June
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.1261 Monday, 23 June 2003 From: Richard Gyde <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 23 Jun 2003 19:50:52 +1200 Subject: Harold Bloom on Othello Dear SHAKSPERians I have just finished reading Harold bloom's chapter on Othello in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. He presents a novel and (to me at least) startling thesis that Othello and Desdemona had never consummated their marriage at any stage throughout the play. Desdemona died still a virgin, he claims. I would like to present this idea to my high school class who are currently studying the play, but before I do that I would be interested in hearing from any scholars who would care to respond to Bloom's ideas. Would anyone care to offer their opinions on this topic? With thanks, Richard Gyde _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.1260 Monday, 23 June 2003 From: Jim Carroll <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 22 Jun 2003 21:17:25 EDT Subject: 14.1186 Re: A Lover's Complaint Comment: Re: SHK 14.1186 Re: A Lover's Complaint Bill Lloyd, in his post from June 6, gave the opinion that Elliott and Valenza's statistical tests were "evidence", not "proof", against a Shakespeare attribution. May I suggest that they are not even evidence? One of the 4 tests that reject "A Lover's Complaint" in Elliott and Valenza's "And Then There Were None" (CHUM vol. 30, 191-245, 1996) is the ""with" as penultimate word in a sentence" test. They report 0 occurrences for "A Lover's Complaint", but this number is described as occurrences per 1000 sentences. That's sentences, not lines. But since Elliott and Valenza are comparing 3000 word blocks of text, there are far fewer than 1000 sentences in their blocks, so the range of numbers is inflated as a result. For example, here are their values for 3 blocks of Venus and Adonis (p237): Words with as penultimate etc 3135 6 3108 6 3359 34 Whoa dude, an average of 15 per block, versus 0 for ALC. The only problem is, when you determine the absolute number of occurrences, their distribution is much less striking. I looked at the first 3048 words of V&A, and it contains 131 sentences, (in my edition) with one occurrence of "with" as the penultimate word of a sentence (line 18, "And being set, I'll smother thee with kisses."). I found only a total of 4 instances of that particular feature in all of Venus and Adonis. If we broke Venus and Adonis down into ~3048 word blocks, the table would look like this if we list how many times "with" occurred at the end of a sentence in each block: Words with as penultimate etc 3048 1 3058 0 3595 3 (The blocks are lines 1-372, 373-746, 747-end, in that order). If I were to break V&A down into 2600 word blocks (the same size as A Lover's Complaint) the table would have the values 1, 0, 1, 2 (with the last block only about 2/3 the size of the others). In either case, 0 occurrences in A Lover's Complaint of this feature no longer appears to be so unusual. In fact, it appears to be in the right ballpark. Jim Carroll _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.1259 Monday, 23 June 2003 From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 21 Jun 2003 20:16:27 -0400 Subject: Shakespeare on Disney's The Weekenders The Toon Disney rebroadcast on June 21 the following episode of the animated cartoon called The Weekenders. One of the characters, a teen girl, has a bust of Shakespeare in her room, and he talks to her in her dream, reciting some lines after she says he doesn't sound very Shakespearean. Fromtvtome: Episode 64. Talent Show gs: Jeff Bennett (Lor's Dad, Mr. Hassenfeld, Shakespeare) Lor and Tish try out for the annual talent show, where the kids usually end up embarrassing themselves. Lor is forced into it by a teacher to help her 'people skills', but Tish really wants to get in. Problem is, Lor passes and Tish doesn't. Tish gets jealous and refuses to help Lor. Lor gets help from Tino and Carver and that's all I have to say about that. Tish ditches her jealousy and helps Lor after Shakespeare talks to her in a dream. Lor is a hit in the talent show. PHILLIP: Tino's cousin Phillip showing up for the weekend. Bad for Tino, because he's missing out on the premiere of Chum Bukkit: The Movie. Phillip was a vest-wearing geek when they last met 6 years ago. He tries to make excuses to ditch Phil, but Phil lets him go when he finds out. The others visit Phillip and find out he's changed. They all end up watching the movie together. b: 07-Feb-2003 w: Larry Spencer d: Steven Lyons _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.1258 Monday, 23 June 2003 From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 21 Jun 2003 08:51:08 -0400 Subject: NYTimes Review of Pericles Production In Antiquity, the Stuff of Dreams June 18, 2003 By MARGO JEFFERSON We all need to believe that our lives are worth living. Romance