November
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2094 Monday, 29 November 1999. From: Martin Jukovsky <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Date: Saturday, 27 Nov 1999 23:24:28 -0500 Subject: Shakespeare on the Radio The following messages appeared recently on the Old-Time Radio mailing list (http://www.lofcom.com/). Pardon the length, but I though a good deal of this would be of interest here. --Martin Jukovsky ******************************************* Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 16:33:07 -0500 From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. To:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: Shakespeare and OTR I'm a scholar at work on an index of allusions from and references to Shakespeare in OTR. (This is part of a larger encyclopedia project on Shakespeare and popular culture.) I would appreciate the help of OTR fans and experts on the list in compiling programs that feature references to Shakespeare or his plays or that use lines or plots from his plays. I've already compiled information on the various radio cycles of Shakespeare plays (CBS/Columbia's Shakespeare cycle, Barrymore's Streamlined Shakespeare, Anthology, etc.). Now I'm interested in collecting allusions and references to Shakespeare in radio shows. Some examples of what I've found: SUSPENSE: "Othello," "Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble," THE LONE RANGER: "The Barbary Coast, Part II" GUNSMOKE: "Shakespeare" JACK BENNY: "Romeo and Jello-ette" FRED ALLEN SHOW or TOWN HALL TONIGHT: "Ham Spade" (I have no date or episode number for this) THE SHADOW: "Nightmare at Gaelsberry" THE MAGNIFICENT MONTAGUE: "Shakespeare on the Radio," "To Play Romeo" Any other references you might recall I would deeply appreciate. Contact me in the forum or at the e-mail address below. I will make sure to acknowledge everyone who offers help. Many thanks! Douglas LanierThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ******************************************************** Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 23:09:28 -0500 From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. To:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: Re: Shakespeare references on radio I'm a scholar at work on an index of allusions from and references to Shakespeare in OTR. (This is part of a larger encyclopedia project on Shakespeare and popular culture.) I would appreciate the help of OTR fans and experts on the list in compiling programs that feature references to Shakespeare or his plays or that use lines or plots from his plays. I've already compiled information on the various radio ... You should definitely track down a copy of the CBS RADIO WORKSHOP episode "Hamlet Revisited: Another Point of View", 6/22/56. William Conrad (who also wrote the script) takes another look at Hamlet and comes to the conclusion that Hamlet is the real villain of the story, directly or indirectly causing more deaths than any other character in the play. Very well done. From the same series is "An Interview with William Shakespeare", broadcast 2/24/56, starring Hans Corned. There was also a 30-minute version of "Macbeth" presented on LIGHTS OUT in the late 1930s, either late 1938 or 1939. Steve Lewis ****************************************** Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 16:15:51 -0500 From: "Andrea H. Selch" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. To:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: shakespeare on radio Look at Norman Corwin's "verse-brochure" for radio called "Seems Radio is Here to Stay" (published in Thirteen by Corwin (New York: Holt, 1942). This was written to celebrate the 20th anniversary of radio and was broadcast by CBS's prestige program, The Columbia Worskhop, in April 1939. It features a long passage from Hamlet. I would also look into (that is, listen to) The Swift Premium Hour with William Lyon "Billy" Phelps, a retired Yale professor. Perhaps also Information Please! For more background on these two programs, see Chapter 6 of Joan Shelley Rubin's *The Making of Middlebrow Culture" (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ of North Carolina Press, 1992), which treats book programs on commercial radio. Also, both NBC and CBS ran series of Shakespeare's plays in the summer of 1937. Erik Barnouw sees this as part of the two network's "battling marquees." Finally, Tony Wons, the host of the poetry and popular wisdom program, Tony's Scrap Book, began his career at WLS around 1925 doing 45-minute versions of Shakespeare's plays. He did all the voices himself! It is no surprise he eventually collapsed from exhaustion. --Andrea Selch *********************************** Martin Jukovsky Cambridge, Mass.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2093 Monday, 29 November 1999. From: Reg Grouse <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 28 Nov 1999 12:11:20 +1000 Subject: 10.2063 Re: Age of Awareness Comment: Re: SHK 10.2063 Re: Age of Awareness Terence Hawkes writes: >It's precisely the distinction you presuppose between an 'intellectual' >and an 'emotional response' that strikes me as dangerous as well as >mistaken. Language is not music. It has a vital discursive dimension in >which the intellect is intricately and irrevocably involved. I cannot imagine how emotional responses could be regarded as dangerous. If so we are all in danger all of the time, for it is difficult not to have emotional responses to most experiences particularly experiences of art. Language, you claim, is not music. True, but verse speaking is akin to singing without tonal range. It is this musical quality in Shakespeare's verse which I believe first attracted me to his works. I cannot see anything very dangerous in this. I think it was Shakespeare's remarkable facility with words that gave him the skill to use his genius on so many different levels. One of these levels was verse. If you are not moved by what I would call the beauty of his verse so be it, but do not deny me the joy of being moved by it. This is not to deny the value of the intellectual input. All art combines emotional and intellectual elements in varying proportions and usually what we call fine art has a higher percentage of the intellectual. Nevertheless, a work can hardly be defined as art at all if there is no appeal to the emotions. The very definition of art demands this. Reg Grouse
