February
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0098 Tuesday, 6 February 2007 From: Gerald E. Downs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 4 Feb 2007 23:15:46 EST Subject: 18.0079 Thorpe Query Comment: Re: SHK 18.0079 Thorpe Query Marvin Bennet Krims said: >>Thanks to all who correctly steered me away from Thorpe to >>Jaggard and The Passionate Pilgrim. >> >>This List is such a valuable resource. The Editor replied: "thanks so much for the last comment." Elsewhere the Editor wishes to "raise the level of discourse on the list" and expresses a desire "that those who contribute to the discussions be knowledgeable, informed, and familiar with the issues involved." One might think these goals apply to the list as a whole, not only to special topics. If so, is it possible that Peter Holland's contribution falls short of the 'valuable resource' necessary to a raised level of discussion? >>In 1599 William Jaggard published the second edition of the >>collection of poems called The Passionate Pilgrim (the date of >>the first edition is uncertain) which the title-page attributed to >>Shakespeare, much to Shakespeare's annoyance that Jaggard, >>as Thomas Heywood noted, 'altogether unknowne to him . >>presumed to make so bold with his name' (see Schoenbaum, >>William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, p. 219). Heywood's postscript epistle in _An Apology for Actors_ was in reference to the third edition of _The Passionate Pilgrim_, each publications of 1612, thirteen years after the second edition of PP, during which interim recorded annoyance is missing, though only five of the twenty poems of 1599 are known Shakespeare. Schoenbaum has the dates right in _Documentary Life_; though his inference that "Apparently Shakespeare complained too, but privately and to the printer" has no extant basis. Holland seems instead to repeat information from _Shakespeare's Lives_, where Schoenbaum describes the 1612 goings on as 1599 goings on, and where he misquotes Heywood much as Holland does. The partial sentence properly reads, "(that altogether vnknowne to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." In _Apology_ Heywood says that rhetoric "not onely emboldens a scholler to speake, but instructs him to speak well, and with judgement, to observe his commas, colons, & full poynts, his parentheses . . ." Maybe his parenthesis and the words in it should be observed, not revised within quotation marks. Perhaps Shakespeare was angry with Jaggard in 1612, but the 'injury' was done to Heywood, by his own account, where the name Shakespeare is not mentioned. Heywood's remarks are far from clearly expressed, but it is (in the long run) unhelpful to explain his meaning by misquotation. Or is this a good use of 'Presentism'? Gerald E. Downs [Editor's Note: I have every intention of answering this rather mean-spirited and highly misleading post; however, I simply do not have the time to do so today. -HMC] _______________________________________________________________ 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 18.0097 Tuesday, 6 February 2007 [1] From: Ron Severdia <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 09:48:41 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update [2] From: Ray Lischner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 02 Feb 2007 19:34:58 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update [3] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 3 Feb 2007 16:42:11 -0000 Subj: Re: SHK 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ron Severdia <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 09:48:41 -0800 Subject: 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update Comment: Re: SHK 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update >Tanya Gough wrote: > >>. . . at 4+ hours ("Ken Branagh's endless, uncut, four-hour Hamlet" >>- Blackadder V) there was a considerable amount of data to >>transfer and clean up. Oh, yes, and it's a 70mm film, so that's a heck >>of a lot of pixels. > >The 70mm stock doesn't make a difference except that there's more >detail in the source, so for the same compression method the >digital output file will be bigger for any given number of pixels. >The number of pixels is set by the digital output format, not the >analogue input. > >However, by my rough calculation it's 6 times as many pixels when >done for High Definition or Blu-Ray video as when done for NTSC/ >PAL. (About 2.1M pixels per frame instead of 0.35M.) > >All of which is only a preamble to asking if Tanya knows of plans >to put Shakespeare material in the new, higher definition formats. >Ever since I realized that to make a DVD from a feature film >involves discarding 95% of the image data, I've been conscious of >the loss. I know I can't see the difference, but there's a principle. > >Gabriel Egan > >[Editor's Note: Gabriel's statement - "to make a DVD from a feature >film involves discarding 95% of the image data" - fascinates me. >Would he, Tanya, or someone else please explain? I was determined >not to buy a High Definition DVD player or players for my DVD-only >system with a 65" Mitsubishi DLP