and melodrama speak to that need and take it one step further: these genres, with their fantastic happenings, call up the extremes beneath the everyday. They help us believe that our lives make stories worth telling. Shakespeare's "Pericles" is a series of extravagant stories with such improbably happy endings that the hero himself must cry out: Give me a gash, put me to present pain, Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me O'erbear the shores of my mortality And drown me with their sweetness. Improbable yes, and enchanting. People are at the mercy of nature and of one another's worst impulses. Some critics belittle the play's episodic quality, but those episodes are packed with action and feeling. The actions are extreme: murder and incest, storms and famine. So are the emotions, which run from envy and brutish lust to love and loyalty undying. The characters don't need much psychological parsing. Their motives aren't ambiguous or contradictory. This one is generous and bold; that one is calculating and weak; a third one is high-minded and outspoken. People in the play go through trials almost beyond human endurance. And since "Pericles" is a romance, their rewards must be beyond human expectations. They long for a world of loving families and just rulers, a world in which nature is benign. But only miracles - sudden rescues, extreme coincidence, divine intervention - can achieve this. These stories are framed by another gentler tale. Shakespeare wrote his "Pericles" around 1608 (in collaboration with George Wilkins, most scholars believe). It begins with an old man who walks onstage and tells us he is back from the dead, "to sing a song that old was sung." He is the 14th-century poet John Gower. The popular legend of Pericles dates back centuries, and Gower's version was a primary source for Shakespeare. Old Gower is also that universal figure, the bard from an ancient world where tales were sung and spoken before they were written down. All of which is lovely to think on, but doesn't matter much if we can't feel that we enter a dream space when the play starts. In fact we do feel this from the first moment of the Red Bull Theater's production, which is at the Culture Project in the East Village through June 26. The Culture Project has two levels, and the lower one seems a vast space with six mammoth columns, a brick ceiling and a thick gray cement floor. White pillows are scattered around the perimeter. Gower (the benevolent Raphael Nash Thompson) is all in white with graying hair and beard. Holding a big leather-bound book with gold lettering, he acknowledges us with a small smile and kneels down. Two masks and a bell - instruments of his art - lie on the cloth before him. He strikes the bell and walks to the center of the space. The tale begins. Full review at: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/18/arts/theater/18PERI.html?ex=1057188046&ei=1&en=264158d7632bb566 _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.1257 Monday, 23 June 2003 [1] From: David Friedberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Jun 2003 20:47:34 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 14.1240 Re: Funeral Elegye [2] From: Peter Groves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 21 Jun 2003 02:05:22 +0000 Subj: Re: SHK 14.1240 Re: Funeral Elegye [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Friedberg <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Jun 2003 20:47:34 -0400 Subject: 14.1240 Re: Funeral Elegye Comment: Re: SHK 14.1240 Re: Funeral Elegye Re: tmesis That was the answer to a clue in the very cryptic Observer Crossword puzzle by "Ximenes" in the fifties. The clue was 'mis misset set' The phrase itself is a tmesis; and 'mis set' is an anagram (meaning mis-set, as by a human printer) of 'tmesis'.. Convoluted meanings in twelve letters. David Friedberg [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter Groves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 21 Jun 2003 02:05:22 +0000 Subject: 14.1240 Re: Funeral Elegye Comment: Re: SHK 14.1240 Re: Funeral Elegye >>I got introduced to that kind of thing in the air force (US) >>twenty >>years before that and thought the guy using >>"un-fucking-believable" and >>similar terms (e.g., "in-goddam-credible," >>"inte--fucking--lectual") had >>invented the mode. I thought he was absolutely brilliant. He >>WAS, in >>fact, a bright fellow. I wonder who did invent it. > >Forgive me if I've missed a post suggesting this kind of expression is, >I believe, an example of the rhetorical figure called tmesis. > >Bruce Golden And for some reason it sounds best when the interpolation directly precedes the main stressed syllable of the word: thus "un-fucking-believable" is less effective than "unbe-fucking-lievable" Peter Groves _______________________________________________________________ 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.