The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.1278 Wednesday, 25 June 2003
[1] From: Markus Marti <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 17:05:51 +0200
Subj: Re: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
[2] From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 12:06:19 -0400
Subj: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
[3] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 20:49:06 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
[4] From: Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 21:10:24 +0100
Subj: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
[5] From: Rolland Banker <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 25 Jun 2003 04:45:38 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 14.1230 Shakespeare and European Fanaticism/or a new
Sphere of
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Markus Marti <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 17:05:51 +0200
Subject: 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
Comment: Re: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
>He was as typically English as he was a citizen
>of the world
Opinions on this matter are divided on the Continent.
In German speaking countries we all know for certain that "Shakespeare"
was German (cf. www.unibas.ch/shine/williamsbirne.htm), while Italians
think he was Italian (cf.
http://www.cronologia.it/storia/biografie/shakes.htm). If the English
think that he (whoever they think "he" was: Peele? Bacon? Queen
Elizabeth?) was English, they must be wrong, as usual.
I don't see any allusions to Berlusconi in Shakespeare's work so far,
but I was told that Scrollolanza is at the moment writing on a new
tragedy, comedy, history, political, juridical-comical,
tragical-comical-historical-mafiosical, scene individable, or poem
unlimited, entitled "Silvio or Take What You Will".
If you complain about the use (or abuse) of the brand "Shakespeare" in a
political debate, you are making just another (equally detestable)
ideological statement: To you, it seems, that Shakespeare is "eternal",
"apolitical", or, just "English".
If he is as eternal as Elvis, when will his drama "Antony finds the
Weapons of Mass Destruction" come forth?
Markus Marti
Shakespeare in Europe: [http://www.unibas.ch/shine/]
Translators of Shakespeare: [http://www.unibas.ch/shine/translators.htm]
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 12:06:19 -0400
Subject: Shakespeare and European Politics
Comment: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
Sam Small writes,
'One of the greatest gifts from Shakespeare is his political
universality. He was as typically English as he was a citizen of the
world . . .'
Eh?
Terence Hawkes
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 20:49:06 +0100
Subject: 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
Comment: Re: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
Sam Small writes of Shakespeare
>His references to Italy, for instance, were for the culture
>and fashion of the time and not to their system of government.
>These European cities were setting for great human stories - they
>could have been Martian for all he cared.
What a peculiar way to understand the plays!
Are we to believe that the Roman "system[s] of government" don't provide
essential contexts for Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar,
Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline?
Or that Venice's being a city-state dependent on international trade
doesn't matter in The Merchant of Venice? Both sides in the trial scene
accept that this element of the economic structure conditions the legal
superstructure.
As Jonathan Bate pointed out in his plenary talk at the last World
Shakespeare Congress, the Jew of Malta (a place known for its Christian
knights) would have struck an Elizabethan audience as oxymoronic, as
would Moor of Venice.
And where else, I wonder, might Troilus and Cressida just as easily be
set?
That location did matter is the principle underlying John Jowett and
Gary Taylor's brilliant analysis of why Middleton relocated the action
of Measure for Measure to Vienna.
Gabriel Egan
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 24 Jun 2003 21:10:24 +0100
Subject: Shakespeare and European Politics
Comment: SHK 14.1269 Shakespeare and European Politics
I don't know what brought on Sam Small's previous, very peculiar post.
Maybe I missed something.
But he might want to reconsider some plays *in their
historical-political context*, rather than "universally": all the
history plays (what's the point about the Wars of the Roses and the
Tudor dynasty?); Julius Caesar; Macbeth; Cymbeline; Henry VIII; and
probably quite a few others that are not so obvious.
But then, it's difficult to know what Sam was trying to say, except for
the rather odd, "Shakespeare was not in favour of Giscard d'Estang's new
constitution for the European Union." I daresay he had no opinion on the
abandonment of the Gold Standard, either.
As for the Germans, they have of course always been convinced (with some
reason) that Shakespeare should really have been one of their own, and
that his English parentage was just a queer accident of fate. But I
don't go much for that Romantic twaddle.
m
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Rolland Banker <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 25 Jun 2003 04:45:38 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 14.1230 Shakespeare and European Fanaticism/or a new
Comment: Re: SHK 14.1230 Shakespeare and European Fanaticism/or a new
Sphere of
Well as Bloom said, "High Romantic Bardolatry is merely the most
normative of the faiths that worship him." I sympathize with your
concern at the birth pangs of any Euro Empire run by Germany.
It's up to us I suppose to take our part and make it our cause.
How about hoisting a flag in memory of a phrase of Ben Jonson's about
dear Shakespeare: as the very 'sphere of humanity'! (this is all
paraphrased from Charles Lamb in reference to:) Shakespeare's admirable
observation of life.
Remember, a little leaven, leaveneth the whole lump.
We can only hope.
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