TV, Pioneer Elite DVD Player, and >Sony Home Theater System with an all-region Toshiba DVD player >thrown in. My DVD collection of Shakespeare titles is enormous, and >I cannot imagine buying them again in HD. As I said, this system is >only used to play DVDs; I simply don't watch television. -HMC] That *can* be true. But that's like saying that since film is only 24fps and NTSC TV is 30 fps means that there's *more* image data in TV programs Also based on the pixels per frame calculation). It's true that a lot of information gets "tossed" when converting to digital (we live in an analogue world, right?) but it also depends on the source material. You also need to take into consideration what is actually perceptible with the human eye (but that's another discussion). There's a visceral aspect to 24fps and film (which is why so many digital video cameras try to emulate it) that they try to preserve in a digital transfer (the "Holy Grail" :) ). So putting a specific percentage on this is not really possible since every film, size, frame rate, and process is unique in its own way, but 95% is way too high. The 70mm film only makes a small difference when "cleaning" the film after a digital transfer, not when outputting the film to a DVD- compatible fileset. (or HD or Blue-Ray, as the case may be). I've heard this excuse repeated over that last year or two as a reason for delaying the Hamlet DVD and it's has such a minimal effect over the process that it's a joke (we're talking about a question of a week...maybe...). Anybody who works in digital video would laugh at this repeated excuse that it's been delayed so long for that reason. Personally, I bought a Panasonic DVD player that does a very good job of upscaling regular DVDs to HD. More and more players are coming out with this function since there's such a huge existing base of people that have large DVD collections. But just like there are films on VHS that will probably never be transferred to DVD (because of no interest or cost), there will be movies that will never make it to HD- DVD or Blue-Ray. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ray Lischner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 02 Feb 2007 19:34:58 -0500 Subject: 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update Comment: Re: SHK 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update >Gabriel's statement - "to make a DVD from a feature film >involves discarding 95% of the image data" - fascinates me. Would he, >Tanya, or someone else please explain? A DVD is typically 480x720 pixels per frame. The width can vary, but the number of scan lines is no more than 480. The High-Definition formats have up to 1080 scan lines; 1080x1920 being a typical size. Film has even higher resolution, not measured in scan lines or pixels, but the clarity of film degrades when projected on imperfect equipment. How often have we walked into the cinema and seen that the movie is not quite focused correctly? On the other, other hand, DVDs (standard and high definition) compress the image, and the quality of the result depends on the care and quality of the compression process. Two web sites that I think are helpful: http://tinyurl.com/2yxmrs http://tinyurl.com/26ln6m Ray Lischner, author of Shakespeare for Dummies [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 3 Feb 2007 16:42:11 -0000 Subject: 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update Comment: Re: SHK 18.0086 Branagh Hamlet DVD Update Hardy wrote: >Gabriel's statement - "to make a DVD from >a feature film involves discarding 95% of the >image data" - fascinates me. Would he, Tanya, or someone else please explain? It's difficult to quantify the data density of film stock and it varies with 'speed' (sensitivity to light), but the effective resolution of an average 35mm frame is 4-6 million pixels. A frame of DVD-Video is around 0.35 million pixels, so in the transfer around 95% of the image is lost. The new high definition equipment (HDTV, HD-DVD, BluRay) shows 1 to 2 million pixels. Playing your old DVDs on the new equipment will reveal their shortcomings. Gabriel Egan [Editor's Note: Gabriel, the next time you are in the Washington, D.C., area, get in touch with me and I will show you how awesome my system is without (HD-DVD, BluRay) but with my 1080p DLP HDTV. And I still haven't figured out how to hook up the HDMI connection so that I can still have the home theater surround sound. -HMC] _______________________________________________________________ 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 18.0096 Tuesday, 6 February 2007 [1] From: Nora Kreimer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 4 Feb 2007 13:22:21 -0300 Subj: Fw: SHK 18.0080 Shakespeare Quotations [2] From: S. L Kasten <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 05 Feb 2007 00:53:18 +0200 Subj: Re: SHK 18.0087 Shakespeare Quotations [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nora Kreimer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 4 Feb 2007 13:22:21 -0300 Subject: 18.0080 Shakespeare Quotations Comment: Fw: SHK 18.0080 Shakespeare Quotations Javier Marias, son of eminent Spanish philosopher Julian Marias, wrote two novels with A Shakespeare quotation as their titles: Ma
