May
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.1221 Thursday, 2 May 2002 From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 20:09:12 +0100 Subject: 13.1208 Re: Shakespeare and Monkeys Comment: Re: SHK 13.1208 Re: Shakespeare and Monkeys > 2. And, as we know, at least some roaches can type albeit only lower > case. SHAME on you, Dana -- archie used his head, not his digits. mehitabel. _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> 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 13.1220 Thursday, 2 May 2002 From: Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 01 May 2002 14:37:30 -0400 Subject: Edgar and Edmund Sean Lawrence suggests that Edgar does not reveal himself to his father when they first meet because to do so would kill the old man. This is an interesting idea, but it doesn't seem to me to be true. Everything is a matter of timing. Revealing himself right away would do no harm; revealing himself after what he has done to Gloucester causes such contrary feelings that Gloucester's heart breaks in two. In other words, Edgar does things backwards. Why he does them backwards is the burden of my argument. Sean also points out that Edgar is disguised as Poor Tom when he talks of "foul fiends" -- true enough. But "Poor Tom," an image of an Elizabethan beggar, is an image of Edgar's condition now that his father has cut him off. "Poor Tom" is also an image of how Edgar feels inside -- destitute. So the demons he must ward off are more real than you might think. How would you feel, Sean, if someone did to you what Gloucester did to Edgar? That is the central question. And the answer is simple and straightforward: we all would feel hate and the desire for revenge. And so does Edgar, though he can't admit it to himself. Brian Willis writes that Edgar and Cordelia must "prove themselves" to their fathers. Isn't the opposite true, Brian? Edgar and Cordelia are the victims, as I see it, and Gloucester and Lear are the perpetrators, no? If anyone needs to prove himself, it's Gloucester or Lear, isn't it? Aren't they the ones who have done wrong? Brian also asserts that my argument is not textually based. I'm flabbergasted and bewildered by this statement, since all throughout my various posts I have only discussed incidents that occur in the play. I have focused, however, on Edgar's actions because they are hard to reconcile with his words. I hope that Brian doesn't mean that action -- the plot -- is not an integral part of the text. Edgar's actions towards his father appear unnatural: they do not seem to fit with his words. I have argued that his actions are actually quite natural, for anyone in his position would feel hate as well as love for his father. I can't fathom how or in what way I have not grounded my argument in the text. Brian also points to the similar roles that Edgar and Cordelia play in the subplot and the main plot respectively. I agree, although I think that the parallel between Edgar and Lear on the Heath is even more important. But I'll save that for later. Like Edgar, Cordelia is in a love/hate relationship with her father. The most obvious example is near the end of the opening scene when she addresses Goneril and Regan: Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are, and like a sister am most loath to call Your faults as they are named. Love well our father. To your professed bosoms I commit him. But yet, alas, stood I within his grace, I would prefer hm to a better place. (1.1.272-78). In these lines Cordelia reverts to the role of favorite child and so insults her sisters that she guarantees that Lear will be mistreated by them. Take that, old man! --Ed Taft _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> 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 13.1219 Thursday, 2 May 2002 [1] From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 18:05:29 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 13.1206 Re: Accents (Received Pronunciation) [2] From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 01 May 2002 10:15:06 -0700 Subj: Re: SHK 13.1206 Re: Accents (Received Pronunciation) [3] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 01 May 2002 15:46:37 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 13.1206 Re: Accents (Received Pronunciation) [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 18:05:29 +0100 Subject: 13.1206 Re: Accents (Received Pronunciation) Comment: Re: SHK 13.1206 Re: Accents (Received Pronunciation) > From: Jonathan Hope <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > > Not unrelated to musings about RP, you can read Tom Leonard's poem 'Six > o'clock news', and hear him speak it (if your computer is swanky enough) > at the following site And, boy, do I +ever+ know where this is coming from. There was a strike reported (well, quite a few) in Glasgow in the sixties. The 'objective' newscasters spoke RP, the bosses spoke RP, the workers spoke Glasgow. Objectivity, anyone? This was still a hot issue at least as late as the mid-seventies. James Kelman's first published-in-Britain short story, "Nice tae be nice" (the only one of his in strict Glasgow) was almost physically censored. The magazine (_Yorick_) which published it had to switch printers. (Well, I was censored in the same issue, so it might not all be down to Jim.) Robin Hamilton [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 01 May 2002 10:15:06 -0700 Subject: 13.1206 Re: Accents (Received Pronunciation) Comment: Re: SHK 13.1206 Re: Accents (Received Pronunciation) Dear all, You clearly know more about this than I do, so I'll ask a question: Does anyone know of any examples of members of the upper classes finding RP odd, or the accents of BBC newsreaders, if they aren't actually synonymous? The larger question has to do with how national standards can be treated as 'other' by people from all regions whatsoever. If I'm right, then any national standard would sound upper-class if one thinks of both the upper class and alternative accents as "not us" or "not from around here". Could the alterity of a different class and an alternative accent just have been conflated at some point by those who neither speak RP nor are members of the upper classes? Could RP speakers be assumed to be upper class in the same way that all non-American English speakers are sometimes assumed to be British? Cheers, Se
