February
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.0341 Friday, 21 February 2003 From: John Zuill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 10:43:00 -0300 Subject: 14.0334 Shakespop Comment: Re: SHK 14.0334 Shakespop Did anyone mention "Last Action Hero". The film starts with Arnold Schartzenagger as an action hero Hamlet. He tosses the skull aside and blows up the castle; helicopters and gun galore. It's the only part of the film which is fun. Arnold always has a strain of irony running through his flicks even at their most puerile. John Zuill _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0340 Friday, 21 February 2003 From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 23:50:21 -0500 Subject: Re: Endings of Titus Andronicus I happily concede that I was not born to be an editor. So I may be totally in the dark here without knowing it. But I am surprised (and even dismayed) by the way so many people pass off speculation and conjecture as fact and certainty when it comes to talking about editing Shakespeare. In the case of the ending of Titus Andronicus, we have what, for the sake of clarity, I will label an "addition" theory: the printers added the lines. Since I do not find this theory convincing, let me add a possibly new "restoration" theory, namely, that the lines are by Shakespeare (or his representative or his collaborator). I don't find the addition theory convincing for several reasons. 1. It assumes, without any foundation as far as I know, that problems in Q2 were introduced by someone other than Shakespeare (either the printers or the editor[s]) while Q1 is a perfect transcription of what Shakespeare wrote. Why not consider that the printers of Q1 mistakenly cut the lines in Q2 and that the printers of Q2 were correcting their error? 2. The idea that the printers added the lines depends on the contradictory assumptions that (a) they were too dumb to recognize the real ending, which is supposedly good and marked by the final, redundant couplet and (b) smart enough to rewrite the final line (of Q1) and then make up the final four lines (of Q2) themselves. Further, it assumes that they were industrious enough to write the lines but too lazy to ask the editors about the correct ending of Q1. 3. The addition theory also assumes that the there was no intermediary between Q1 and Q2. The printers of Q2 merely used Q1 and did not have access to the source of Q1 or a more recent and revised version of the source of Q1. What if this assumption is incorrect? What if the printers of Q2 added lines given them by the editor(s) of Q2? If the ending of Q2 the result of editing rather than printing, we may view the ending of Q2 as an attempt to correct perceived problems with the ending of Q1. The most obvious problem is that the final couplet rhymes the same word, namely, "pity." One can make a virtue of this defect, of course. One could argue that the word "pity" is so important in the play that Shakespeare repeats it in the last two lines of the play so his audience can appreciate its importance. But if that was the goal, the execution is patently awkward. It's kind of like an Oliver Stone movie where EVERYTHING IS SPELLED OUT REALLY CLEARLY because the viewer is assumed to be incredibly stupid. If a case can be made for the Q1 ending, a case can also be made against it, it's enough to see. And so if the editor(s) of Q2 thought the ending of Q1 weak, or knew that Shakespeare thought so, they may have either restored Shakespeare's original ending (missing from Q1) by supplying what were Shakespeare's original lines or by supplying what they thought was an approximation of Shakespeare's lines or by supplying what were lines added in performance and written by someone else, possibly with Shakespeare's knowledge. I'm not saying that the rewritten line and added lines of Q2 were necessarily written by Shakespeare. I am saying that they were an effort to restored rather than simply tacked on. 4. Finally, Heminge and Condell accepted the Q2 ending. Perhaps they were lazy, indifferent, or incompetent editors in this instance. Perhaps not. Perhaps they thought the Q2 ending the better ending. If there are "facts" of which I am ignorant that invalidate my restoration theory, let me just say "never mind" in advance. Best, Richard _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0339 Friday, 21 February 2003 From: Susan St. John <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 18:21:32 -0700 Subject: 14.0332 15 Minute Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 14.0332 15 Minute Hamlet >Chae Lian writes: > >I am in desperate need of a copy of Tom Stoppard's FIFTEEN MINUTE >HAMLET. For some reason, this play no longer seems to be part of a >Stoppard anthology and can only be found as a single copy. It appears >to have been "replaced" by DOGG'S HAMLET instead, which is quite >different. DOGG'S HAMLET includes the entire 15 minute Hamlet (even the 1 minute re-cap)...it is the last few pages of the play. DOGG'S HAMLET is a play about a group of school boys, who speak a language called Dogg, who are putting on the 15 minute Hamlet in its "original language." But the Hamlet section at the end is indeed the exact same as the