May
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1022 Friday, 27 May 2005 [1] From: Scot Zarela <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 10:28:20 -0700 Subj: SHK 16.0995 About Hamlet [2] From: Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 14:48:35 -0400 Subj: About Hamlet [3] From: Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 14:48:35 -0400 Subj: About Hamlet [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scot Zarela <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 10:28:20 -0700 Subject: About Hamlet Comment: SHK 16.0995 About Hamlet "Put on him what forgeries you will." I think an audience (or an audience of one, a reader) might catch wind of a suspicion that Polonius forged the letter he attributes to Hamlet. But have we anything solid to make it more than a suspicion? Elliott Stone suggests a motive: "Polonius is very anxious that Hamlet is to be thought to be in love with his daughter." (It's clear to me-am I wrong? -- that Polonius is anxious about this because he believes it to be true: believes Hamlet really is in love with Ophelia. But in any case ....) Would Polonius fake evidence to put his point across? I don't think so: he speaks very upright principles; admittedly he's a politician, but the "forgeries" he recommends to Reynaldo are comparatively slight, and intended to be done in loose talk, by innuendo, and without lasting damage. But to establish falsehood as truth, with forged letters (and forged signature-of the Prince, no less) is to step beyond politics into something plainly wicked. At least Polonius would have to wrestle (or sidestep) his conscience before committing the sin: a scene Shakespeare ought to have provided-unless the letter is from Hamlet. Elliott Stone again suggests "look[ing] at the letter in terms of Hamlet's speech ... and then compar[ing] it to Polonius's speech with its overblown verbosity and circuitous digressions." While doing that, we should remember that one doesn't write as one speaks. Hamlet would have been trying to fit his heart to the genre of a courtly love letter (his protest about his lack of success can be a genre element too). We should also remember that Polonius doesn't read aloud the whole letter-"etc" can cover many shuffling pages. What we do hear strikes my ear as credibly princely, especially given Hamlet's young age. How it strikes my ear seems to me the right kind of test, rather than more minute anatomizing. Scientific Criticism must allow the on-the-fly manner proper to hearing a play. -- Scot [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 13:50:13 -0400 Subject: About Hamlet Jim Carroll writes, "My reading of history gave me the impression that kings have always had friendships with others far below their class, for example Henry II and Thomas Becket, who was the son of a merchant." Sure. If a king were to associate with those only of his own rank, he'd have to leave the country to find a friend! But look at the end of 1.5 for example. Hamlet wants them all to go together, to NOT stand on the order of their leaving. The way I've seen it played, he puts his shoulders around all of them and they walk off together. Now maybe Henry did the same thing in a royal group that included Becket, but I doubt it. The sense of the ending of 1.5 is that friendship trumps rank. That seems, to me anyway, something rather unusual. Ed Taft [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 14:48:35 -0400 Subject: About Hamlet Dear Don: 1. Erasmus's views on kingship seem to me to have had a profound effect. I don't doubt that Elizabeth and James could be as cruel as those who went before them, but both practiced a policy of tending to their own gardens. As you doubtless know, James fancied himself a "peacemaker," and Elizabeth did not particularly want any "foreign entanglements," either personally or politically. That's why, for example, she kept the hot-headed Philip Sidney at bay or in marginal conflicts that amounted to little. She was none too pleased with having to deal with the Irish too. 2. As for friendship, it's hard to imagine that anyone in the middle ages would or could write "On Friendship," as Michel de Montaigne did. Spenser echoes this idea in Book 4 of FQ, and so does Sidney in A&S when a friend (Sonnet 21) tells him point blank that loving Stella is bad for him. And, of course, Shakespeare's sonnets are in part about friendship that goes sour. Now, there's a difference between a literary emphasis on friendship and hard evidence that people practiced it or cultivated it more in the Renaissance. I can't prove the latter; no one can. But regardless, the character Hamlet seems in the first part of the play to regard it highly. It's one of the reasons we like him as a character. One and two, above, seem to me to be rather ordinary observations, and that's why I don't see the need for such resistance. Ed _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1021 Friday, 27 May 2005 [1] From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 22:27:11 +0800 Subj: RE: SHK 16.1004 Can of . . . [Was Antony and Cleopatra 4.3] [2] From: Gene Tyburn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 10:10:57 -0700 Subj: Regarding the Worm Controversy [3] From: Jack Heller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 12:47:25 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 16.1004 Can of . . . [Was Antony and Cleopatra 4.3] [4] From: Rainbow Saari <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 May 2005 23:13:07 +1200 Subj: SHK 16.1004 Can of ..... [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 22:27:11 +0800 Subject: 16.1004 Can of . . . [Was Antony and Cleopatra 4.3] Comment: RE: SHK 16.1004 Can of . . . [Was Antony and Cleopatra 4.3] So far, Elliot Stone has been offered most of the standard annotations of the Clown's use of 'worm': that 'worm' means snake and thus asp; that 'worm' means worm and thus is connected with death (which is what the Clown brings her); and that 'worm' is phallic and thus part of the sexual word play that pervades the Clown's speech and virtually everything, down to her dying words, that Cleopatra says in the course of the play. If he finds this 'unconvincing', then he needs to give us some idea of what he is seeking. Arthur Lindley [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gene Tyburn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 10:10:57 -0700 Subject: Regarding the Worm Controversy Here is how I handled the worm controversy in my libretto version if anyone cares to read it. Cleo- Caesar is no more trusting then love that's hired for quick comforting. Iris- Let's make a finish good lady. We no more for the sun. Cleo- Iris go! Fetch me my robe and my crownet . Immortal love is calling me. Immortal love is calling me. Charmein - Madam here is that kindly man that you requested bring us figs. Approach, good fellow, fear her not. Cleo- Hast thou the worm of Niles brought? He is a little weezend up farmer Man - Truly, but I would not touch him As those that do most often die of sleep Like death, no pain nor cry. Cleo - Thank you fellow, now get thee hence. Man - I wish you care in the handling. But what it bites it seldom eats. Again, tis not worth feeding much, beware my Lady of what you touch. She sings to the worm Cleo- No more the grape of Egypt drink Now quench your thirst on this heavenly brew. She puts the asp on her bosom Me' thinks I hear my Antony He beckons forth, I bid adieu. Come, come releasing worm, come dispatch I'm at death door, you must throw the latch! The asp stings her This is from the last scene of the libretto of Antony and Cleopatra the opera. [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jack Heller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 12:47:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: 16.1004 Can of . . . [Was Antony and Cleopatra 4.3] Comment: Re: SHK 16.1004 Can of . . . [Was Antony and Cleopatra 4.3] One other point: the very first definition of "worm" in my compact OED is "serpent, snake, dragon." Citations for this meaning extend from Beowulf to the 19th century, so there should be no problem with the substitution of "worm" for the asp. Jack Heller [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rainbow Saari <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 May 2005 23:13:07 +1200 Subject: Can of ..... Comment: SHK 16.1004 Can of ..... To those who have noted the phallic undertones of the Clown's dialogue with Cleopatra in 5.2. I add my affirming voice. A quick scan of Shakespeare's use of "worm" elsewhere in his plays reveals to me no other place where the term carries such an obvious undercurrent of sexual meaning, but here it is deliberate and appropriate. Why give the word such phallic resonance? Probably because doing so allowed him to expand the layers of meaning available to his hearers. Can we be sure that some of his audience would be likely to have picked up on this phallic level of meaning? I believe we can. In the most explicitly bawdy/erotic surviving contemporary poem of Shakespeare's time, Nashe's " A Choise of Valentines", the protagonist laments that during his lovemaking with his mistress he has spent himself before the act itself "in thought of hir delight" and describes their attempts to revive his recalcitrant penis: I kisse, I clap, I feele, I view at will, Yett dead he lyes not thinking good or ill. Vnhappie me, quoth shee, and wilt' not stand? Com, lett me rubb and chafe it with my hand. Perhaps the sillie worme is labour'd sore, And wearied that it can doe no more. (ll. 129-134) No doubt here what kind of "worm" this is. To add to the sexual imagery that others have rightly commented on in this passage, I'd like to point out that the rustic clown--- a character who, as his language reveals, knows of "country matters", sex and sexual "death"--- brings Cleopatra a basket of figs, yonic symbols, containing "worms", phallic symbols. Jack Heller writes that "Cleopatra's interaction with the Clown is central to the play's juxtaposition of, or clash of, comedy and tragedy. Why does a clown (peasant) bring in the asp and make malapropisms moments before Cleopatra's suicide? Here, I think, the bawdiness is fully intentional." I agree it is intentional. The clown's malapropism "falliable", glossed as "infallible" leads me to suspect that Shakespeare is employing both obvious and convoluted wordplay in their dialogue: " But this is most falliable, the worm's an odd worm". Shakespeare knew the word "fallible", meaning likely to fail; he had used it in Measure for Measure 3.1. and its opposite "infallible" in the following scene, 3.2. "Infallible" is spelled correctly in all of its five uses in his canon ( a search of the Internet Shakespeare Draft Early Texts confirms this) as is his single instance of the use of "fallible". The Folio text of Antony and Cleopatra contains the botched term "falliable". The spelling of the word might well be a printer's error, though it seems to have found acceptance by editors as a malapropism. What suggests to me this is not just a printer's error is that the word as it is spelled allows it to be pronounced as "fall-liable" by the clown. We can assume he thinks he is saying "this is most infallible", most certain, unfailing ---as do Armado in Love's Labors Lost and Parolles in All's Well That Ends Well--- but he affirms that ' this is most liable to fall, the worm's an odd