The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.1197  Monday, 16 June 2003

[1]     From:   Bill Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 13 Jun 2003 08:24:17 EDT
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.1157 Re: Hamlet and Grebanier

[2]     From:   Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 13 Jun 2003 08:28:13 -0700 (PDT)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.1184 Re: Deconstruction [Grebanier]

[3]     From:   Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 13 Jun 2003 13:04:53 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.1184 Re: Grebanier

[4]     From:   Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 13 Jun 2003 14:00:17 -0300
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.1189 Re: Hamlet and Grebanier


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Bill Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 13 Jun 2003 08:24:17 EDT
Subject: 14.1157 Re: Hamlet and Grebanier
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.1157 Re: Hamlet and Grebanier

Who knew the powerful influence on the market that our SHAKSPER
conference might have? I'm agog and aghast that a used paperback -- with
underlining!-- of Bernard Grebanier's Heart of Hamlet is going for
$165.00 on Amazon.com.  [...pause as I recover and get up off the
floor...]  And another copy is listed there for $191.00. Since just a
few weeks back there were a handful of copies at Bookfinder.com in the
$10-15 range, I can only assume that that these absurdly inflated prices
must be the result of an increased demand caused by our recent string on
the book.

There's a lot of scarcer books I wouldn't pay $150-200 for. It used to
be that Heart of Hamlet was often to be found nestling amongst the
beat-up paperback editions of Shakespeare plays on the shelves of your
local used bookstore. Probably some of you are old enough to remember
back when hip-hop was how bunnie-rabbits walked and folks had to go
around to all the local secondhand book emporiums to supply their
out-of-print needs, instedda just clicking on them. I'd wait a bit-- the
market for this book will surely return to a sane level. Not that it's
not a book worth having, but if you have an extra couple hundred to
spend do something useful with it like joining the Malone Society half a
dozen times.

Bill "Magog" Lloyd

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 13 Jun 2003 08:28:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 14.1184 Re: Deconstruction [Grebanier]
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.1184 Re: Deconstruction [Grebanier]

 M. Luskin writes, "There is not a used copy of Grebanier to be found,
the book is wait listed, though there were many for sale at the outset
of the sanity discussion, demonstrating the economic power of this
list.  If each of us were to spend the odd few hundred million, we could
buy our way out of the economic slowdown."

Dear "M:"  Then, are you going to be the only member of SHAKSPER who has
not read Grebanier?

Also, is there some compelling reason why you won't just stop by your
library and fill out an interlibrary loan request for the book and get
it in three to four days?

Try it, you might like it.  And, read Grebanier.

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

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 13 Jun 2003 13:04:53 -0400
Subject: 14.1184 Re: Grebanier
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.1184 Re: Grebanier

I have on my shelf a copy of Grebanier's Playwriting: How to Write for
the Theatre" in which he claims to have deduced the laws of drama from
common elements of the best drama, from Shakespeare's Hamlet to Albee's
Zoo Story, and to have successfully taught them to student playwrights
over many years.

Does anyone know who among these Grebanier students has written work we
might have encountered in the theatre, enabling us to see these
teachable principles in action today?

Geralyn Horton
Newton, MA

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 13 Jun 2003 14:00:17 -0300
Subject: 14.1189 Re: Hamlet and Grebanier
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.1189 Re: Hamlet and Grebanier

Bill Arnold quotes Grebanier,

>"It is clear from
>the Daemonologie that a ghost may be none other than the Devil himself,
>masquerading for the occasion in the guise of a person familiar to the
>unfortunate mortal favored with the supernatural visit.  James, who
>probably never once harbored an original idea in his cranium, was
>voicing accepted notions when he wrote the following passage...."

Then, in his own voice, adds,

>Now, the point is, in my humble opinion, that the Elizabethans of the
>time of the staging of Hamlet, which was years later, were as a people
>already believers of ghosts and their own king had years before told
>them that ghosts were the Devil Incarnate.

You've gone from a suggestion ("may be") to a certainty ("were").  It's
perfectly reasonable that Hamlet might not be sure what the ghost is.
As you've just quoted Grebanier saying, a ghost ought to appear in the
guise of "a person familiar to the unfortunate mortal favored with the
supernatural visit", so Hamlet father is exactly what the devil ought to
look like.  In general, the response of both Grebanier and the on-stage
characters to the ghost seems considerably more ambiguous than you're
giving them credit for.

Cheers,
Sean.

_______________________________________________________________
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