The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0554 Wednesday, 22 August 2007
[1] From: Bob Lapides <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 16:15:24 EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
[2] From: Peter Bridgman <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 21:42:09 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
[3] From: Abigail Quart <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 17:38:52 -0400
Subj: RE: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
[4] From: Nicole Coonradt <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 22:42:07 +0000
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
[5] From: V. Kerry Inman <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 20:28:11 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
[6] From: Peter Bridgman <
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Date: Wednesday, 22 Aug 2007 09:41:28 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
[7] From: Edmund Taft <
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Date: Wednesday, 22 Aug 2007 10:13:12 -0400
Subj: Redheads
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bob Lapides <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 16:15:24 EDT
Subject: 18.0548 Redheads
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
According to Frank Felsenstein's *Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm
of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660-1830*, it was the 18C
actor Charles Macklin who first gave Shylock a red hat and a big nose.
Macklin made a point of researching Jewish history and culture, actual
and imagined. He justified the red hat to Alexander Pope, who asked
about it, by saying "he had read that the Jews in Italy, particularly in
Venice, wore hats of that colour."
Bob Lapides
nyc
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Bridgman <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 21:42:09 +0100
Subject: 18.0548 Redheads
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
Donald Bloom writes ...
>I would gather then that there is no negative association
>with red hair outside the Jew / Judas association.
>Or is there?
Yes, if slaves wore red wigs in the Roman theatre.
>With regard to Jews and Judas, does anybody know why
>or how they came to be associated with red hair? It would
>seem to be a very odd sort of connection ...
The negative Jewish association may have started with the Jacob-Esau story.
I suspect however that when medieval artists first painted Judas with
red hair, this was merely to distinguish him from the other apostles at
the Last Supper (in the same way that John is depicted as beardless, or
Peter is depicted as white-haired.) Once Judas's red hair had become a
recognised convention in Art, it was adopted by the mystery plays.
Since audiences always booed the guy with the red wig, it was a short
step for the red "syrup" to become a shorthand for "villain".
But not shorthand for "Jew", since just about everyone else on the
mystery play stage (apart from Pilate and the Roman soldiers) was a
co-religionist of Judas.
Peter Bridgman
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Abigail Quart <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 17:38:52 -0400
Subject: 18.0548 Redheads
Comment: RE: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
With regard to Jews and Judas, does anybody know why or how they came to
be associated with red hair? It would seem to be a very odd sort of
connection, or does it have a common origin with the unluckiness still
apparently sensed in the Middle East? Did one cause the other?
Ass-eared Set, the murderer of Osiris, was believed to be red-haired, so
the tradition may have come Egypt. Also, the name "Adam" is supposed to
mean "red man" so there's a long tradition in that neighborhood.
Among the Jews, however, red hair seems to be just as bad a feature as
it is among the Christians. I remember my grandmother telling me how
red-haired girls in her village had trouble finding husbands. That it
was the "worst thing."
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Nicole Coonradt <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 22:42:07 +0000
Subject: 18.0548 Redheads
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
Seeing red? I love this thread and the interesting turns it's taken,
especially today's posts.
First, I wonder if red associated with malice or sexual promiscuity is
directly linked to alchemical elements-- fire, specifically-- and
perhaps humours--blood?-- which would both be very Elizabethan concepts.
Anyone an expert? Is this the "folklore" to which Don refers?
Some of this might be taken as silly, but the cultural trickle down
regarding red at times seems obvious as in say, Hester Prynne's
**scarlet** letter-- after all, it could have been any color and yet
Hawthorne chose **scarlet*. And women of ill repute are often shown
wearing red. Off the top of my head, we have Nancy in the 1968 film
_Oliver!_ as one example, which is a double whammy: red hair and red
dress. Miss Kitty, the saloon madam in the TV show _Gunsmoke_, had red
hair. Laughably, "Ginger" from _Gilligan's Island_ had red hair and she
played the sexy, movie star. Re temper, Maureen O'Hara's character in
_The Quiet Man_ is especially noted for her red hair-- "I have a fearful
temper" she says at one point, and then John Wayne is warned about it
from another as well, specifically linking it to her hair color: "And
her with her red hair and her freckles-- that temper is no lie!" Victor
McLaglen, the biggest hothead of the film is called "Red" Will Danaher.
