June
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0568 Wednesday, 17 June 1998. [1] From: David J. Knauer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 17:29:08 -0500 (CDT) Subj: Edward Pudsey Query [2] From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 20:17:23 -0400 (EDT) Subj: RSC in DC [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David J. Knauer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 17:29:08 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Edward Pudsey Query Last week, Robin Headlam Wells asked for opinions on the need for publication of Edward Pudsey's commonplace book, which contains extracts from the plays of Shakespeare and others. While I don't have an opinion on Pudsey specifically, this question has raised another close to my own current research. Is there a published bibliography anywhere of the several contemporary commonplace books and diaries containing extracts from or commentary on Shakespearean drama? You find occasional references in Chambers, Wickham, Bentley, Gurr, etc. to a few of them when their remarks concern stage history, but rarely anything on Renaissance responses to the *texts* of the plays. I am particularly interested in what early modern audiences or readers may have *done* with drama once they decided to keep it for themselves. Feel free to reply off-list if this seems too tangential. David KnauerThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 20:17:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: RSC in DC For the curious; there is a tradition of slash & burn criticism in Washington, D.C. which at times has left even the locals aghast. Lloyd Rose's predecessor at the Washington Post, David Richards, richly earned the nickname "Prince of Darkness." It seems that Ms. Rose is working overtime to prove herself his twin. We used to sell buttons as a fund-raiser for a local actor's organization, with a beat-up dustbin and fish scales, captioned "I've been trashed by David Richards!"-his pans were regarded as a vital part of initiation ritual for many years. Seems we should reissue those buttons, and offer a couple dozen (with a new caption) for our sisters and brothers-at-arms in the RSC. Cheers, Andy White Arlington, VA
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0567 Wednesday, 17 June 1998. [1] From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 13:35:58 -0700 Subj: SHK 9.0563 Re: The "As You Like It" Hike -Reply [2] From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 17 Jun 1998 04:25:06 -0400 Subj: SHK 9.0563 Re: The "As You Like It" Hike [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 13:35:58 -0700 Subject: Re: The "As You Like It" Hike -Reply Comment: SHK 9.0563 Re: The "As You Like It" Hike -Reply Penelope Rixon wrote: > It seems that seeing 'As You Like It' these days is only for those with > stamina and a great love for the play: I daresay too much exposure leads to boredom. It does for me at any rate. I suppose that is why some have resurrected the call for a moratorium of Shakespeare production for a decade. That will not happen, of course. To many livelihoods depend on keeping the RSC and the many festivals going. Besides, each performance is the first for someone. We mustn't withhold the riches they will discover. Just when I think I can't bear another AYLI, Shrew, Dream, Othello, or other oft' seen play, I attend a production that works in so many ways I am enraptured all over again. Perhaps some really are burnt out on Shakespeare. Then move on. Like Penelope, I only think I am burnt out. Then someone does it right and everything old is new again. Bless the Bard and his infinite variety. Sentimentally yours, Mike Jensen [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 17 Jun 1998 04:25:06 -0400 Subject: Re: The "As You Like It" Hike Comment: SHK 9.0563 Re: The "As You Like It" Hike We may have to abandon our annual 'King Lear' Cakewalk. Persuading the audience to jump off the cliff was always difficult. However, guests will continue to be welcome at the Titus Andronicus Lunch (no substitutions). T. Hawkes
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0566 Wednesday, 17 June 1998. [1] From: Michael Friedman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 16:35:21 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Q: 1994 BBC MM [2] From: H. R. Greenberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 20:04:00 EDT Subj: London Theatre [3] From: Tim Brookes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 17 Jun 1998 11:19:54 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Request for Contemporary Accounts [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Friedman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 16:35:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Q: 1994 BBC MM I have another question for the group. I have been trying to order for our library a copy of the 1994 BBC production of *Measure for Measure* directed by David Thacker. The video version was reviewed by Herb Coursen in the Summer 1997 issue of *Shakespeare Bulletin*, but the director of our media collection has been unable to locate a distributor for it. I would need to order it in VHS format so that I can play it in the US, but I'm not sure that it has been released in this country. Does anyone out there have more information? Michael Friedman University of Scranton [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: H. R. Greenberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 20:04:00 EDT Subject: London Theatre I will be in London during the first week of August. I already have reservations for several shows at the Globe. Does anyone know of any decent fringe theater going on at the time, and how to make reservations? The stuff at the National seems pretty thin during this time, and I mostly have despaired of the West End. Thanks in advance, Harvey Roy Greenberg, MD [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tim Brookes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 17 Jun 1998 11:19:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Request for Contemporary Accounts Dear Colleagues, I'm writing a novel set in 1994, and I'm badly in need of help. In particular I'm looking for contemporary and preferably eyewitness accounts of any or all of the following: Marshalsea Prison Silversmiths and their work The Cotswold Olympics Market day in a provincial town or city The road(s) between Stratford and London Carters and drovers If anyone knows of any sources I could follow up, I'd be very grateful indeed. Thanks in anticipation. Yours, Tim Brookes
