December
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.2226 Monday, 4 December 2000 From: Tim Richards <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 02 Dec 2000 12:53:49 +1100 Subject: 11.2203 Mary Arden's House Comment: Re: SHK 11.2203 Mary Arden's House At 10:29 30-11-00 -0500, David Kathman posted this article: >Shakespeare tourists view wrong house -- for 200 years My first reaction to this was bemusement. Why on earth *do* tourists visit the house where Shakespeare's mother lived as a child? Would you also make a pilgrimage to Einstein's mum's home, or Picasso's dad's kindergarten? There's a quasi-religious whiff about all this... Tim Richards.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.2225 Monday, 4 December 2000 From: William Sutton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2000 16:10:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: 11.2212 Re: "Invention in a noted weed" Comment: Re: SHK 11.2212 Re: "Invention in a noted weed" Nutmeg and cocaine sounds good but the case seems to be closed on these sensationalist bozos. So the Arden cottage is not the Arden homestead, that's news. How much more is in those archives? LOL, William Sutton PS /nutted/ weed. Bind me in a nutshell, Hardy, I'm the king of infinite space. ROTFLOL [Editors' Note: Agreeing with Peter Holland that there is not much more fruitful that can be about this subject, I have got to offer a correction. The alleged cocaine in the pipe or pipes must have been coco leaves. I do not believe that cocaine was processed until the turn of the 20th century when it came to the attention of Freud. -HMC]
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.2224 Monday, 4 December 2000 From: Chris Clark <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Dec 2000 23:38:23 GMT Subject: Genre in Early Modern England Hi, I'm analysing generic instability in the plays of Elizabethan/Jacobean England. Does anyone recommend any essays/books/articles on this subject? I'm particularly focusing on the History Plays and the contemporary understanding of the word "history." I consulted Raymond Williams' Keywords, so often a great help, but his discussion does not go into very much detail on the word in this period. I've got a number of Chronicles out - what I'm looking for really is audience analysis and preferably even diaries/journals/accounts - perhaps comparing the (mainly Puritan) critics of the theatre with its defenders might be an idea. Can anyone offer me some advice to give me a handle when discussing this question? Cheers, Chris Clark King's College London
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.2223 Monday, 4 December 2000 [1] From: L. Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2000 11:48:57 -0600 Subj: Edward Bond, His Works and His Pomps [2] From: Herman Gollob <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Dec 2000 16:02:54 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 11.2215 Edward Bond's 'Bingo' [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: L. Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2000 11:48:57 -0600 Subject: Edward Bond, His Works and His Pomps Years ago, I attended the premiere of "Bingo" in London. If I remember correctly, it starred Gielgud as the unrelievedly despondent Shakespeare, who sat for most of the performance in profile in a chair, terminally dour. Albert Finney was second in nervous command. With such a cast, one would suppose that the very telephone book could be made an exciting piece, but Bond's work had not even that much electricity. It is, in fact, probably the worst, most boring play I have ever seen. I could not stay for the ending, but stood outside the theater, waiting, rather than continue the pain of watching great actors suffer, at it seemed, through the ugliness. However, the English critics loved it (but then they also love early John Wayne movies), and Bond scribbled on, regurgitating another piece a while later. I cannot remember the name of *that*, but, thinking at the time that I had better give him another chance, I attended *that* one. It starred Glenda Jackson, whom the Costume Department had dressed as a purple flag caught in a windstorm. That part was memorable as unintended comedy, the play otherwise was not, an opinion I was gratified to hear confirmed by several in the upper galleries who began to repeat Ms. Jackson's lines and those of other actors in loud, mocking yells. That Mr. Bond and his plays have not been set adrift is nothing if not miraculous, his continuing favorable reception as mysterious as the commercial success of that sublimely ugliest of all pieces of jewelry, the Rolex watch. L. Swilley [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Herman Gollob <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Dec 2000 16:02:54 -0500 Subject: 11.2215 Edward Bond's 'Bingo' Comment: Re: SHK 11.2215 Edward Bond's 'Bingo' >I'm currently teaching some classes on Edward Bond's 'Bingo', a play >about Shakespeare from the 1970s. It's a thought-provoking play, and I >was wondering if any list members would like to offer their views on it. >What do you think about Bond's representation of Shakespeare as a >selfish capitalist who repents and eventually commits suicide? And how >about Shakespeare's death-bed speech, "Was anything done?", and its >implied dismissal of his plays? > >Any comments would be appreciated. > >David Nicol >UCE, Birmingham Dear Mr. Nicol, I saw BINGO at Stratford in 1995 and thought it a shallow tendentious Marxist screed. A far more powerful portrait of a Shakespeare in torment is Edward Arlington Robinson's shattering narrative poem, BEN JONSON ENTERTAINS A MAN FROM STRATFORD (in fact, the only redeemable feature of BINGO is the Ben Jonson cameo, and that's mostly caricature. Herman Gollob
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.2222 Monday, 4 December 2000 From: Laura Graser <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2000 09:27:44 -0800 Subject: 11.2211 Re: Hecate Comment: Re: SHK 11.2211 Re: Hecate Last spring (2000) Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company, in Portland, Oregon, did a wonderful Macbeth, with Hecate played by Nannette Gatchel. Directed by our AD, Nancy N. Doherty. It was set c. 1000 AD. The three witches (a young woman, an old woman, and a middle-aged man) were played as student-witches, with day jobs (as it were) in Dunsinane Castle. Hecate was their boss, who appears to chide them when they messed up--the idea being that they got in over their heads and told Macbeth too much, and now look what he's gone and done. The witches were dressed as the servants they were; Hecate was in a silk ball gown, with extended arms. She appeared on an overhead walkway during the two scenes when she is chiding her students. She appeared again, briefly, during Banquo's murder, perhaps helping Fleance escape. I'm making it sound cute, which it wasn't. I found Hecate's scenes very effective. Laura Graser, Portland, Or.