The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0656 Tuesday, 2 October 2007
[1] From: Hannibal Hamlin <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 08:36:39 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
[2] From: Peter Holland <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 09:24:22 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
[3] From: Jack Heller<
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 10:11:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
[4] From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 11:18:35 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0644 Greenblatt on Cardenio
[5] From: Larry Weiss <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 19:43:36 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
[6] From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Saturday, 29 Sep 2007 09:10:57 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0644 Greenblatt on Cardenio
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Hannibal Hamlin <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 08:36:39 -0400
Subject: 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
So, if Theobald had discovered manuscripts of previously unknown plays
of Shakespeare, why did he not include these in his edition? It seems
bizarre behavior to publish "Double Falsehood" but to let the actual MS
on which it was (putatively) based disappear. If Theobald had been
simply a hack or fraud, that would be one thing, but he was an important
editor of Shakespeare. "Double Falsehood" appeared in 1727, but
Theobald's edition came out four years later-why was the "rediscovered"
MS not included (even in an appendix)? Fishy. Even fishier, of course,
is any attempt now to sift out the authentic bits from Theobald's play,
since, as Jennifer points out, the matter of original collaboration
isn't even clear. This would be (sort of) like trying to reconstruct
Lodge's Rosalynde through analysis of As You Like It.
At any rate, thank to the responders. My curiosity has been
sufficiently assuaged.
Hannibal Hamlin
Associate Professor of English
The Ohio State University
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Holland <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 09:24:22 -0400
Subject: 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Let me recommend the interesting article by Stephan Kukowski, "The Hand
of John Fletcher in *Double Falsehood*" Shakespeare Survey 43
(Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1991), 81-9. Kukowski explores
the traces of Fletcher in Theobald's play rather effectively. Luis
Pujante has also written well on the parallels to Shelton's version of
Don Quixote in "*Double Falsehood* and the Verbal Parallels with
Shelton's *Don Quixote*" Shakespeare Survey 51 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 95-105.
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jack Heller<
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 10:11:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Does this reconstructed CARDENIO include anything from the play
variously titled THE SECOND MAIDEN'S TRAGEDY or THE LADY'S TRAGEDY?
I would hope not, but there used to be an edition claiming SECOND
MAIDEN'S TRAGEDY to be CARDENIO. I've never bought that attribution; THE
SECOND MAIDEN'S TRAGEDY seems most like a Thomas Middleton play.
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 11:18:35 -0400
Subject: 18.0644 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0644 Greenblatt on Cardenio
I happen to be in southern Vermont this weekend, to see my brother's kid
in a high-school production of "Copenhagen," so I'll be attending the talk.
At present, I am not aware of anything that is supposed to survive from
"Cardenio" except "Double Falshood," with two exceptions, the first
being the late Charles Hamilton's bizarre attempt to identify "Cardenio"
with "The Second Maiden's Tragedy" (and Pelion-upon-Ossa claim that
"Double Falshood" derives there from).
The second exception is the song "Woods, Rocks, and Mountains" by Robert
Johnson, which Michael Wood believes stood in the place of DF's
blatantly 18th-century "Fond Echo! Forego thy light Strain". I cannot
deny that the song would be very well suited to the situation, but I am
unaware of Wood's positive arguments to put it there.
Ever since Kukowski's "The Hand of Fletcher in 'Double Falshood'", the
weight of opinion has favored the likelihood of "Double Falshood" having
been genuinely based on "Cardenio", though it should be noted that
Theobald himself says that the oldest of his three mss. dated back only
to the Restoration, so that the text may already have been "improved"
before Theobald ever saw it.
John W. Kennedy
[5]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <
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Date: Friday, 28 Sep 2007 19:43:36 -0400
Subject: 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0650 Greenblatt on Cardenio
It appears likely that Theobald had a MS of a play based on the Cardenio
tale in Don Quixote The MS seems to have had two authors, and Fletcher
appears quite probably to be one of them. In fact, Theobald recognized
his style and candidly said as much in the introduction to the second
edition of DF, even though he was unlikely to have known of Moseley's
Stationers Registry entry ascribing Cardenio to Fletcher and Shakespeare
and even though he still insisted that the MSS he worked from were
entirely WS's work.
The open question is whether the other author was Shakespeare, and the
verdict must be "not proven": Only one or two short passages in DF are
conceivably good enough to ascribe to the pen of WS late in his career;
but Theobald acknowledged that he revised the play for contemporary
readers and audiences. The Shakespearean portions of the known Fletcher
collaborations (HenVIII and TNK) are rather dense with complex
tangential imagery, so Theobald might have deliberately made any genuine
Shakespeare text unrecognizable as such in order to present a commercial
work.
[6]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Saturday, 29 Sep 2007 09:10:57 -0400
Subject: 18.0644 Greenblatt on Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0644 Greenblatt on Cardenio
The earthquake can be rescheduled; Stephen Greenblatt has been working
with "Don Quixote" and "Double Falshood" alone. The paper he read was
concerned with his own experiment, with Charles Mee, in the nascent
field of [cultural] mobility studies, in which the Cardenio material
(and the "Tale of the Curious Impertinent" as well) was used as the raw
material of a new "Cardenio" by Greenblatt and Mee, featuring
21st-century American characters, which they further handed on to other
playwrights in India, Croatia, Japan, etc., with the request that they,
in turn, write new versions for their cultures. A very interesting
study, but not primarily Shakespeare scholarship in the usual sense.
John W. Kennedy
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