The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1943 Thursday, 25 November 2005
[1] From: John Ramsay <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 23 Nov 2005 12:17:29 -0000
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
[2] From: Tom Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 23 Nov 2005 10:35:22 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
[3] From: Alan Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 23 Nov 2005 11:46:08 -0500 (EST)
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
[4] From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, November 25, 2005
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
[5] From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, November 25, 2005
Subj: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Ramsay <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 23 Nov 2005 12:17:29 -0000
Subject: 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Jack Lynch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
>Richard Burt asks, about my request for bowdlerized texts of
>Shakespeare:
>
> [How] far back do you want to go?
>
>"Going back" is comparatively easy-not only to _The Family Shakespeare_
>by the Bowdlers themselves, but to many of the stage versions of the
>plays from the Restoration through the nineteenth century, where cutting
>naughtiness was common.
>
>But more or less contemporary editions of the plays, things that might
>still be read by students today, are harder to track down. That's what
>I'm keen to find. Back to the 1960s or '70s, maybe?
>Anything from the last ten years or so would be golden.
In the early 60's Ontario still had bowdlerized Shakespeare in the
schools but the 60's spirit of anti-censorship combined with the
availability of cheaper albeit non-censored paperback editions made
bowdlerized Shakespeare obsolete.
I imagine it was the same in other educational jurisdictions.
When the 60's faded into the 70's and the would-be censors of what
students read once again appeared on stage the agenda had changed.
Shakespeare's sexual references were comparatively mild compared to the
modern books on the high school curriculum so the censors focused on
getting books like 'Go Ask Alice' and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'
off the curriculum.
This was only part of the censors overall agenda. They also had to get
Darwin out of the science curriculum.
Last I heard they're still working on that in an 'intelligently
designed' way -:)
John Ramsay
P.S. I've still got a couple of bowdlerized editions of Shakespeare
from my early teaching days.
If Jack Lynch is interested I'd be happy to give him details via
personal email.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tom Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 23 Nov 2005 10:35:22 -0500
Subject: 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Some high school single and anthology texts of Romeo and Juliet, until
fairly recently, if not still, omitted material deemed obscene. I was
once warned, before teaching a high school class as a visitor, that
there might be some blank looks if I discussed "certain parts" of the
play. I had a graduate student writing a paper on this issue a couple of
years ago who went into the history of school texts of the play fairly
extensively and came up with some very interesting stuff. That's one
useful place to look. Finding copies of old high school texts is a bit
of a challenge though -- libraries don't usually keep them when they're
replaced in the curriculum.
Tom
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Alan Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 23 Nov 2005 11:46:08 -0500 (EST)
Subject: 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Jack Lynch should check A. L. Rowse's edition of Shakespeare's plays
(late 1970s? 1980s?) in which (as I remember - it's been some time) he
regularly changed words and phrases to make the text more accessible.
To document changes in the acting scripts is much easier, though the
target is usually not bawdry but items that are deemed politically
incorrect. Usually the passage is cut - the Gordian knot approach.
Prominent among the casualties are Portia's comment on the departed
Morocco "Let all of his complexion choose me so" (The Merchant of
Venice, 2.7.79) and the third witch's "Liver of blaspheming Jew"
(Macbeth, 4.1.26). Harder to cut, because it is the climax to a comic
sequence, is Benedick's 'if I do not love her, I am a Jew' (Much Ado
About Nothing, 2.3.263), so that Gregory Doran (RSC 2002) changed Jew to
jack (other alternatives have been knave, fool, and even jerk). To
avoid any semblance of a racial slur, the director of a 1995 Macbeth
(Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, D.C.) changed Macduff's 'Be not a
niggard of your speech' (4.3.180) to miser; and the director of a 1989 A
Midsummer Night's Dream (San Francisco Shakespeare Festival), which
featured an Asian-American actor as Snout-Wall, changed references to
the chink in the wall (e.g., 'Show me thy chink' - 5.1.177) to hole (my
thanks to Mike Jensen for this item). In a virtually uncut Othello
(Stratford Festival Canada 1979) Othello's famous speech building to his
suicide was not interrupted by the brief lines from Lodovico and
Gratiano, a standard adjustment. In this instance, however, the two
interjections were not omitted to enhance the dramatic rhythm but
because, in a production that was to end its run with a series of
matinees for high school students, the director and her actors were
fearful of losing this climactic moment when Lodovico, in front of 2,000
teenagers, exclaimed: "O bloody period!" (5.2.357).
Alan Dessen
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ale Simari <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 23 Nov 2005 21:42:25 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
In the Signet Classic's Romeo and Juliet (USA, 1963) edited by J. A.
Bryant, Jr there is a change in Juliet's famous speech (II, ii, 40-42).
Rather than saying
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man.
Juliet's words are changed to:
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name
Belonging to a man.
If the "other part" in the original text is considered to have bawdy
connotations, then this change may be of help.
Regards,
Ale Simari
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, November 25, 2005
Subject: 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
Comment: Re: SHK 16.1938 Modern Bowdlerizations
One of the first rules Ken Steele taught me when I began editing the
SHAKSPER digests was NOT to give into the temptation to comment on a
submission before it has been distributed to the list. But I cannot
resist this one, I don't want to forget, and I have a little time today.
So . . .
Ale Simari cites the 1963 Signet edition of Romeo and Juliet's rendering
of 2.2.40-42 as
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name
Belonging to a man.
rather than
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man.
Simari suggests that the change is an example of bowdlerization. I don't
think so.
I don't have a copy of the Signet in my library, but I suspect the
editor by J. A. Bryant, Jr., chose to follow the Q2-F1 reading of the
lines rather than the practice of most other modern editors of rendering
2.2.40-44 as a mix-and-match from Q1, Q2, F1:
(What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,) (Q1, Q2, F1: TLN 834)
(Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part) (Q1)
(Belonging to a man.) [O, be some other name!] (Q2, F1: TLN 836) [Q2,
F1: TLN 835 2nd]
(What's in a name? That which we call a rose) (Q1, Q2)
(By any other word would smell as sweet.) (Q2, F1: TLN 838)
For anyone interested, I reproduce Q1, Q2, F1 and several modern
editions of these lines.
Q1
Whats <I>Mountague?</I> It is nor hand nor foote,
Nor arme, nor face, nor any other part.
Whats in a name? That which we call a Rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet:
Q2
Whats <I>Mountague?</I> it is nor hand nor foote,
Nor arme nor face, o be some other name
Belonging to a man.
Whats in a name that which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweete,
F1
What's <I>Mountague</I>? it is nor hand nor foote,
Nor arme, nor face, O be some other name
Belonging to a man.
What? in a names that which we call a Rose,
By any other word would smell as sweete,
Riverside
What's Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,
Nor arm nor face, [nor any other part]
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;
Oxford
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
New Pelican
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
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