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0095 Tuesday, 6 February 2007 [1] From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 03 Feb 2007 19:15:59 +0000 Subj: RE: SHK 18.0081 A Question [2] From: Nora Kreimer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 13:22:21 -0300 Subj: Fw: SHK 18.0080 Shakespeare Quotations [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 03 Feb 2007 19:15:59 +0000 Subject: 18.0081 A Question Comment: RE: SHK 18.0081 A Question The issue is joined. From the barricades, fiery John Drakakis goes on the attack: >It seems to me that the confusion lies primarily with Joe Egert. He >styles himself as a reactionary devotee of the Enlightenment... JD's confusion may lie in his valuation. I take it JD has not "re-defined and transvalued" the label "reactionary" to mean "progressive." Is it still the epithet of choice inside the echo chambers of "radical enquiry"? Frankly, it is a wonder that long immersion in the acids of Theory has left JD any standards at all with which to distinguish the two. How indeed does he distinguish them (presently)? The same for "Modernity", "Renaissance", and "Enlightenment." What in his view are the Defining features of the Enlightenment, that categorically differentiate it (this week) from its pre- and post-Enlightenment brethren? JD goes on: >I'm also a little alarmed at his deployment of metaphor: he >'consumes' a 'Greenblatt concoction' and feels 'sated and fully >nourished'. I did not mean to alarm JD. Nonetheless he seems quite taken with the metaphor. He is welcome to use it in good health with my blessing. In his defense, I might add, Drakakis, like Greenblatt, serves us meat along with theory in his superb essays. JD is not finished: >Egert seems to have constructed a caricature of the position that he >then proceeds to critique... he misrepresents the very position he seeks to >challenge. Perhaps he can tell us why he thinks 'history' in the >formulation that he chooses is so important, and what (in passing) >he thinks a 'fact' is, how it's constituted, and how it might be >separated from the process of valuation). Facts and texts, of course, cannot be separated from their valuation---there's that truism again. Yet they emphatically do speak for themselves, only we hear them in translation (the equivalent of JD's valuation). Once again, for JD's benefit, the tales or histories told by scholars and historians are imperfect translations, while History Itself is a Fact, the true Other, the unvarnished Object, the perfect Text. I've acknowledged the hedges and qualifiers tossed by Hugh Grady and company, almost as a sop, to their critics. Yet their principles lend themselves too easily to caricature and appropriation for Orwellian corruption. Remember NT Wright's, "it should come as a relief not to have to aim at an impossible objectivity." I find this most pernicious. Does JD agree with Wright? We already see some of the twisting and torturing of meaning in Hugh Grady's penchant for re-defining and transvaluing the terms of discourse. How can a non-teleological and non-hierarchical "Marxism" still be called Marxism? The authentic mature Marxism has morphed into "vulgar" Marxism. Walter Cohen himself could not abide such a loss of hierarchical judgment at Theory's hands. The "subject", formerly rendered a non-autonomous Ghost, apparently still stalks the dark halls of Theory. He is now to be slowly revived and granted a measure of agency, restricted of course to resistance only. Is this not agenda-driven chicanery? To inspire such resistance," materialists" are now in eager quest for" Messianic" visions. Has the wheel come full circle? back to the Noble Myths of Plato and Strauss with which to dismantle and reorganize society? Historicist and non-historicist modes of interpretation, we are told, are in dialectic opposition, except when they are not. At other times, Hugh Grady has permitted historicism and presentism, in their wider sense, to encompass each other. Let us end at the beginning and ask: why this need to rehabilitate a perfectly good pejorative like "presentism"? If the shoe doesn't fit, change the shoe, not the foot. Could they not have chosen instead "now-ism", or "extantism", or better yet "noncense"? Regards from the bridge, Joe Egert [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nora Kreimer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 13:22:21 -0300 Subject: 18.0080 Shakespeare Quotations Comment: Fw: SHK 18.0080 Shakespeare Quotations Javier Marias, son of eminent Spanish philosopher Julian Marias, wrote two novels with A Shakespeare quotation as their titles: Ma
