. Other than that, cheap accommodation is sometimes available in Oxford in a college - worth writing to the Assistant Secretary of St. John's College, Oxford. There is a big vacation American study scheme at St. John's but taken by a regular mission group. Nevertheless, they may know of a place. in which case, you would then need to get relevant library tickets to get access to the Bodleian, and Radcliffe Libraries. American university / college supervisors can frequently arrange access through 'trade' links, worth a try. If not, try London. Plenty of cheapish accommodation, decent study, but horrendous travel. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.