The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0317  Tuesday, 18 April 2006

From: 		John W. Kennedy <
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Date: 		Monday, 17 Apr 2006 21:18:03 -0400
Subject: 17.0313 Caracalla
Comment: 	Re: SHK 17.0313 Caracalla

Peter Holland <
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 >[Centerwall] is much less convincing when he argues that the
 >passages he quotes show the knotted syntax characteristic of
 >Chapman's dramatic verse, for the extracts he prints read
 >perfectly clearly to me in a way that is true of little of
 >Chapman's tragic verse. But then he argues, too, that the
 >simple dramaturgy of Caracalla indicates that it must be a
 >very early work, perhaps Chapman's first play, and here he
 >falls into the common trap of assuming that dramatists produce
 >more complicated plays as they mature, something the chronology
 >of Shakespeare's plays shows to be untrue (Pericles?!) but something
 >which underpinned the ambitious and mistaken chronologies
 >created by, say, Malone.

"Complex", like "simple", is a dangerously multivalent word, both often 
degenerating into the merely evaluative, or even the phatic. When I, for 
one, think of "complexity" in Shakespeare, I think first of "Cymbeline" 
(which, if I recall aright, Malone indeed misplaced as early).

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