September
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1656 Thursday, 29 September 2005 From: Scot Zarela <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Sep 2005 12:42:18 -0700 Subject: 16.1630 Editing Shaksper Comment: Re: SHK 16.1630 Editing Shaksper Greetings to all! My first metadiscussion! I looked over several of these in the archives before joining Shaksper; if this one gets going as it may, it will be the first since I've been a member. Laura Bohannon, in the assigned chapter, tells a lovely story about telling a story, and she tells it with very few mistakes. However, if she, or Hardy in assigning it, holds that this narrative discredits "essentialism", they do but mistake. Let me explain. (I will assume no reader of this who hasn't first made acquaintance with http://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/home/idris/Essays/Shakes_in_Bush.htm) The old men overcome Bohannon's initial reluctance to relate "Hamlet" by "threaten[ing] to tell me no more stories until I told them one of mine." She bends to their wishes then, or so she thinks: but can she really lay claim to "Hamlet" as "one of my own stories"? On the evidence of her telling of her telling, no. She trots along with the text, putting it into the Tiv language as she goes. This isn't story-telling; rather, this is investigating a text --- and the Tiv elders become her collaborators in this effort. All together, they do a creditable job, stumbling of course at gaps in their factual knowledge, but patching those gaps for the meantime with guesses, supposes, and analogies drawn from knowledge they're more certain of. Thus investigating yields a provisional interpretation that can be refined, if need be and if so desired, in future sessions. But where in all this is the story requested by the Tiv old men? They had no way of knowing that the textually acculturated anthropologist held what she held to be certain knowledge at a kind of arm's length. Story-telling springs from a knowledge that rests inward. About story-telling "essentialist" claims can, perhaps, be made (weakly, I think, if I may interject the personal note); but these claims can't be tested until we find ourselves in the presence of the phenomena of story-telling. Minimally, that requires an inward-knowing story-teller and a (willing?) sympathetic audience. Some scholars will recoil from these terms, and they may be excused. Others will suspiciously interrogate the terms, and they must be allowed. Nothing in my account of story-telling means to devalue investigations of texts. They're simply two different critters, and I think the distinction matters. My taste (a last personal note, s.v.p.) runs more to stories, but not to the exclusion of the other. Cheers always, ever Cheers, -- Scot _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1655 Thursday, 29 September 2005 From: Mari Bonomi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Sep 2005 11:41:05 -0400 Subject: 16.1633 Octogenarian Lears on Stage Comment: RE: SHK 16.1633 Octogenarian Lears on Stage Wow! No memories of an actual octogenarian Lear but many memories of Alvin Epstein, from the original Broadway production of _No Strings_ to many performances in repertory at Yale Repertory Theatre under Brustein. I cannot picture Epstein as Lear... There was always, to me, a fumbling-bumbling quality to his performance style/approach regardless of comic or straight role. Not that he was "bad" at any of them but rather that he seemed always to portray a person barely adequate to function at whatever the character's function was. I will be very interested to hear from those who see this performance how Epstein does as Lear, who I have never pictured as fumbling or bumbling around the stage at any point in his... regression (is that the appropriate opposite to "progression"?). Mari Bonomi _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1654 Thursday, 29 September 2005 From: W. Haddon Judson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Sep 2005 11:02:39 -0400 Subject: 16.1632 Roderick Marshall Comment: Re: SHK 16.1632 Roderick Marshall Steve Cohen, Try this URL. Third, fourth and fifth items. http://www.questia.com/SM.qst Sincerely, W. Haddon Judson _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1653 Thursday, 29 September 2005 From: Robert Projansky <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 28 Sep 2005 03:02:55 -0700 Subject: Dark Lady et al Re the identities of the sonnets' Dark lady and Young Man, I have a little experience in such identity research, although it was pretty far a field. Back in the late 20th century, a poet -- a Dark Lady herself -- with whom I was then more than friends, published a first volume of poems which I admired very much. One was a sort of coming-of-age poem that included references to her own home state and her family's business back there, thirty-five years before. When I asked her something about the boy in the poem, she said, "Oh, it's all fiction." Well, wasn't I surprised. Stupidly, I suppose, it had simply not occurred to me that it might be just that, and not only because of the real-world allusions; her poem had made me believe it was her own experience. Well, the poem contained nothing embarrassing, so I had no reason to disbelieve her explanation. Here's the wrinkle: later (honest) she told me she lied a lot, which others corroborated. So, did the Young Man in her poem ever exist? I have no idea, but imagine trying to find out in 2405 who he was. Best wishes, Bob Projansky _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1652 Thursday, 29 September 2005 From: Will Sharpe <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 28 Sep 2005 17:20:54 +0100 Subject: Source Query Does anything exist, hopefully in some kind of catalogue form, that lists the sources of plays, sort of in the way that Harbage lists genre/date/auspices? Common sense tells me that this is the sort of thing that would be found in individual editions of plays/articles about certain plays, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to ask. I'm especially interested in finding out which plays are based on ballads (not pamphlets, and other than the Huntingdon plays and The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green as I already know about those). Any suggestions for reading on this matter would be greatly appreciated, especially any articles anyone knows of that might be lurking in hard-to-find places as books seem to be presenting themselves slightly more easily as I plod through the library catalogue. Also, any articles/books about drama based on ballad sources that could be construed as dealing with the idea/s of English history/Englishness. Best, Will Sharpe _______________________________________________________________ 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.