September
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1846 Friday, 29 September 2000. From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 29 Sep 2000 10:01:43 -0400 Subject: Re: The Power of Words (Apologies) Comment: SHK 11.1845 Re: The Power of Words (Apologies) Apologies, my note on the above subject should read: Anyone wishing to continue to discuss this thread should do so offline. Hardy
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1845 Friday, 29 September 2000. [Editor's Note: Anyone wished to continue to discuss this thread should do so offline. -Hardy] [1] From: William Sutton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 29 Sep 2000 03:49:56 -0700 (PDT) Subj: Re: SHK 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words [2] From: Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 29 Sep 2000 08:27:01 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Sutton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 29 Sep 2000 03:49:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words Comment: Re: SHK 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words Dear all, What if an actor is bisexual? Engenderedly yours, W.S. ps Can lesbian actresses be seen for what they are? [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 29 Sep 2000 08:27:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words Comment: Re: SHK 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words "...outside knowledge..." Not always. An actor's sexuality, at odds with that of his character, will sometimes be obvious from his performance itself, due precisely to his failings as an actor. In other cases, identity politics may lead a gay actor to ignore or even flout his chameleonic mandate.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1844 Friday, 29 September 2000. From: Patrick Buckridge <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 29 Sep 2000 12:49:15 +1000 Subject: 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words Comment: Re: SHK 11.1834 Re: The Power of Words >The fop is laughed at not because he is trying to be something >in itself contemptible, but rather because he is trying unsuccessfully >to be something which, if he succeeded, would make him the play's hero. This is a wonderfully insightful comment of Salgado's; but doesn't it bring the matter round ALMOST full circle to the question of sexuality? Sparkish is not Horner (Country Wife) because he doesn't have Horner's bullish virility. If he did, he'd be as sexually irresistible as Horner, even with his superficial fopperies - as Horner himself 'proves' by adopting all the foppish mannerisms (including a lack of interest in women), while still communicating his intentions and capacities to the willing wives. In other words, fops are REALLY being ridiculed for their (assumed) lack of virility, not for their flamboyant manners, even when it appears otherwise. Which is not the same as ridiculing them for being gay or effeminate - or at least it wouldn't be the same for us, but in fact I suspect that at any time prior to the mid-20th century, homosexuality WAS equated with lack of virility in the popular (and probably also the medical) mind. I don't know how much this applies to Osric, who comes very early in the history of foppery (perhaps preceded only by the Earl of Oxford, as described by Gabriel Harvey in his Anti-Cicernianus). There was a 1960s production of Hamlet - it might have been the Nicol Williamson one, I'm not sure - in which Osric was played as a kind of 'memento mori' character, almost as Death itself, glaring balefully at Hamlet in a very creepy fashion. Pat Buckridge
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1843 Friday, 29 September 2000. From: Elizabeth Williamson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 28 Sep 2000 18:36:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Leontes - Thanks to All Just wanted to say thanks for all the replies on my half-cracked name query. I'm currently checking outthe variorum but no luck with the Shakespeare dictionaries so far. The passage, if anyone is interested, can be found at Republic, 439e-440a. Cheers, Elizabeth Williamson
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1842 Friday, 29 September 2000. From: Edmund M. Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 28 Sep 2000 23:13:54 +0000 Subject: Use of Dialect Terence Hawkes chides me for suggesting that Glendower may show great restraint when Hotspur refers to Glendower's native language. Terry seems to think that such an inference is unsupportable because it deals with "the inner life" of a character and what s/he does NOT say. Consider the following: Mortimer: Shall I tell you [Hotspur], cousin? He [Glendower] holds your temper in a high respect And curbs himself even of his natural scope When you come cross his humor. Faith, he does. (1H4. 3.1.165-168) Apparently I am not the only one concerned about Glendower's "inner life." What characters are thinking when they DON'T speak is often vitally important to the play and to any full interpretation of it. What is going through Isabella mind as the end of Act 5 in MM unfolds? What is Hamlet's real reason for visiting his mother in her bedroom? And on and on. Terry's brand of cultural materialist fundamentalism ("Characters don't think"!) limits literary interpretation in much the same way as religious fundamentalists try to restrict interpretation of the Bible. Besides, while he is free to subscribe to whatever definition of art suits him, his views clearly clash with what Renaissance artists believed they were doing: holding a mirror up to nature. Just as we often wonder about and try to figure out what someone else is thinking, we also wonder about and try to figure out what a character in a play is thinking or feeling. And, as in the example above, Shakespeare often gives us some help in this endeavor. People show restraint in life and characters can show it in art. I thank Terry for his efforts to improve my style. We can all learn from others. --Ed Taft