April
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.06647 Sunday, 18 April 1999. [1] From: Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 16 Apr 1999 23:18:38 +0100 Subj: SHK 10.06646 Q: Midsummer Night's Dream [2] From: Karen Peterson-Kranz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 17 Apr 1999 02:00:45 +0100 (BST) Subj: For your attention [3] From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 17 Apr 1999 08:05:39 -0400 Subj: SHK 10.06646 Q: Midsummer Night's Dream [4] From: William Williams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 17 Apr 1999 14:09:32 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 10.06646 Q: Midsummer Night's Dream [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 16 Apr 1999 23:18:38 +0100 Subject: Q: Midsummer Night's Dream Comment: SHK 10.06646 Q: Midsummer Night's Dream It leaves fairly little to the imagination in the Bottom / Titania scenes, and the comedy is played for all its worth and a bit more. The innuendo between Titania and Bottom is translated from Shak's ironical gloss on their collective innocence into in your face specificity. That said, it is also the fastest and one of the funniest Dreams I've seen. Oberon's a bit of a nerd, and Puck was a bit too camp for my liking, but if your boy is NOT clued up on the finer points of foreplay, then this will be a serious learning curve for him!! Boyd was on Radio 4 tonight 'incandescent with fury' over the walk-out by the Coventry kids, and the whole press jamboree over it. Says he's taking his ten-year-olds to the show. Well, ten is ten, and six is six, so ....... money and choice are two words that come to mind. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Karen Peterson-Kranz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 17 Apr 1999 02:00:45 +0100 (BST) Subject: For your attention I thought the list might be interested in the Guardian article about the current RSC MND production, as mentioned by Lisa Hopkins. To see this story with its related links on the News Unlimited site, go to http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk Over-sexed Shakespeare has shocked pupils voting with feet By Rory Carroll Friday April 16 1999 The Guardian The Royal Shakespeare Company sent warning letters to primary schools yesterday after a group of Roman Catholic primary schoolchildren walked out of a matinee performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, shocked by its sexually explicit nature. A teacher, Stephen McGaw, marched his pupils out of the theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon after watching a man dressed as a donkey simulating sex with Titania, Queen of the Fairies. 'The production has really driven a horse and carriage through our school religious education and sex education policies,' said Mr McGaw. 'The day was a complete disaster, and I was left feeling that all my positive groundwork on Shakespeare was ruined.' The mixed class of 34 pupils aged 10 and 11 had saved up for the
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.06646 Friday, 16 April 1999. From: Lisa Hopkins <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 16 Apr 1999 11:14:12 +0100 Subject: Midsummer Night's Dream I'm sorry to post a fairly peripheral enquiry (especially now Hardy has revealed that he has a method for cursing transgressors) but I was wondering whether anyone on the list had yet seen the Royal Shakespeare Company's Midsummer Night's Dream. My six-year-old son, having seen the McKellen Tempest at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, asked if he could go to another production, so I've booked for Dream. I now see in this morning's Guardian a big spread about traumatised primary school children being led trembling from the theatre by their outraged teachers. Does anyone know if it's really that bad? My son is a robust kind of child, and has seen enough wildlife programmes to have grasped the general idea of mating; and when I was a child I lived in Malta, where many films were X-rated but where there was an interesting idea that children under seven were too young to be corrupted, so that they were allowed into X-films. My parents, being unable to find a babysitter, thus took me with them to such torrid tales of adulterous passion as Far From the Madding Crowd and Doctor Zhivago, without, as far as I know, any adverse effects. However, I would still be grateful for any opinions on the production. Lisa Hopkins Sheffield Hallam UniversityThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.06645 Friday, 16 April 1999. From: Skip Nicholson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Apr 1999 22:13:09 -0700 Subject: Romeo A colleague asks for informaiton about a reference a secondary student found stating that: "At one point, two versions of "Romeo and Juliet", one with a tragic ending and one with a happy ending, played on alternate nights and the audience would choose whichever ending suited their mood at the time." I can only assume that the Cibber effect was in full bloom... Can anyone offer any specific help??? I'm much obliged. Cheers, Skip Nicholson South Pasadena (CA) HSThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.06644 Friday, 16 April 1999. From: Skip Nicholson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Apr 1999 19:20:31 -0700 Subject: 10.06625 Affronting Ophelia Comment: RE: SHK 10.06625 Affronting Ophelia >On March 26, David Baron, the film critic for the Times Picayune, wrote >that Gwyneth Paltrow's Academy Award acceptance speech reminded him of >Ophelia's "mad scene in King Lear." In an unprecedented fit of >precision, the TP fired Baron who has been reviewing films for the paper >since 1979. Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, and pay attention to your >English professor. Anyone who heard her speech knows that Baron was absolutely right. In fact, he could have said Ophelia's mad scene in Two Gentlemen of Verona and still have been right. Cheers, Skip Nicholson South Pasadena (CA) HSThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.06643 Friday, 16 April 1999. From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Apr 1999 16:17:52 +0100 Subject: 10.06637 Re: Elizabeth I Comment: Re: SHK 10.06637 Re: Elizabeth I >Still, it is a good anecdote, if one gets it right (and >has a citation). > >Stephanie Hughes Another (or related) from Ben Jonson's CONVERSATIONS with Drummond (Ben Jonson, COMPLETE POEMS, ed. Parfitt, p. 470) "That she had a membrana on her. which made her incapable of man, though for her delight she tried many. At the coming over of Monsieur, there was a French surgeon who took in hand to cut it, yet fear stayed her ..." Robin Hamilton