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0094 Tuesday, 6 February 2007 [1] From: Louis Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 11:35:48 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 18.0082 Understanding Antony [2] From: Tony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 15:12:24 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 18.0088 Understanding Antony [3] From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 15:38:15 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 18.0088 Understanding Antony [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Louis Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 11:35:48 -0600 Subject: 18.0082 Understanding Antony Comment: Re: SHK 18.0082 Understanding Antony First, much thanks to the seven here who have responded to my question. Edmund Taft's response, that "Antony's praise for Caesar stems in part from the fact that Caesar acted like a father to the younger man," is helpful and might with great difficulty be indicated in some way, before the soliloquy, by the actor playing Antony; but respecting the formal integrity of the play, and unless it can be suggested by the lines and actions of the characters *in the play*, such an explanation, dependent as it may be on material external to the play itself, must be disallowed, just as historical information about the greatness of the real Caesar must be put aside when considering the character of Caesar that Shakespeare has given us. John W. Kennedy's remark is that I have begun with a dubious assumption (i.e., that Caesar is "a pompous, power-greedy person"), that, he says, "if taken wholeheartedly by the actor playing Caesar, would likely wreck the play." And he quotes Caesar's lines, "Cowards dye many times before their deaths, etc." offered as evidence of Caesar's nobility. But as that speech is made to Calpurnia - and to himself, already frightened enough by her dream to send for a priestly reading of his future - it cannot be distinguished in type from his other puffy remarks. (And would Mr. Kennedy please say how my interpretation of Caesar would wreck the play?) Steve Sohmer, Judy Lewis and Peter Groves have mistaken me. I referred to Antony's SOLILOQUY over the corpse of Caesar, not his funeral speech made in public. I have maintained - and I hope rightly - that a soliloquy conveys the real opinions and feelings of the character, since he is speaking only to himself. (Incidentally, the exact meaning of "noblest" in Antony's "Thou art the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times, etc." seems to be given by the O.E. D., under "Noble," (4) "having high moral qualities or ideals," for it gives as illustration Antony's other use of the term in his comment on the dead Brutus, "This was the noblest Roman of them all, etc.") Donald Bloom quotes Brutus' "Did not great Iulius bleede for Iustice sake? etc." as one of the quotations defining the *public * man while Caesar's remarks indicating his pomposity or hubris define the *personal or private* man. This suggests that a deeper matter of the play is Caesar's (the character's) tendency to confuse the public and private orders (like Lear's treating the public state as his private property to be parcelled out to his daughters), and to parade his personal opinions about himself ("...for always I am Caesar..." and this to the very senators to whom he is applying for further power! - "...if I were as you, If I could pray to move, prayers would move me..." But all this seems beside the point of my question: doesn't Antony see what we see? And if he does, how can he so lament Caesar's death and praise him so in the soliloquy? From time to time, we have returned to a central problem in our many discussions: Should we bring into a play our knowledge of the historical person, qualifying what is said about the *character* by such knowledge? I have said and say that we should not. We should consider Caesar, for example, as Character X, defined all and only by what the character says and does and what is said and done about him in the play. After that exercise is complete, we may, indeed, say, "This is what the playwright thinks of the historical *man* - that is, as he is presented in the play, " and such might well then be compared to other historical presentations and opinions of the man. But to intrude historical *particulars* into the *universals* of literature, of art, is to alter the vocabulary and therefore the organic calculus of the work. L. Swilley ============================================================= From: Tony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 15:12:24 -0500 Subject: 18.0088 Understanding Antony Comment: Re: SHK 18.0088 Understanding Antony I had the pleasure of being dramaturge to a production of Julius Caesar not long ago and, for me, all the characters presented the same sort of challenge facing Louis Swilley with respect to Antony. I find that, in moments of acute anxiety as to the right way to handle Shakespeare's characters, it frequently helps to turn to Shakespeare's words in the play itself and disregard Marx, Freud, Derrida, Lacan, vice-president Cheney, and any other all-purpose authorities. Antony first appears as a contestant in the ritual running race in which his touch may, or may not, cure Calphurnia of her barrenness, an event in which Brutus declines to participate even as a spectator because he is not "gamesome" and lacks the "quick spirit" that makes it attractive to Antony. In Caesar's estimation, Antony contrasts with the "spare" Cassius of the "lean and