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0565 Wednesday, 17 June 1998. [1] From: Curtis Perry <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 09:11:04 -0700 (MST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0558 Re: Contemporary Uses of Shakespeare [2] From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 13:59:02 EDT Subj: Re: Contemporary Uses of Shakespearean Materials [3] From: Ilona Goldmane <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 21:24:25 +0200 (WET) Subj: Re: Contemporary Uses of Shakespearean Materials [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Curtis Perry <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 09:11:04 -0700 (MST) Subject: 9.0558 Re: Contemporary Uses of Shakespeare Comment: Re: SHK 9.0558 Re: Contemporary Uses of Shakespeare > >From Movieline Magazine,July 1998: > > "Then there's > McBeth's, based on the Bard's Macbeth, which is being set in a fast-food > restaurant and stars Primary Colors' Maura Tierney. The guy has yet to > be cast, but Murg thinks Paul Rudd, who made an extremely smooth Paris > in William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, would be perfect as the > power-mad husband". Can this possibly be true? Does anybody else know anything about it? Is this a spatula I see before me? [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 13:59:02 EDT Subject: Re: Contemporary Uses of Shakespearean Materials Minor uses I've recently come across: In the musical Ragtime, Coalhouse Walker says he loves Sarah "well, but not too wisely." In Barbara Kingsolver's novel Pigs in Heaven, which I am currently reading, there is a Beatrice/Benedict twist to the plot which I am hoping works as well as it did in the play. Dale Lyles [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ilona Goldmane <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 21:24:25 +0200 (WET) Subject: Re: Contemporary Uses of Shakespearean Materials Dear colleagues, I'd like to ask you two questions: 1) Which XX century literary theories are more interesting and appropriate to interpret Shakespearean tragedies? 2) What do you know about a "Hamlet" with Arnold Schwarznieger and don't you think a little bit strange to invite this actor to this role? Sincerely Yours, Ilona Goldmane University of Latvia
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0564 Wednesday, 17 June 1998. [1] From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 11:00:42 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0559 Re: Various Hamlet Postings [2] From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 15:10:55 -0700 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0559 Mea Culpa [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 11:00:42 -0400 Subject: 9.0559 Re: Various Hamlet Postings Comment: Re: SHK 9.0559 Re: Various Hamlet Postings Terence Hawkes suggests the following: >Fortinbras: Let four captains >Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage, >For he [i.e., Hamlet] was likely, had he been put on, >To have prov'd most royal; and for his [i.e. Claudius's] passage, >The soldier's music and the rite of war >Speak loudly for him. >Take up the bodies [of Hamlet and Claudius]. . . >(V, 2, 400-406, Arden edition) This could work on stage, but the actor playing Fortinbras would have to indicate Claudius when he says "his." Without being guided by some kind of gesture, the auditor would take "he" and "his" to refer to the same "him." Nevertheless, Hawkes's very neat reading accounts for "Take up the bodies," both prince and king, who have died like soldiers fighting in a civil conflict. Yours, Bill Godshalk [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 16 Jun 1998 15:10:55 -0700 Subject: 9.0559 Mea Culpa Comment: Re: SHK 9.0559 Mea Culpa Hi, guys. Thanks to everyone to pointed out the obvious (to anyone but me, it would seem) point that Hamlet's and Laertes' foils would normally have been 'bated'. Mea culpa. On the whole, I find myself in substantial agreement with Laura Fargas, although I (obviously) take character criticism a little more seriously: this one murder seems to baffle Hamlet. Why? What makes killing Claudius so different from anyone else? We can't just put Hamlet's reluctance down to a general intellectualism or religiosity which is-illogically or at least unnecessarily, and certainly Platonically-declared to be the opposite of activity in the world. Why is this particular murder so hard to perform? Is it because he has to face Claudius, where he doesn't have to face those others that he does away with? (Polonius is behind the arras, R&G are off in England when the axe falls). Could the nakedness of the face really be an ethical command? I don't know if I'm right, but I'd rather steer the debate in the direction of discussing a discrete situation facing Hamlet's character rather than declaring the general disposition of that character, or its historical situatedness, to be its fate. Cheers, Sean