The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2044  Friday, 9 December 2005

[1] 	From: 	Chris Whatmore <
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	Date: 	Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 19:30:09 +0000
	Subj: 	RE: SHK 16.2013 Living Characters

[2] 	From: 	Elliott Stone <
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	Date: 	Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 20:04:37 -0500
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 16.2030 Living Characters Penultimate


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Chris Whatmore <
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Date: 		Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 19:30:09 +0000
Subject: 16.2013 Living Characters
Comment: 	RE: SHK 16.2013 Living Characters

Returning (I think) to something like the original subject of this 
thread before the Friday deadline, there was an interesting passage  in 
Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech - which, unusually for  him, 
included a number of personal observations on the creative  process of 
play writing:
"It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that 
moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even 
hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. 
The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by 
the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live 
with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to 
them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat 
and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that 
you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and 
an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you 
are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, 
a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, 
at any time."

Surely it is this "ambiguous transaction" between "flesh and blood"  and 
"language in art" that is the very engine of Pinter's,  Shakespeare's or 
any dramatist's enterprise; to argue that one side  of the transaction 
is more important or more 'real' than the other  seems somehow to miss 
the point.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Elliott Stone <
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Date: 		Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 20:04:37 -0500
Subject: 16.2030 Living Characters Penultimate
Comment: 	Re: SHK 16.2030 Living Characters Penultimate

Joseph Egert might be on to something when he asks "Is the relationship 
between Norway and Claudius a little too cozy?".

Is not this a theme in the Tempest?

Best,
Elliott H. Stone

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