The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.0673  Monday, 11 April 2005

[1]     From:   Thomas Pendleton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 8 Apr 2005 14:17:00 -0400
        Subj:   RE: SHK 16.0666 Representations of the Living

[2]     From:   Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 08 Apr 2005 15:42:05 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 16.0666 Representations of the Living

[3]     From:   Stanley Wells <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Saturday, 9 Apr 2005 12:00:01 +0100
        Subj:   RE: SHK 16.0651 Representations of the Living

[4]     From:   David Crosby <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 11 Apr 2005 12:25:25 -0500
        Subj:   RE: SHK 16.0651 Representations of the Living


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Thomas Pendleton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 8 Apr 2005 14:17:00 -0400
Subject: 16.0666 Representations of the Living
Comment:        RE: SHK 16.0666 Representations of the Living

I would suggest that Robin Hamilton doesn't hate being picky
sufficiently.  I don't know how Queen Elizabeth 1/2 feels about the matter.

Tom Pendleton

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 08 Apr 2005 15:42:05 -0400
Subject: 16.0666 Representations of the Living
Comment:        Re: SHK 16.0666 Representations of the Living

 >the current queen of the UK ought to be termed
 >"Elizabeth I and II", as she is the second English monarch christened
 >Elizabeth, but the first Elizabeth to reign as sovereign over Scotland
 >(and the United Kindom as a whole)

She is, in effect.  In Scotland the post boxes are monogrammed "E R"
while they are "E II R" in England, Wales and Ulster.

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Stanley Wells <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Saturday, 9 Apr 2005 12:00:01 +0100
Subject: 16.0651 Representations of the Living
Comment:        RE: SHK 16.0651 Representations of the Living

A short addendum to Professor Pendleton's interesting message: The lost
play Keep the Widow Waking, or The Late Murder in Whitechapel, by
Dekker, Rowley, Ford, and Webster, dates from 1624, not 1594. The
fascinating story of the events that lay behind it is told in C J
Sisson's neglected book Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age (Cambridge, CUP,
1936.)

Stanley Wells

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           David Crosby <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Monday, 11 Apr 2005 12:25:25 -0500
Subject: 16.0651 Representations of the Living
Comment:        RE: SHK 16.0651 Representations of the Living

Thanks to Tom Pendleton for supplying a category, cameo appearances by
the royal family, for this thread. I think it also fits Thomas Nashe's
show, "Summer's Last Will and Testament," apparently presented by child
actors at the Archbishop of Canterbury's house in Croydon in October
1592 [see Fraser and Rabkin's introduction in _Drama of the English
Renaissance_].  Although there is no speaking character identified as
Elizabeth, the personified figure of Summer offers this in his final
testament:

"Unto Eliza, that most sacred dame,
Whom none but saints and angels ought to name,
All my fair days remaining I bequeath
To wait upon her till she be returned.
Autumn, I charge thee, when that I am dead,
Be prest and serviceable at her beck,
Present her with they goodliest ripened fruits, etc......

It is charming to assume that Elizabeth was present to receive this
testament in person, and that Nashe wrote the lines expressly for that
purpose. Fraser and Rabkin compare the show to a court masque because of
its "peculiarly intimate relationship between actors and audience,
fiction and the real lives of those watching.

Elizabeth was accustomed to having to act her part in pageants that were
presented to her on her progresses and re-entries into London, and I
like to think she did the same for this performance of Nashe's show.

David Crosby

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