worm.' The "worm" that is most liable to fall or fail, at inconvenient moments, is the old trouser snake, or penis. The "odd worm" is one likely to "fall at odds" with a man. Again, why give the word "worm" phallic resonance in this passage? Cleopatra calls the "worm" an "aspic", or asp, in each further instance after the clown has left. The play is, of course, full of reference to the intense sexual attraction felt by the lovers for each other. The use of sexually loaded language here just before the Queen ends her life suggests that WS wished to emphasise to his audience a connection between sex and the lovers' deaths. Shakespeare was fond of contrasting opposites The bawdy here, which I envisage as being played absolutely straight by an earnest Clown who means Cleopatra nothing but the best, is juxtaposed to and contrasts with the nobility of her actions. Ultimately it may be that the bawdy connotations of "worm" serve as a vehicle to draw the audience's attention to the irony of her death by the bite of a literal snake; it suggests her fate was sealed when she "died" from the bite of Antony's metaphorical "worm". Cheers to all, Rainbow Saari _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1020 Friday, 27 May 2005 [1] From: Kathy Dent <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 16:50:45 +0100 Subj: RE: SHK 16.1005 Subterranean Shakespeare Presents The Taming of the Shrew [2] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 13:36:53 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 16.1005 Subterranean Shakespeare Presents The Taming of the Shrew [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kathy Dent <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 16:50:45 +0100 Subject: 16.1005 Subterranean Shakespeare Presents The Taming Comment: RE: SHK 16.1005 Subterranean Shakespeare Presents The Taming of the Shrew East Coast - West Coast squabbles? Unless it's Great Yarmouth and Aberystwyth, I aint interested. Could those of you out west (I mean the whole of the American continent) please conduct your tribal wars in the privacy of an off-list punch-up? Kathy Dent [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 13:36:53 -0400 Subject: 16.1005 Subterranean Shakespeare Presents The Taming Comment: Re: SHK 16.1005 Subterranean Shakespeare Presents The Taming of the Shrew I was speaking more to the perverse political reworking of the play than the quality of its performance (which I could not judge since I didn't see it). Yes, there is plenty of that to go around here too, but I think that there is more of a market for more-or-less unadulterated Shakespeare in New York than in places whose claim to fame is their radical chic. As for Denzel's Washington's Brutus, you won't get an argument from me. The whole production is abominable, starting with miscast actors who neither understood the play nor enunciated the lines in a comprehensible fashion. _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1019 Friday, 27 May 2005 [1] From: Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 08:01:10 -0700 (PDT) Subj: Re: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function [2] From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 16:52:27 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function [3] From: William Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 12:47:53 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function [4] From: Mari Bonomi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 20:56:16 -0400 Subj: RE: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function [5] From: Gerald E. Downs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 22:05:53 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 16.0956 First Folio Function [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 08:01:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 16.1007 First Folio Function Comment: Re: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function D Bloom writes, "If there is no iambic cadence to the lines why does he think they constitute blank verse? How can you have blank verse without the verse (primarily iambic metric lines)?" I defy anyone to stand on stage and say "The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain" and make it sound like prose :) Bill Arnold http://www.cwru.edu/affil/edis/scholars/arnold.htm [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 16:52:27 +0100 Subject: 16.1007 First Folio Function Comment: Re: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function Don Bloom wrote: >How can you have blank verse without the verse >(primarily iambic metric lines)? Was it my imagination (or my e-mail reader), or was SHK 16.1008 (Branagh Filming As You Like It) arranged as blank verse? John Briggs [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 12:47:53 -0400 Subject: 16.1007 First Folio Function Comment: Re: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function Some years ago I read, don't ask me where, that spoken English is primarily iambic in nature. And, yes, as Peter and Don seem to suggest, I have a tin ear courtesy of my paternal grandfather. Because I can't hear the iambs doesn't mean they are not there. But is there only one way to read -- or speak -- an iambic line? Is it possible that actors with very good ears will differ in their speaking of "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well [....]"