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.1218 Thursday, 2 May 2002 From: Kevin J. Donovan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 11:44:28 -0500 (CDT) Subject: 13.1214 The Phoenix Comment: Re: SHK 13.1214 The Phoenix For Emma French: I would direct your student to the following: John Orrell, _The Theatres of Inigo Jones and John Webb_; Gurr, _The Shakespearean Stage_, 3rd ed., Ch. 4 (and works cited therein); R. A. Foakes, _Illustrations of the English Stage_ (fig. 29). You might advise him or her that the theater is more often cited as the Cockpit in Drury Land than as the Phoenix. Kevin Donovan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> 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 13.1217 Thursday, 2 May 2002 [1] From: Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 17:43:23 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters [2] From: Miranda Johnson-Haddad <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 01 May 2002 16:27:15 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters [3] From: Brian Willis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 13:52:37 -0700 (PDT) Subj: Re: SHK 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 17:43:23 +0100 Subject: 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters Comment: Re: SHK 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters >Why would [one] assume that Goneril is 25, or that R and C are several >years younger and why does it matter?" asks Judi Wilkins. "If Shakespeare >hasn't made their exact ages integral to the playing out of his action, then >he presumably didn't think it was important. If Lear is 80, (and he does >burble on about his age), what is the 'real' or mimetic problem with his >having fathered children in his middle age? There are two ages in King Lear - very, very old and youngish. Lear is staggeringly, exaggeratedly old. Part of the problem of the play's politics is the fact that Goneril and Regan have had to sit about for a good many years waiting for their dad to kick the bucket, so that they can have a go at running things, as is their birthright. This is perhaps more acutely felt here in the UK, where we are faced with the problem of powerless royals dying young and powerful ones enjoying an awkward longevity. And this in a world where, more than ever, "Ripeness is all". m [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Miranda Johnson-Haddad <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 01 May 2002 16:27:15 -0400 Subject: 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters Comment: Re: SHK 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters This thread has a timely relevance for me today, because my Shakespeare class at UCLA this morning spent some time debating what was gained or lost by portraying Goneril as being of a certain age. Specifically, we were watching the 1997 version starring Ian Holm (yes, I plead guilty to being one of those academic lightweights, so disparaged by some members of this list, who finds it useful to show performance clips in class). Several of my students suggested that Lear's cursing Goneril with sterility carries particularly nasty significance if she is older and perhaps has been "trying" to have a child (the quotation marks are my students'). As I tell my students, if we carry this kind of thing too far we wind up speculating about "how many children had Lady Macbeth?" Nevertheless, I think when there are implications for performance / comprehension, some discussion of this kind of topic can be productive. It certainly was in class this morning. Best, Miranda Johnson-Haddad [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Brian Willis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 1 May 2002 13:52:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters Comment: Re: SHK 13.1212 Re: King Lear's Daughters Judi, I agree wholeheartedly with your points. I do wonder, however, the age and sex of the actors playing Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Did boys play all three? Did older men play the two older sisters or all three? It might also have some bearing on the fertility curse of Lear and it might have something to do with our perceptions of these characters. I have read that older actors were known to play older women. If Cordelia was played by a boy, and the other sisters by older men, how does that alter our perceptions of the three? Cordelia would probably seem even more innocent and the sisters more experienced. I suppose there is no way to prove who played who in this play, but it does raise questions that indeed the text does not raise. Brian Willis _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> 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.