July
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.1283 Friday, 16 July 1999. From: H. R. Greenberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 18:36:57 EDT Subject: Those Pesky Pirates of Hamlet Again Pursuing work on Hamlet's pirates and related subjects has lead me into the purlieus of Elizabethan criminality. I recall in a conversation many years ago with Professor Barbara Everett her mentioning a well-known work on the Elizabethan criminal underworld which would presumably include pirates. Does anyone out there know what this book would be? Many thanks in advance, HRGreenberg md endit
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.1282 Friday, 16 July 1999. [1] From: Syd Kasten <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 22:49:28 +0300 Subj: Horatio et al. [2] From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 23:23:04 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 10.1251 Re: Horatio [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Syd Kasten <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 22:49:28 +0300 Subject: Horatio et al. Brian Haylett wrote >This is the play that >happily mixes Germanic Hamlet and Gertrude with Latinate Claudius, >Polonius, Laertes and Greek Ophelia. If Horatio is indeed Reason, then >he is Hamlet's Reason - which is an answer to those who ask why Claudius >did not use him to spy on Hamlet. Germanic Gertrude and Latinate Claudius are OK. As for the others-the Lithuanians of today use the the "ius" endings in names. Lithuania is across the Baltic from Denmark. The states that lie between them on land include Poland, which has been seen as a source of Polonius' name, making him a Polish born gentleman who picked up a nickname in Lithuania before coming into the service of Denmark. To my eye Laertes seems more Greek than Roman - Heracles, Hippocrates etc. Ophelia, the name, indeed looks Greek. Opheleo means "I aid, help, benefit". I'm not sure how this would would fit into the text context or subtext. Until I looked up the word today in the limited vocabulary of "Easy Selecions from Xenophon", a book that I've had kicking around since highschool, my association would be to the Hebrew. Hebrew has two ways of spelling the word "ophel", each spelling with its own meaning. Spelt with an aleph the word implies darkness; with an ayin it is a "high, fortified place". In this sense, it refers to the ridge in Jerusalem south of Temple Mount which became David's capital. Each of these meanings adds a poignancy to the character for anyone who has Hebrew. This, of course, is stretching things, since how could a glovemaker's son develop such a depth and breadth, not to mention a working knowledge of Hebrew. Still, Shakespeare was not unaware of emotions which were evoked by Jerusalem, and used them to effect in the death of Henry IV. As for wordplay on names, has anyone noticed that the actor playing Claudius in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, was Claudius in the TV epic "I, Claudius"? Cool! Best wishes, Syd Kasten [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 23:23:04 -0400 Subject: 10.1251 Re: Horatio Comment: Re: SHK 10.1251 Re: Horatio It must be remembered that the name Horatio was already familiar from the smash hit held over for the nth straight week Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy." This fact, combined with the possible attribution of the Ur-Hamlet make Shakespeare's Horatio a nod to Kyd recognizable by the Elizabethan audience. 1601, the proposed staging date, was, by the way, also the year of Kyd's imprisonment, torture, illness and death. There is little in the sources to justify a Horatio in the Hamlet story: Saxo and others have a brother to the more or less Ophelia character who hips Hamlet to the plots being laid on him, but he seems to me more akin to Laertes. The short answer is that Claudius would not enlist Horatio because he knows he wouldn't do it and would probably hip Hamlet to the plots being laid on him. For me, Horatio is Kyd whom Shakespeare has brought on stage as personal tribute and as symbol of the nobler aspirations of Elizabethan tragedy. Perhaps his role has more to do with "oratio" than with "ratio?" Clifford Stetner www.columbia.edu/~fs10/cds.htm
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.1281 Friday, 16 July 1999. [1] From: Kate Welch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 15:00:52 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 10.1272 Middleton's The Cristall Sanctuary [2] From: John Jowett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 20:51:20 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 10.1272 Middleton's The Cristall Sanctuary [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kate Welch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 15:00:52 GMT Subject: 10.1272 Middleton's The Cristall Sanctuary Comment: Re: SHK 10.1272 Middleton's The Cristall Sanctuary This quotation is from The Triumphs of Integrity (1623). In Bullen's edition of the complete works of Middleton (1885-6) it is page 391 of volume 7. Kate Welch Information Assistant Shakespeare Institute Library. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Jowett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 20:51:20 GMT Subject: 10.1272 Middleton's The Cristall Sanctuary Comment: Re: SHK 10.1272 Middleton's The Cristall Sanctuary Jack Heller enquires about Philip Brockbank's reference to Middleton's 'vnparaleld Maister-peece of Art, called the Cristall Sanctuary, stilde by the name of the Temple of Integrity'. This is a part of Middleton's 1623 civic entertainment called The Triumphs of Integrity. Middleton is praising the accomplishment of his partner, the set designer Garret Christmas. The work can be read in the Middleton editions of Alexander Dyce and A.H. Bullen, and is edited by David M. Bergeron in the forthcoming OUP edition of Middleton's Collected Works. John Jowett
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.1280 Friday, 16 July 1999. From: Carl Fortunato <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 15 Jul 1999 09:39:02 EDT Subject: 10.1273 Re: Midsummer Questions Comment: Re: SHK 10.1273 Re: Midsummer Questions >In the Peter Hall production of "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" currently >playing in Los Angeles, the role of Egeus is played by an actor who is >made up to look like William Shakespeare. > >(I don't recommend the production, The role of Oberon is played by an >actor who seems to be channeling Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook.) In ours, the Oberon is paying him as some sort of stage magician, and it seems to work.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.1279 Thursday, 15 July 1999. From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 14 Jul 1999 10:03:16 +0000 Subject: 10.1270 Time in R&J Comment: Re: SHK 10.1270 Time in R&J Marilyn Bonomi calculates: > Mantua is a 1/2 day's ride from Verona, though whether or not > Shakespeare actually knew that I have no way of knowing. He probably didn't. He treats Verona as a port in Two Gents., if memory serves, so he doesn't seem too familiar with the immediate geography. By the way, I recall that studying this play in grade 10, one of my classmates commented that nobody seems to sleep very much. Nights seem to be filled with balcony scenes, marriage consummations, or visits to tombs. Cheers, Se