The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1875  Monday, 14 November 2005

[1] 	From: 	Elliott Stone <
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	Date: 	Saturday, 12 Nov 2005 17:43:17 -0500
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 16.1865 The Rude Mechanicals

[2] 	From: 	Michael Egan <
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	Date: 	Sunday, 13 Nov 2005 08:47:50 -1000
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 16.1865 The Rude Mechanicals


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Elliott Stone <
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Date: 		Saturday, 12 Nov 2005 17:43:17 -0500
Subject: 16.1865 The Rude Mechanicals
Comment: 	Re: SHK 16.1865 The Rude Mechanicals

It seems that everybody but Shakespeare wants to believe that his plays 
were being watched in "market squares, taverns and in the courtyards of 
inns".  Look at the plays within the plays (MND,HAM,TS) and you will 
find that they are all set before the toffs in their castles and 
palaces.  Perhaps we should be more careful when we argue "Who was 
Shakespeare's audience". It may be that they were written for an 
upper-class audience and later put on at the Globe. The Hasty Pudding 
Shows of this world were not produced for College English Professors. 
The student audiences hoot and holler and laugh or moan. They certainly 
don't take notes! Wasn't it Walt Whitman who argued that the History 
plays seem to have been written by a wolfish Earl?

Best,
Elliott H. Stone

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Michael Egan <
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Date: 		Sunday, 13 Nov 2005 08:47:50 -1000
Subject: 16.1865 The Rude Mechanicals
Comment: 	Re: SHK 16.1865 The Rude Mechanicals

Marina Tarlinskaya's distinction between 'bombastic' and (presumably) 
'non-bombastic' plays-within-the-play is unhelpful. Nor is it accurate 
to claim that Shakespeare 'parodies' the former in Hamlet. The model is 
the Elizabethan mask (or masque in Jonson's later Gallicized spelling), 
and the word would be 'exploit' rather than 'parody.' The distinction, 
if one is to be made, is between the masque's early conventions and its 
subsequent elaborations in the court of James I. Chambers uses the terms 
'mask simple' and 'mask spectacular' to indicate the difference. 
(Elizabethan Stage, I, pp. 140 ff.).

Tarlinskaya's further observations about  Elizabethan poets (presumably 
she means playwrights) who oppose personages by verse and prose, and 
'those who speak in verse--by the types of "rhythm" they use (such as 
"heroes" vs. "villains")', once again raises questions about the 
validity of stylometric measures based on the assumption that 
Shakespeare's dramatic 'style' can be identified and then predicted on 
the basis of word-occurrence or usage.

--Michael Egan

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