April
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0342 Monday, 24 April 2006 From: Helen Whall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 22 Apr 2006 11:55:30 -0400 Subject: 17.0333 All's Well in Boston Comment: Re: SHK 17.0333 All's Well in Boston I took students to see this AWEW production on opening night. It was already, amazingly, in great shape. This is a very "honest" production-not too concept-laden, lots of attention to language and very intelligent cuts. Simple, clever set required by the space and "traveling company" realities. I think we get to see theater magic at its best when directors and designers are up against a limited space and a limited budget. The actor who plays Bertram doubles as the Clown, but clearly more for economy than thematic import. He transforms his features and voice in such an effective way that my students didn't catch the doubling at first and were never subsequently distracted. Nor did the doubling alter their hostility to the Bertram character. John Kuntz, as the clown, assumes an eerie resemblance to the late Dudley More crossed with The Black Adder/Rowen Atkins. He makes this clown hysterically funny in, not despite the silliness. As Bertram he is quite credibly callow, reluctant even to help the ailing King before Helen arrives. Nice take on the king's insistence both to Helen and Bertram that they marry. And no cheating at the end...we are left both satisfied and troubled. The cast is very strong, especially the women, though Diana needs to speak up/project. I'm betting that happened once she got feedback for performance two. Fine use of music throughout as under-commentary on the play and on love, ah sweet-sour love. This is a young company of not exceptionally young actors. They play where they can find a house and I'll follow them anywhere! Helen Whall _______________________________________________________________ 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 17.0341 Monday, 24 April 2006 From: Charlotte Pressler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 23 Apr 2006 14:36:59 -0400 Subject: Shakespeare Honors Seminar in a Two-Year College I'd like to call on the collective wisdom of list members for suggestions regarding a seminar for Honors students at my two-year Florida college, which I will be teaching this fall, titled "Shakespeare's Life and Times." The college is in rural south Florida, meaning that some students attend for financial reasons. It is an open-admissions college, but the admissions requirements for the Honors program itself place it on the "selective" level. The students will be coming from diverse background but are likely to feel somewhat culturally isolated. They will be lacking in historical knowledge and will struggle with the language. However, they will have had a freshman-level introduction to literature, which usually includes one Shakespeare play. They may also have had some Shakespeare in their high school courses. The seminar is formally listed as a sophomore-level interdisciplinary humanities course, and I intend to teach it as such. (I should have mentioned that I am the director of the Honors program, with an earned doctorate from SUNY Buffalo in Renaissance literature, and a dual appointment in English and philosophy.) I want to investigate a number of plays in their Elizabethan historical and social contexts, and also look at the reception and performance of the plays up to the present. I believe I will start them off with classroom showings of the PBS "In Search of Shakespeare" and want to make extensive use of its companion website. I've selected the Norton Shakespeare and Russ McDonald's Bedford Companion as their primary textbooks. The plays I have tentatively selected are: Richard III (with a glance at the Henriad), Much Ado, Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Tempest. I want to select plays they have probably have not read, so MSND, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet are out. I am, however, mightily tempted toward King Lear, which has some relevance for Floridians. I've weighted the early part of the seminar toward plays with strong film treatments, hoping that students will grow in strength in dealing with the plays and secondary material as time goes on. They will be required to write five semi-formal response papers, with citations to secondary material assigned by me. I want to be sure that some of the paper topics are non-literary, in keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of the course. Suggestions here are very welcome. They will also have to make one oral presentation, which could involve a presentation of a response paper, or a performance, with commentary, of a scene from a play, or a comparison-contrast of film treatments of a play. Finally, I am asking several colleagues, as well as faculty from nearby universities to give lectures, some of which will be open to the public, on their specialty topics. So far, these include theater history, Shakespeare performance in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Shakespeare in Africa -- this last from a faculty member who grew up in Zimbabwe and has taught in South Africa. (I'll take suggestions for others off-list -- and thanks!) I'll be glad to hear thoughts and suggestions, on- or off-list, especially from those who have taught similar courses. Charlotte Pressler Director, Honors Program Professor: English/philosophy South Florida Community College Avon Park, FL (Yes, in fact, the town is named after Shakespeare's birthplace. The first settlers were a hopeful group of British would-be citrus farmers, who planted just in time for the Big Freezes of the 1890s. But that's another story...) _______________________________________________________________ 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 17.0340 Monday, 24 April 2006 From: Al Magary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 22 Apr 2006 23:40:30 -0700 Subject: High Scores without Shakespeare Brush up your Shakespeare: for a pass you need to know ... nothing Julie Henry and Chris Hastings The Telegraph, April 23, 2006 His work, he once said, would live "so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see" - but 14-year-olds sitting the national English test next month can now score zero on the Shakespeare section and still achieve a pass. As a result, experts fear that William Shakespeare, who is believed to have been born 442 years ago today, St George's Day, 1564, and whose plays have been central to the study of English literature for generations, is in danger of being eased out of the curriculum. Changes made to the examination last year mean that, despite the boast of Sonnet 18, the Shakespeare paper - one of three taken by 600,000 14-year-olds - now barely counts in the overall result. It is worth only 18 out of a possible 100 marks. Prior to the changes, questions on the Bard were worth 38 marks in the English test. As long as pupils gain around half marks in the other two papers, which assess reading and