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2092 Monday, 29 November 1999. From: Geoffrey Forward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Nov 1999 07:59:39 -0800 Subject: 10.2035 Dyers and Big Calves Comment: Re: SHK 10.2035 Dyers and Big Calves I would think in the first paragraph that the writer is poking fun at a dyer with big calves without any necessary causative connection. Calves larger than his thighs would make the man look deformed/funny, as the drawings of Popey [sp], the cartoon character, had Popey's forearms much larger than his biceps. In the second paragraph, however, the pun is on dyeing (the cloth) and dye (die, as in dead). It was the man's bad luck to have to work as a dyer (often dyes) all his life. Another pun shows in course (coarse) and course (racecourse). Geoff
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2091 Monday, 29 November 1999. [1] From: Judith Matthews Craig <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 24 Nov 1999 12:57:35 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 10.2076 Re: DC Dream [2] From: William Kemp <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 27 Nov 1999 12:42:41 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 10.2076 Re: DC Dream [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Judith Matthews Craig <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 24 Nov 1999 12:57:35 -0600 Subject: 10.2076 Re: DC Dream Comment: Re: SHK 10.2076 Re: DC Dream Abigail Quart writes: <Wet Shakespeare seems to be a growing trend, <Last year in New York I saw <Lincoln Center's Twelfth Night and the New York <Shakespeare Festival's Cymbeline in Central Park, both had bodies of <water onstage and <quantities of dripping actors. Maybe they are copying the Disney idea of a theme park known to Texans-Wet and Wild. What a drip. Judy Craig [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Kemp <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 27 Nov 1999 12:42:41 -0500 Subject: 10.2076 Re: DC Dream Comment: Re: SHK 10.2076 Re: DC Dream Scott Crozier asked for more information about Joe Calarco's current production of MND in Washington. The theater has a web site (http://ShakespeareDC.org/) which includes commentary. I won't see the production until next week, but restructuring the script to put "Pyramus and Thisbe" in the middle rather than at the end strikes me as diminishing the play. The Athenian lovers are, after all, pretty thin characters, whether fully clothed or in their underwear. Bill Kemp
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2090 Monday, 29 November 1999. From: Jadwiga Krupski <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Nov 1999 10:33:18 -0500 Subject: Unkindest Cut I am planning a panel paper for the Spring conference of the Association for Core texts and Courses (ACTC) in which I propose to discuss some directorial omissions in the productions of plays. I shall cite two specific instances, The first one concerns two productions of A WINTER's TALE - one by the Cebtaur Theatre in Montreal, the other in Stratford, Ontario in the same year (I think it was 1997). In both cases, the dialogue between Perdita and Polyxenes about nature and nurture (IV,iv) was cut. This passage highlights the characterization of Perdita: she is the lost princess, nurtured in "base" circumstances, yet her nobility and integrity epitomize her true "nature" - which is the controlling factor of the final redemption and reconciliation. On the other hand, something may be said for Polyxenes's touch of sophistry, when he argues that the very fact of human endeavors to improve on pristine nature is also "natural". My second example comes from Kenneth Branagh's otherwise admirable film, HENRY V. Toward the end of the film, the King is seen, crossing the battle-ravaged landscape carrying a dead boy. He has been informed of the slaughter of the baggage train boys by the retreating French - and he has responded with great anger. His brief appearance with the dead boy in his arms would acquired more weight and focus, had a previous scene been included. It involves the nameless Boy of the DRAMATIS PERSONAE, Falstaff's former factotum. His master's death has forced him to seek the protection of the only friends he knew - and to join Falstaff's former boon companions, as they enlist in the King's expedition against France. But as he watches this band of thieves and looters an action, he makes a decision: as he tells us, "I must leave them and seek/ some other service. Their villainy/ goes against my weak stomach/ and I must cast it up! (H.V, II,ii,47-53)". He finds his "other service" in the baggage train. Having this episode precede the King's reaction to the slaughter of children, would have made a strong statement of considerable thematic weight. I wonder if any list members have had similar experiences with this kind of "most unkindest cut of all" - and would like to share them. Greetings, Jadwiga Krupski