The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0696 Tuesday, 25 July 2006
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[1] From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Monday, 24 Jul 2006 18:47:13 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0693 Against All-Male Productions
[2] From: Larry Weiss <
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Date: Monday, 24 Jul 2006 23:00:25 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0693 Against All-Male Productions
[3] From: John Crowley <
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Date: Tuesday, 25 Jul 2006 07:57:23 -0400
Subj: Against All-Male Productions
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Monday, 24 Jul 2006 18:47:13 -0400
Subject: 17.0693 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0693 Against All-Male Productions
Hardy M. Cook quoted David Lindley:
>But there is simply no doubt that Shakespeare wrote for boy
>(or male) actors, and that this must have, to some degree,
>conditioned the way he composed his female roles.
>
>There is NO doubt. Hardy]
Indeed, to deny it is, ultimately, to suppose that Shakespeare did not
know his craft. (Why is it so easy to believe that Shakespeare was a
philosopher, a mystic, or a reformer, and so yet hard to believe that he
was a playwright?)
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <
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Date: Monday, 24 Jul 2006 23:00:25 -0400
Subject: 17.0693 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0693 Against All-Male Productions
I believe that this thread started as a discussion of whether or to what
extent all-male casting is appropriate on the modern stage. There might
be some utility to such a discussion as it deals with present
conditions. But I agree wholeheartedly with Hardy that there is no
utility in speculating about what Shakespeare would have preferred if he
had thought about it. For all that appears, Will might have deplored an
innovation putting women on the stage because it would have denied him
the ambiguities he played with in his trousers roles-consider Rosalind
(a boy playing a girl pretending to be a boy behaving as a girl) -- or
delicious lines such as "boy my greatness." We don't know; we can't
know; we can't find out; and it is an utter waste of time to dispute it.
Maybe Shakespeare would have preferred writing for IMAX than for a
bare platform stage, but it doesn't help us understand what he did write
if we focus on such imponderables.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Crowley <
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Date: Tuesday, 25 Jul 2006 07:57:23 -0400
Subject: Against All-Male Productions
It might be relevant to the question of whether boys could
satisfactorily play women that in Japanese Kabuki (almost
contemporaneously) male actors -- not only boys but mature men -- were
playing women and establishing famed dynasties of female impersonators.
A tradition begun when women were banned from the popular theater
(they were of a class with prostitutes) continued even after women were
allowed on the stage again. There seems to be little (no?) evidence of
that kind of adulation and following for the Elizabethan male actors who
played women. But the Japanese adulation and the large followings were
originally bound up with the fact that the male actors were originally
often prostitutes too, and so maybe the sexual mores or attitudes in
Elizabethan social life kept fanship more quiet -- I say this having no
particular evidence. Maybe if we had preserved the no-women ban for
another century or two we'd now have famed and skilled female
impersonators (which we do have) who are not only good but also
classically trained actors (which we don't have.) It might make all the
difference to our opinion of all-male productions.
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