The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.029  Monday, 6 January 2003

[1]     From:   Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 03 Jan 2003 10:21:25 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

[2]     From:   Joseph Sullivan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 03 Jan 2003 11:08:52 -0500
        Subj:   The Marlovian Red Herring

[3]     From:   Claude Caspar <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 3 Jan 2003 12:35:03 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

[4]     From:   John Zuill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 03 Jan 2003 17:55:17 -0300
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

[5]     From:   Mike Rubbo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Saturday, 4 Jan 2003 21:29:12 +1100
        Subj:   Much ado

[6]     From:   Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Saturday, 4 Jan 2003 07:06:13 -0800 (PST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.006 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 03 Jan 2003 10:21:25 -0500
Subject: 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

I watched it last night, and though it was largely ignorant, stupid,
boring, I did think it was generally competently done. Poor old Stanley
Wells and Jonathan Bate.  Their patience was clearly tried, yet they
remained quite gracious and even witty.

The most interesting thing, to me, was the use of clips from Shakespeare
in Love and Shekar Kepur's Elizabeth.  The director talked as if these
films were themselves documentaries.

The director also tuned out to be a disintegrationist.  Shakespeare and
Marlowe became collaborators, in his view, after Marlowe supposedly
faked his own death and lived in Italy.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Joseph Sullivan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 03 Jan 2003 11:08:52 -0500
Subject:        The Marlovian Red Herring

During the Frontline Marlowe as Bard episode, not to be confused with
the earlier de Vere as Bard episode, great weight was hoisted upon the
notion that because several of Shakespeare's plays were set in Italy,
that it is more feasible to hold a dead man rose from the grave and
traveled there to write rather than that a theatre professional read a
book by Virgil.  I'd like to know what aspects of the plays are THAT
Italian?  And once we resolve that in order to set a play in a distant
land, one has to live there, what implications pop up for other works?
Should we conclude that Marlowe sojourned to Uzbekistan to write
Tamburlaine?

Sorry again for distracting attention from the works themselves.

Joe Sullivan, Marietta College

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Claude Caspar <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 3 Jan 2003 12:35:03 -0500
Subject: 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

Actually, this show was very revealing about the flimsiness of this
theory.  It is always fascinating to see the human mind, the perennial
detective, fathom out the trail of the mystery.  But, as was here
wonderfully portrayed, that trail is often a leap of the imagination, to
make up for the lack of stepping stones.  What a fact is, often here the
absence of any fact at all, becomes a real presence, as if knowledge was
nothing more than exasperation, in other words, imagination.  Let one
example, amongst many, suffice:  That elder woman "scholar" was, at the
end, asked fair questions poking at her assumptions.  She was asked
[from memory distorted by my laughter] about the "probabilities" of what
she proposed.  She got rather surly at such an attitude, bringing up
"probabilities!" Isn't her whole thesis based on even more far-fetched
"probabilities."  If she stuck to facts her case would evaporate. [I
wish I could say I detected a moment of self understanding, as true to
WS.] After all, the Swan is the leading contender, so must be given a
slight benefit of the doubt. What is fun is to let the Oxfordians
disprove Marlowe & vice versa. Who is last man standing?  No one at
all?  Amusing when they speak of Marlowe developing in Time, are we to
suppose his frank hard homosexuality softened into Shakespeare's
polymorphousness? See the opening & closing of Faust.  There, the muse
is evoked as male- have you ever seen that anywhere else?.

l5: Intends our Muse to daunt his heavenly verse:
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.001
0&layout=norm%3Dcompare&query=head%3D%232)

See the last lines where the dammed Faust is smothered orally by a
phallic icon, in an amazing homoerotic image.

Adders, and serpents, let me breathe a while;
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.001
0&layout=norm%3Dcompare&query=scene%3D%2313)

Those interested in the question of the Will must see Honnigmann's essay
on it.  It really is a startling document, but actually true to WS being
who he seems to be, an utterly unique document only WS could have had
written, & revised just before dying. "Myriad-Minded Shakespeare: Essays
on the Tragedies, Problem Comedies and Shakespeare the Man."  The very
thing that is such an insurmountable stumbling block for many is what is
most unnerving about WS, for sure. His detachment! Yes, and he didn't
care about his "Work."  Or books. Had none of the ordinary sympathies
most can't imagine living without, or at least was not bound by them.
The man who could imagine what every kind of person was like, was not
himself like any we know or understand.  He floated above it all. Some
have pointed to his understanding & acceptance of Nothingness.

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           John Zuill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 03 Jan 2003 17:55:17 -0300
Subject: 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.017 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

I saw the show. It seems to me it left one hanging on the Marlowe
question. We finally get to Italy, find out about this English expatriot
called Marlowe, we hear that little scholarship has been done on the
Italian Marlowe, we are told that this is astounding, and then we are
left with that. So who was this other Marlowe? What is the show trying
to imply, I mean precisely? Marlowe mailed the work home? What? Its the
"life in outer space" question. Show me the little green men.

Frontline is usually much better than this.

[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Mike Rubbo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Saturday, 4 Jan 2003 21:29:12 +1100
Subject:        Much ado

Thank you for drawing attention to my film. Mike Rubbo

[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Saturday, 4 Jan 2003 07:06:13 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 14.006 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.006 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

Dave Kathman writes, "To take the Marlovian scenario at all seriously,
one must believe that Marlowe's death was somehow faked despite the
explicit evidence of the coroner's inquisition, the burial record, and
the many subsequent mentions in print of Marlowe's untimely death. Once
somebody makes that leap, however, they can basically make up anything
they want for Marlowe's imagined life in exile writing the works of
Shakespeare.  With the Earl of Oxford, they have to deal with the
inconvenient fact that he died in 1604, that he wrote many letters in
the 1590s, none of which mention plays or poetry, and so on. The
Shakespeare Authorship Page http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com"

I want to personally thank Hardy Cook and Dave Kathman for this final
nail in the coffin of the Marlovian and Oxfordian theorists, as anyone
who has gone to the ShakespeareAuthorship.com website and read all the
scholarly evidence presented there WILL in all fairness come to the
logical conclusion that Will Shakespeare was Will Shakespeare, and the
Swan-of-Avon was Will Shakespeare, and the Will Shakespeare of history
was the English bard we have come to know and revere as the greatest
playwright of all time.

Bill Arnold
http://www.cwru.edu/affil/edis/scholars/arnold.htm

_______________________________________________________________
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>

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