hungry look", the "great observer," who "looks quite through the deeds of men;" Caesar trusts (or doesn't mistrust) Antony, a lover of plays and music and given to smiling, an "Antony, that revels long o' nights." Antony is a player of performances, and it is in performances that he expresses so much of himself as the play allows us to know. He is the one who offered a "crown" to Caesar during the popular demonstration he may also have organized, as described by Casca. His words to the conspirators after Caesar's death are smooth and convincing, but as soon as he finds himself alone on stage with Caesar's corpse we learn how artificial and performative they were, and far from his own feelings. After his praise over the corpse of "the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times," we may well remember to ask with Hamlet," What's Hecuba to him or him to her/ that he should weep for her?" We are not given much to explain his personal relation to Caesar, but Caesar's language hints that he may have embraced Antony precisely because he considered him frivolous and unthreatening When Antony takes up the cause of revenge, he does so without regard to high principals, personal or otherwise. He disdains concern for justice or moral consequences, seeing full well that the events he sets in motion will flow from Hell and be led by Ate, the goddess of overweening madness, and will subject Rome to general destruction. His performance during the funeral oration is pure and masterful example of manipulation and demagoguery, but the resulting mischief is of no concern to him; "let it take what course it will." Yet, he is a good and effective soldier, and it is he who wins the day at Philippi. And he continues to perform even at the end, when he would have been better employed consolidating his own battlefield gains. As he delivers his "noblest Roman" speech over Brutus' corpse (is he sincere or just caught up in the opportunity for performance?), it is Octavius who gathers the spoils of the field and takes command ("within my tent') of the story and thus of the future. Is Antony cynical, passionately revengeful, frivolous, or drunk with the power of words? Is he driven by a vision of patriotism, martial or even personal loyalty, hatred for the conspirators, or perhaps a sense of personal failure for having let Caesar fall to the very man, Cassius, against whom he had warned Antony in the strongest terms? Shakespeare allows innumerable good choices to be made with respect to Antony's personal qualities and relationships with the other characters; the backstory is largely up for grabs. But it does seem certain to me at least, that Shakespeare directs us to view the whole spectrum of his actions as arising out Antony's fundamental character as an all-purpose performer and, like any player in Shakespeare's own troupe, a professionally quick study and enactor of whatever roles the exterior scene and setting present for him to exercise his talents. And if Antony sees the whole world as a stage, on which he plays his part as well as he can, he may be the sort of man Shakespeare would have taken very much to heart. Tony ============================================================= From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 2 Feb 2007 15:38:15 -0600 Subject: 18.0088 Understanding Antony Comment: RE: SHK 18.0088 Understanding Antony William Godshalk writes >I would suggest that seeing the past in terms of the present is >inevitable. How can it be otherwise? We reconstruct the past from a >position in the present. We may use artifacts and documents from the >past in this reconstruction, but those artifacts and documents can only >be read and interpreted in the present. The problem to me can be seen in the phrase "in terms of," which I don't know the precise meaning of. I don't say it is meaningless, but that it leaves a great deal unsaid that needs to be said. If, in turn, you mean by "the present" a state of mind that includes as much presumption, circular reasoning, prejudice, bigotry and illogic as can be found in the past, then you may have it. But I don't think you do. In fact, I'd be stunned if you did. But if you mean a state of mind that attempts to transcend the limitations and blindness of cultural assumptions, then I'm with you. In regard to "Julius Caesar," the hatred of dictators is a 20th Century commonplace. I hate them, too. Did Shakespeare hate them? Hardly. You may say he hated bad men, and especially bad rulers. Good. But would he have thought that an absolute monarch was by definition evil? I doubt it. By reading back into Shakespeare our attitude toward such people we must inevitably distort what he wrote in favor of confirming our prejudices. These prejudices may be morally correct (as regards Jews and women, as well, for example), but they are no less prejudices. I had hoped that the presentist idea was to help us overcome our tendency to misread the past by making us aware of such prejudices, assumptions, givens and so forth. Am I wrong in this? Cheers, don _______________________________________________________________ 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.