? I assume we are talking about individual lines, not sentences or speeches. Bill [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mari Bonomi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 20:56:16 -0400 Subject: 16.1007 First Folio Function Comment: RE: SHK 16.1007 First Folio Function Adjusting William Godshalk's paragraph into iambic pentameter blank verse (requires a couple of minor emendations): I have a friend, a poet, who can and does Speak in blank verse. If he did not point out That he was doing so, I would not know That certainly he was.... English is for some reason a very iambic language. I've sometimes taught metre by having students do to prose texts (magazines, newspapers, novels) precisely what I did to Bill's statement above. It can lead to hearing poetry everywhere :) Mari Bonomi (Bill's original text: "I have a friend, a poet, who can and does speak in blank verse. If he didn't point out that he was doing so, I certainly wouldn't know that he was.") [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gerald E. Downs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 22:05:53 EDT Subject: 16.0956 First Folio Function Comment: Re: SHK 16.0956 First Folio Function When Kim Carrell asks: >Why do modern editions continue to set Mercutio's "Queen Mab" >speech as verse when both the Folio and Q2 show it is prose until >the line > > This is the hag, when Maides lie on their backs Peter Groves responds: >Why the compositors of Q2 and F1 set it as prose is no doubt >an interesting question, but it is one for bibliographers, not for >critics, actors and other readers of Shakespeare: All readers of Shakespeare must acknowledge that bibliography often trumps and this exchange shows why. The problem is how to merge criticism with inference from bibliographical facts. Q2 R&J normally prints verse as verse. When it prints verse as prose, the verse does not become prose, as others have noted. It is only printed that way and there must be a reason. The best rule of thumb is to look for a workaday cause for any anomaly. When verse is printed as prose one probability is that a compositor has accidentally omitted a significant number of lines: work has continued and if the lines are to be inserted as verse, all the following finished pages will need redoing. But if the omission can be inserted in a compressed form a minimum number of pages will be reset. In Q2 all the lines not printed as verse in the Mab speech are on C2r, indicating perhaps a reinserted omission of about twelve lines. An alternative is that the form was inaccurately cast off; when space for verse ran out, the lines had to be compacted. There is no reason to suppose the lines were meant to direct actors to read them as prose, or to think they signify anything other than a mistake. Q1 prints the passage as verse. But F merely follows its own copy, Q3. No manuscript was involved. Text that results from accident will have meaning. Often meaning may be teased out of corrupt text that can look pretty bad once the corruption is discovered. It is far better to weigh the bibliographical probabilities first. Beginning his contribution to _Scholarly Editing_(1995), Tanselle notes in a comment on Pope's shortcomings that ". . . primary assumptions . . . are that editing is an activity of historical scholarship and that an editor's own preferences are subordinate to historical accuracy." None of the early R&J printings can be considered in Carrell's seemingly non-historical approach without risking theatrical interpretation of mundane error. There is nothing wrong with that until one gets matters turned around by claiming some kind of authorial intention in obvious corruption, as if "playing it as it lays" by itself invokes authority. But the versions in print were not those from which the actors worked. Lending authority to oddities in Shakespeare's printed plays is something of a lost cause because most examples will fall into categories better explained by eclectic editing than coded theater. It doesn't help to ignore invalidated claims. The 'preponderance of evidence' will suggest that mislining, punctuation, spacing, capitals, etc., result from forces not concerned with theatrical secrets. Gerald E. Downs _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1018 Friday, 27 May 2005 From: Holger Schott Syme <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 May 2005 21:06:25 -0400 Subject: 16.1006 First Falstaff [Was Gambon as Falstaff] Comment: RE: SHK 16.1006 First Falstaff [Was Gambon as Falstaff] Many thanks to Bill Lloyd for his detailed responses. I'm not absolutely sold on the identification of the Falstaff in the _Wits_ frontispiece as Lowin (just as I don't necessarily believe that Tamburlaine illustration depicts Alleyn), though it's not implausible. I agree with Bill on Kempe: there is little evidence to suggest that Kempe ever played major characters, although the idea of Kempe as Falstaff is not unattractive (and Kastan's argument in his intro to the Arden _1H4_ makes it at least sound like a decent possibility). As for Lowin's and Heminge's parts in the first performances of Jonson's plays, I remain unconvinced. The company changed a lot in the ten years between _Volpone_'s original staging and the revival that the Riddell annotations seem to refer to. I have to confess that I don't have Riddell's article to hand (although I consider those annotations good evidence), and can't remember if it lists Heminge as Corbaccio; Gurr claims that he played that role in _The Shakespeare Company_ (a book sadly filled with speculations offered as fact), but doesn't support the claim; if it comes from Riddell, that would seem to contradict Gurr's statement that the last _Catiline_ (1611) was the last performance with which Heminge's name was associated. The evidence on this appears inconclusive to me, but I'm grateful to Bill for laying it out so clearly. Best, Holger _______________________________________________________________ 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.