previously published 15 minute version. So if you have access to DOGG'S HAMLET you already have what you need! Susan. _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0338 Friday, 21 February 2003 From: Nancy Charlton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 15:32:21 -0800 Subject: 14.0319 Re: 400th Anniversary of Elizabeth I Comment: Re: SHK 14.0319 Re: 400th Anniversary of Elizabeth I Today's CS Monitor has a report on the exhibit at the Huntington and also the forthcoming one at the Folger: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0221/p20s01-alar.html The Folger, sez the article, will focus on the ". . . glittery side of Elizabeth's court - her wardrobe, men, and court entertainments." The Huntington, however, ". . . offers a context for Elizabeth's person and times via letters, maps, artwork, anecdotes, and works of literature (such as Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queen")." No mention of Our Will. It then summarizes her life, noting that the exhibit whitewashes her Machiavellianism. In fact, I couldn't help thinking of Dudley and Raleigh when I read the concluding paragraph, perhaps pessimistically interpreting the last of the series of terms: She won the hearts of the common folk through something akin to Renaissance sound bites. Her speeches and pamphlets went out of their way to use simple language to promote a living deity of remote beauty, mercy, piety, and Tudor resolve. I'll refrain from making comparison to what's going down in the city of the Folger except to say I did read somewhere recently that speeches from the White House are written at either 3rd or 5th grade level. Nancy Charlton _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0337 Friday, 21 February 2003 [1] From: D. F. Coye <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 11:47:58 EST Subj: Re: SHK 14.0333 Re: Henry VI Part 1 Questions [2] From: H. R. Greenberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 12:16:55 EST Subj: Re: SHK 14.0333 Re: Henry VI Part 1 Questions [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: D. F. Coye <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 11:47:58 EST Subject: 14.0333 Re: Henry VI Part 1 Questions Comment: Re: SHK 14.0333 Re: Henry VI Part 1 Questions I must disagree with Bruce Willis who wrote: "Frequently, as I know is certainly the case in King John and Henry V, having performed the Bastard and Henry in those plays, the French and English pronounce the Dauphin in different ways. Usually scanning the meter helps one determine how they pronounce it. The speech of the French characters places the stress on the second syllable - Do-FAN. Most of the English (although the characters in King John are sometimes torn between the two and not clearly of one descent) tend to emphasize the first syllable - DO-fin/fan, or DOLL-fin. I paid a lot of attention to this during those productions. I clearly remember that for both the Bastard and Henry, characters of British descent, they favored the first syllable." This word should never pronounced with second syllable stress no matter who is speaking, as for example in H5 when the French King says to his son at the end of 3.5 "Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Rouen". The pronunciation Shakespeare intended was /DAW fin/, the anglicized form we should still be using today. If actors or directors insist on a frenchified pronunciation, they can use /DOH fan/ (with the second syllable the Fr. nasal vowel I can't reproduce here), but stress still has to fall on the first syllable--which is normal for some recent French words borrowed into British English but not American English (cf. cafe, hotel, garage). The spelling "Dolphin" was used in Eliz. times, which simply indicates that Dauphin-Dolphin were homophones, the /l/ being silent in Dolphin as it was for many dialects in "falcon" and "Walter" (cf. the pun in 2H6 on Walter-water). The /l/ was later restored in standard English for all these words--but some dialects, southern NJ for example, still don't have an /l/ before a consonant in any word (milk, elm, elk), even among prestige speakers. D. F. Coye Princeton, NJ Author of "Pronouncing Shakespeare's Words: A Guide from A to Zounds." Routledge, 2002 [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: H. R. Greenberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Feb 2003 12:16:55 EST Subject: 14.0333 Re: Henry VI Part 1 Questions Comment: Re: SHK 14.0333 Re: Henry VI Part 1 Questions My guess is that there was indeed some contempt for the Dauphin expressed through the "wrong" pronunciation. One associates to the small likenesses -- porcelain or ivory as I recall, that frontally showed Napoleon looking suitably imperial, but the reverse of the status revealed that he was sitting on a toilet. I would also wonder about the English -- and not only the English people's native love of jokey wordplay around foreign words: Ypres becomes Wipers in WWI, et cetera. Something innate here to the language brain, and folks in linguistics might have something useful to speculate about here. H. R. Greenberg _______________________________________________________________ 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.