The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.0523  Tuesday, 24 February 2004

[1]     From:   Ben Spiller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 20 Feb 2004 13:25:49 -0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth

[2]     From:   W.L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 20 Feb 2004 15:04:02 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth

[3]     From:   Jack Heller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 20 Feb 2004 15:21:12 -0500 (EST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth

[4]     From:   John Reed <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Saturday, 21 Feb 2004 11:32:50 -0800
        Subj:   Reply to Middleton and Macbeth


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Ben Spiller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 20 Feb 2004 13:25:49 -0000
Subject: 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth

Dear William,

Have a look at Middleton's The Witch and you will see some interesting
similarities between Middleton's play and Macbeth, most notably the song
sung by Shakespeare's weird sisters and Middleton's witches.

Hope that provides a useful starting-point.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           W.L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 20 Feb 2004 15:04:02 -0500
Subject: 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth

You may wish to start with Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, William
Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, p. 129.  Some critics, however, seem
to forget that Middleston's The Witch is a comedy (or at least I think
so) while Shakespeare's Macbeth is a tragedy, and conflating the two
seems inappropriate -- to me.

Bill Godshalk

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Jack Heller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 20 Feb 2004 15:21:12 -0500 (EST)
Subject: 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth
Comment:        Re: SHK 15.0500 Middleton and Macbeth

For a brief description of how Middleton comes to be associated with
Macbeth, examine the introduction to Macbeth in the Complete Pelican
Shakespeare, ed. Orgel and Braunmuller. In short, the idea is that songs
called for in the witch scenes have their earliest manuscript form in
Middleton's play The Witch.

Jack Heller
Huntington College

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           John Reed <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Saturday, 21 Feb 2004 11:32:50 -0800
Subject:        Reply to Middleton and Macbeth

The question of the authenticity of the Hecate scenes in Macbeth has
been hanging around for more than two hundred years, and is referred to
by many writers.  But none of them (at least the ones I have seen for
myself) seem to be vary careful (there are a lot of passing references).
  I've tried a couple of times to write a paper analyzing this, but it
requires a lot of time to chase down all the myriad references; more
time than I have.  I will list some of them I've turned up here, though.

For what it's worth, I believe the Hecate scenes to be completely
authentic, and everyone who suggests otherwise doesn't know what he's
talking about (ha, ha, ha).  My favorite quote is the following, from Fleay:

"She [Hecate] and her songs...are the sediment of Middleton's puddle,
not the sparkling foam of the living waters of Shakespeare."

Can you believe that?  Imagine the nerve.  I mean honestly.

References

A Clockwork Orange. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Malcolm McDowell,
Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Adrienne Corri.  Warner Bros. 1971.

Auden, W.H. Lectures on Shakespeare. Ed. Arthur Kirsch.  Princeton:
Princeton UP, 2000.

Bartholomeusz, Dennis.  Macbeth and the Players. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1984.

Battenhouse, Roy. Shakespeare's Christian Dimension. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1994.

Bloom, Harold.  Shakespeare. The Invention of the Human.  New York:
Riverhead, 1998.

Clark, William G., and William A. Wright. The Clarendon Press Series.
London, 1869.  Cited in Furness, Macbeth. A New Variorum Edition.

Cormican, L.A. "Medieval Idiom in Shakespeare." Scrutiny 17(1951), p.
303-314.  Cited in Roy Battenhouse. Shakespeare's Christian Dimension.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994, p. 25.

Flachmann, Michael. "Professional Theater People and English Teachers."
in Teaching Shakespeare into the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Ronald
Salomone and James Davis. Athens: Ohio UP, 1997. p. 57-64.

Fleay, F.G. Shakespearian Manual. London: 1876.

Foakes, R.A. "Images of death: ambition in Macbeth." in Focus on
Macbeth. Ed. Ivor Brown. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

France, Richard. Orson Welles on Shakespeare. New York: Greenwood Press.
1990.

Hall, Peter. "Directing Macbeth," in Focus on Macbeth. Ed. Ivor Brown.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, p. 231-248.

Hinman, Charlton. Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare.
New York: Norton, 1968.

Iwasaki, Soji. "The Stage Tableau and Iconography of Macbeth." in
Japanese Studies in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. Ed. Yoshiko
Kawachi. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1998, p. 86-98.

Jones, Robert Edmund. The Dramatic Imagination. New York: Theatre Arts
Books, 1941.

Jorgensen, Paul. Our Naked Frailties. Sensational Art and Meaning in
Macbeth. Berkeley: U of California P, 1971.

Knight, G. Wilson. The Shakespearian Tempest. Third ed. London: Methuen,
1953.

Macbeth. Dir. Orson Welles. Perf. Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Roddy
McDowell, Dan O'Herlihy. Republic, 1948.

Macbeth, in The Plays of William Shakespeare. Vol. 6. Ed. Samuel
Johnson. London: 1765.  Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Macbeth, in The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare. Vol. XI. Ed.
Edward Malone. London: 1821. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1966.

Macbeth. A New Variorum Edition. Rev. ed. Ed. Horace H. Furness.
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1873. Reprint, 1913.

Macbeth, in The Tragedies of Shakespeare. Ed. W.J. Craig. London: Oxford
UP, 1925.

Macbeth. Ed. Kenneth Muir.The Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen, 1979.
Reprint of 1964 ed.

Macbeth. in The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Fourth ed. Ed. David
Bevington. New York: Longman, 1997.

Macbeth, in The Arden Shakespeare. The Complete Works.  Ed. Richard
Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan. Walton-on-Thames:
Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1998.

Morris, Brian. "The kingdom, the power, and the glory in Macbeth." in
Focus on Macbeth. Ed. Ivor Brown. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Palmer, D.J. "'A new Gorgon': visual effects in Macbeth." in Focus on
Macbeth. Ed. Ivor Brown. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, p. 54-69.

Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. Berkeley: U of California
P, 1973.

Rolfe, Poet-Lore, Vol xi, No. 4, 1899.  Cited in Furness. Macbeth, A New
Variorum Edition.

Spencer, Christopher. Davenant's Macbeth. From the Yale Manuscript. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1961.

Stallybrass, Peter. "Macbeth and Witchcraft." in Focus on Macbeth. Ed.
Ivor Brown. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, p. 189-209.

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