The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1898  Monday, 9 October 2000.

[1]     From:   Frank Whigham <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 06 Oct 2000 09:58:23 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.1889 Re: Bullough On-Line

[2]     From:   Sarah Werner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 6 Oct 2000 12:37:58 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.1879 Bullough On-Line?

[3]     From:   Kevin De Ornellas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 06 Oct 2000 15:02:47 GMT
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.1879 Bullough On-Line

[4]     From:   D. G. Hale  <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 06 Oct 2000 15:53:52 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.1889 Re: Bullough On-Line


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Frank Whigham <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 06 Oct 2000 09:58:23 -0500
Subject: 11.1889 Re: Bullough On-Line
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.1889 Re: Bullough On-Line

In Chris Highley's excellent book on Shakespeare, Spenser, and Ireland,
the Welshwomen's atrocity is thus specified, recorded in Abraham
Fleming's revision of Holinshed in the second edition:

. . . yet did the women of Wales cut off their privities, and put one
part thereof into the mouthes of everie dead man, in such sort that the
cullions hoong downe to their chins; and not so contented, they did cut
off their noses and thrust them into their tailes as they laie on the
ground mangled and defaced (3.34).

Frank Whigham

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sarah Werner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 6 Oct 2000 12:37:58 -0400
Subject: 11.1879 Bullough On-Line?
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.1879 Bullough On-Line?

Penn's Furness library has a facsimile of Holinshed online at
http://www.library.upenn.edu/etext/collections/furness/

The details you're looking for are:

"the women of Wales cut off their privities, and put one part thereof
into the mouthes of everie dead man, in such sort that the cullions
hoong downe to their chins; and not so contented, they did cut off their
noses and thrust them into their tailes as they laie on the ground
mangled and defaced."

A fuller version of the passage is reproduced in the edition of the play
edited by Barbara Hodgdon and published in Bedford's Texts and Contexts
series. Also see Phyllis Rackin's discussion of the passage in her
_Stages of History: Shakespeare's English Chronicles_ (pp172-3
specifically, but Chapter 4 for analysis and contextualization of the
relationship between women's deeds and male history).

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Kevin De Ornellas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 06 Oct 2000 15:02:47 GMT
Subject: 11.1879 Bullough On-Line?
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.1879 Bullough On-Line?

>In *1H4* Westmerland reports to King Henry that, after Glendower's
>defeat of Mortimer, "A thousand of his people [were] butchered, / Upon
>whose dead corpse' there was such misuse, / Such beastly shameless
>transformation, / By those Welshwomen done as may not be / Without much
>shame retold or spoken of" (1.1.42-46, Riverside ed.).  Holinshed is
>supposed to provide details at p. 528.  What exactly did the Welshwomen
>do to the corpses?

From p.20, vol. III of the edition of Holinshed from the early 1800s:

'The shamefull villanie vsed by the Welshwomen towards the dead
carcasses, was such, as honest eares would be ashamed to heare, and
continent toongs to speake thereof.  The dead bodies might not be
buried, without great summes of monie given for libertie to conueie them
awaie'.

Bullough's transcription seems to differ very insignificantly, but I
would be interested to hear if there any significant variants on this
between the two distinct Tudor editions of Holinshed.

But, it seems ultimately that Holinshed just will not tell us what
happened to these unfortunate cadavers.  Isn't it infuriating?

Kevin De Ornellas
Queen's University, Belfast

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           D. G. Hale  <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 06 Oct 2000 15:53:52 -0400
Subject: 11.1889 Re: Bullough On-Line
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.1889 Re: Bullough On-Line

I recall reading somewhere that Holinshed and Shakespeare are giving us
a euphemized version of the Welsh women's castrating the English dead
and doing something worse with the members. Standard wartime atrocity
story, which could range from historical truth to demonizing propaganda.

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