writing, they will reach the pass mark and be awarded a level five, the standard expected of their age group. A break down of statistics from last year's test, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that teenagers scored an average of just six marks out of 18 in the Shakespeare paper. Despite this, 74 per cent reached level five or above. Dismal scores were endemic even though pupils are told a year in advance exactly which scene they will be questioned on... The national curriculum stipulates that secondary school pupils must study at least two Shakespeare plays, but the amount of time spent teaching them is left to teachers' discretion. In a review of English teaching last year, inspectors criticised staff for using short extracts from key works of literature. Only four per cent of secondary schools said they went through entire books in English lessons, while more than half admitted to teaching bite-sized sections rather than whole works. David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, said: "The Government's claim that Shakespeare is still at the heart of English teaching is much ado about nothing. We need tougher measures to judge performance in English." A spokesman for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said that in previous years, some of the 38 marks in the Shakespeare paper had been awarded for writing skills, not knowledge of the play... [The longer article is at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/23/nacad23.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/23/ixhome.html _______________________________________________________________ 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 17.0339 Monday, 24 April 2006 From: Dennis Taylor <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 22 Apr 2006 15:41:37 -0400 Subject: Bearman on the Will Again Robert Bearman has just come out with a well researched article, "John Shakespeare: A Papist or Just Penniless?" (SQ 2005), redoing the traditional argument that John Shakespeare's difficulties were due to business, not to recusancy. Bearman makes one important mistake, re. John's "Spiritual Testament": "the evidence, when scrutinized, merely confirms what Edmond Malone suspected-that this document bears all the hallmarks of an eighteenth-century hoax and that subsequent attempts to link it to the Jesuit Mission of the early 1580s is unjustified." The suggestion of hoax, associated with the hapless John Jordan, applies only to the first page of the testament; Malone accepted the validity of the rest of the testament, until much later he remarked but never substantiated that he had found "documents" to prove the will not to be John Shakespeare's. These reasons had nothing necessarily to do with Jordan, but probably concerned the style of the will. In fact, the discovery of later templates answered such doubts: Bearman's misleading phraseology, "subsequent attempts to link it to the Jesuit Mission of the early 1580s", implies that the subsequent attempts were simply argumentation and not discovery of actual evidence verifying the validity of the testament as a traditional form used by Catholics. Greenblatt in Will in the World notes: "The case against authenticity [of the John Shakespeare will] ... has been vigorously resumed by Robert Bearman ... but more recent scholarship has cautiously tended to confirm its authenticity" (p. 397). I might cite my own "Bearish on the Will: John Shakespeare in the Rafters," Shakespeare Newsletter 54.1 (Spring 2004), which discusses Malone's so-called "documents." It would be good if both sides of the Shakespeare and Catholicism issue would cease making misstatements. PS. Bearman cites D. Thomas and N. Evans 1984 article, "John Shakespeare in the Exchequer" (SQ) but doesn't address their argument that John Shakespeare was rich all along, and so debt excuses must have been a cover. However, this issue is not my concern. Dennis Taylor Professor of English Boston College _______________________________________________________________ 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 17.0336 Friday, 21 April 2006 From: Bill Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 2006 11:46:08 EDT Subject: Theory of Hamlet Somehow the thread on Dumbshows in general has morphed into one on the dumbshow in HAMLET! Canst thou work i'the ground so fast? The front matter of the new Arden 3 Hamlet [Q2 text] includes the following excerpt from an address made in 1909 by H. H. Furness, editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard: "Lastly, let me entreat, and beseech, and adjure, and implore you not to write an essay on Hamlet. In the catalog of a library which is very dear to me, there are about four hundred titles of seperate editions, essays, commentaries, lectures, and criticisms of this sole tragedy, and I know this is only the vanguard of the coming years... I am convinced that were I told that my closest friend was lying at the point of death, and that his life could be saved by permitting him to divulge his theory of Hamlet, I would instantly say, 'Let him die! Let him die! Let him die!' " Bill Lloyd [Editor's Note: As editor of SHAKSPER, I entreat, and beseech, and adjure, and implore members NOT to send in posts on Hamlet that simply restate interpretations and theories that have previously been vetted here. Instead, I am thinking about instituting "The SHAKSPER Hermeneutics Competition." I have yet to work out all of the details; but as I imagine it, any member (I am still debating with myself if those who identify themselves as scholars or academics can participate.) who wishes to compete will submit his or her explication of the play or poem under consideration (We will, of course, begin with HAMLET). These interpretations will not be subject to comment by other members but will stand as the submitter's expression of the ultimate truth about the meaning of the play or poem under consideration. After the closing date, SHAKSPER members will vote on which interpretation is the WINNER. From that point forward, no further discussion of the meaning of that play or poem will be permitted on SHAKSPER. Anyone submitting a post about that play or poem will receive a form letter notifying the submitter that the matter of the meaning of that work has been determined and the answer of its true meaning can be found in such and such a post in the archives or in a special section of the web site (like a FAQ). Another alternative would be to set aside space on the SHAKSPER website for a bulletin board dedicated to that play or poem; the winner of the competition will moderate and any others who desire can argue amongst themselves to their heart's content, protected from the cynicism of those so-called scholars or academics who are fed up with listening to or participating in discussions of characters, motivations, themes, or the meanings of particular plays or poems.] _______________________________________________________________ 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.