January
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0101 Thursday, 17 January 2002 From: Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 19:03:50 -0500 Subject: Criticism, Authority and Simon Russell Beale 1. A negative review is a satirical attack on bad art. Those who think that satire should never be savage had better re-read Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Byron et al. If those examples strike them as too lofty or remote, they need only look at Forbidden Broadway and Saturday Night Live. 2. As Mike Jensen has so eloquently written, "criticism is not a democratic process." The victory belongs to those with superior knowledge, education, experience and insight. We may justly look to such spirits as examples and guides. That is why I quoted John Simon and Robert Brustein, the most learned, rigorous and insightful drama critics in America. They are also the most experienced--for example, Brustein is Artistic Director at the A.R.T. where Thomas Derrah is currently playing Iago. 3. It seems that Brian Willis and I both have "preconceived" or optimal notions of what Hamlet should be like. We both believe that he should be "powerful, intelligent, funny, tragic and charismatic." Unfortunately, Beale was none of those things. Moreover, it is not the case that Simon's, Brustein's or my review focussed exclusively on Beale's face and physique, deplorable as those were. On the contrary, Simon wrote of Beale's wretched verse-speaking, squealing voice and charmless personality. Brustein discussed Beale's middle-class or suburban aura, his tiresome and unvarying air of snide disdain, his lack of sexual chemistry with Ophelia. My own review cited many of the same defects while focussing on Beale's gray monotony, his sluggish mind and spirit, his failure to be moving or even interesting. Mr. Willis is free to deem these murky qualities "luminous." I believe that Simon, Brustein and I have reached a more accurate assessment. Thanks to Simon and Brustein's imprimatur, it is an assessment which no honest theater historian can ignore or misrepresent. --Charles Weinstein _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them. Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0100 Thursday, 17 January 2002 From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 14:31:07 -0600 Subject: Doyle's Prose In re: 13.0093: Don Bloom effectively puts *The White Company* (at least in this sudden stab context) down as second rate. It is worth remembering that Doyle said once that of all he wrote *The White Company* and *Sir Nigel* were "The most complete, satisfying and ambitious thing that I have ever done." Yours for good prose, John _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0099 Thursday, 17 January 2002 From: Alan Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 14:50:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: 13.0088 Re: Pregnant Gertrude Comment: Re: SHK 13.0088 Re: Pregnant Gertrude I have nothing to add to the discussion of how playgoers will "read" or react to a visibly pregnant Gertrude. I am reminded, however, of one of my favorite theatre anecdotes--with the joke at my expense. In the 1980s I saw a production of *Henry VIII* in which an actor I much admire played Cranmer in distinctive white make-up, applied so heavily that it called attention to itself. When I queried him after the show, he said that he had two explanations. The first was for the general public: that Cranmer was a scholar who rarely saw the light of day, etc. The other explanation was for me alone: that after over twenty years of playing a wide assortment of roles, in the series of performances that summer he finally had the opportunity to use up the white make-up he had accumulated. What then happens to my instant symbolic interpretation? Alan Dessen _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0098 Thursday, 17 January 2002 [1] From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 12:49:32 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago [2] From: Mary Jane Miller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 14:30:54 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago [3] From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2002 03:53:58 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 12:49:32 -0500 Subject: 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago Comment: Re: SHK 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago Iago's social status is blurred by the Venetian setting; it is always difficult to align the mercantile societies of the Italian city-states with the land-based English system. But it seems to me that most of the signs indicate that he's a gentleman. He associates as comfortably (and in remarkably similar ways) with Roderigo as Sir Toby does with Sir Andrew, speaks well, can aspire to relatively high military rank. His wife is deemed a suitable lady-in-waiting for the high-born Desdemona, and speaks familiarly (as does Iago) of elevated Venetian society. Then as later, the army was a way for younger sons to make an independent life. The other character most like Iago, of course, is Edmund-gently born, in a sense, and gently educated, but precluded by the accident of birth-order from the kind of comfortable security offered to his brother. David Evett [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mary Jane Miller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 14:30:54 -0500 Subject: 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago Comment: Re: SHK 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago Don Bloom says, "Iago has always struck me as having -- his insanity aside -- a classic senior non-com mentality. Moreover, his dissatisfaction with his rank was further evidence of that insanity. Normally, non-coms do not want to be officers, nor thought of as gentlemen with all those expectations. They want considerable power and respect within a limited combat or administrative group, but the social expectations of officers fill them with horror." And that is exactly the way he is played on the BBC Othello as directed by Jonathan Miller by ( I think) Bob Hoskins. Mary Jane [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2002 03:53:58 -0500 Subject: 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago Comment: Re: SHK 13.0090 Re: Ancient Iago As Sean points out, the use of large ordinance requires mathematics, not only in engineering, but simply in the calculation of angles of trajectories on paper when positioning large cannon. Othello's selection of Cassio is evidence of his superior military wisdom (as his selection by the Venetian doges over their native sons is therefore of theirs). In the "ancient" form of warfare the motiveless malignancy of warriors is an asset. Across the late middle ages and renaissance periods in Europe this was no longer so, so the literature of the period is filled with allegories of the replacement of the berserker warrior by the refined and educated chivalric military commander, just as the anger of Achilles is identified by Homer as no longer conducive to Greek imperialist conquest in an earlier analogous process. But just as Iago's kind is obsolete because of his disdain for mathematics, Othello's is obsolete for other reasons, and Lodovico and Cassio emerge as the new model for the European military state, which accounts for its successful repulsion of the Turks, very much in question at the ostensible historical period of the play. There's no denying that Iago is a talented warrior, as we see him effectively bringing down his opponent, but his talents will not serve the new conditions of the war against the Turks. That his own passions and ambitions outweigh considerations of the greater good of the state is one of the qualities that made a valuable commander in "barbarian" times, but, as with Achilles, it becomes counterproductive in modern warfare. My own experience as an enlisted man in the Navy was that the Chiefs, while holding Ensigns and Lieutenant JG's in contempt, did not consider themselves officer material and very rarely aspired beyond Warrant Officer status. Clifford _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0097 Thursday, 17 January 2002 From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2002 08:11:11 -0800 Subject: 13.0092 Re: Elizabethan Coins Comment: Re: SHK 13.0092 Re: Elizabethan Coins Larry Weiss asks, >Have you considered the possibility that what you have are clipped >coins? Yes. There is enough of a ridge around the edge to suggest they were not clipped. Striking coins a bit off center was common. I guess it was difficult to hit them "right on the money." Mike Jensen _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.