Wharton employs red in _Ethan Frome_ in conjunction with Mattie and
sexual tension. Though not a redhead, Liz Hurley as the sexy Devil in
_Bedazzled_, wears naughty red costumes throughout the film, her French
maid getup being the one exception. In a broader sense, the color red,
specifically *as a color*, is the root/trigger of psychosis in
Hitchcock's _Marnie_, linked to both violence and sex. I'm sure a
complete list of symbolic uses of red would be unimaginably long, but it
seems safe to say that malice and sex figure prominently in such a list.
Be that as it may, even if it originated via the Miracle Plays and lore
of Judas as the unlucky, evil ginger, it still seems a bit baffling how
this stage convention would have been employed-- if indeed it was with
any regularity (how can we know?)-- in productions staged before a
ginger monarch.
And, as Basch posted, I, too, recall reading in more than one source
that Shylock was often played wearing a big red nose, but,
unfortunately, I do not have the citations handy, and it may have been
later productions as suggested by one member. At first I thought it
might have appeared in Shapiro's excellent _Shakespeare and the Jews_,
but I'll have to consult my notes. (It's not in Greenblatt's _Will in
the World_, I just checked.) When I read about it conducting research
for a masters' MOV project, it was presented as entirely conventional,
as if it were common cultural knowledge, but more comedic than menacing,
like a modern-day clown rather than a villain. Also, Shapiro's work
does makes the case for the fact that there were Jews in Elizabethan
England, despite their having been driven from the country in 1290 by
Edward I, so Early Moderns may well have actually seen Jews contrary to
Basch's comment about "Jews that they had never seen."
Finally, yesterday, two members posted with quotes from AYLI about
Orlando's hair being of the "dissembling" color and then comment on
Judas, which Rosalind then glosses over, recanting her original
sentiment and reasserting her love. More importantly, however, in the
same passage Celia speaks of Rosalind as having "chestnut" hair, which
would seem to blow the whole red=evil theory out of the water since she
is not a menacing character but the heroine (chestnut effectively
putting her in the "ginger" category). Maybe we've gone off track a bit
here? It seems then that this could not have been an absolute and I'm
inclined to think that for the Bard the red wig on Shylock might well
have been an isolated usage-- iIFhe even used it for his own
productions. Elizabeth I, not being a Jewish man, could likely have
simply overlooked the matter.
Best,
Nicole Coonradt
[Editor's Note: The _Bedazzled_ to which Nicole refers is a re-make of
the classic 1967 film of the same name that starred Peter Cook and
Dudley Moore and was directed by Stanley Donen. Images at the Internet
Movie Database remind me that Lilian Lust - played by Rachel Welsh -
wore a variety of skimpy two-piece attires, some sparkly, some white,
and at least one was red:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAEzvi815TA&mode=related&search= Since
seeing this film, I have craved having a Frobisher & Gleason Raspberry
Flavoured Ice Lolly. But who could forget such memorable moments as the
nuns whose initiation ceremony involves jumping up and down on
trampolines - "For her tremendous feet" - The Order of the Leaping
Berylians: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IECuJDpc_4&NR=1 - or the
Frooney Green Eyewash Men - or Stanley the intellectual: You'd like to
be the sort of person who can use words like 'inarticulate'? - or "What
rotten sins I've got working for me," George says. "It must be the
wages." - or George's re-enacting of the fall of the angels with Stanley
and the Postbox - "I'm getting a bit bored with this, can't we change
places." How Miltonic that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr-Vxu_4ckA]
[5]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: V. Kerry Inman <
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Date: Tuesday, 21 Aug 2007 20:28:11 -0400
Subject: 18.0548 Redheads
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
From: Donald Bloom <
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>I
>also recall reading somewhere (Laurence Durrell, I believe, but other
>places, too) that red hair was (and is) considered unlucky in the Arabic
>world.
>
>Does anybody know what's going on here?
I asked my department head at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and
Civilizations, at the University of Pennsylvania. His reply.
"VK,
I've not heard that one.
ROGER ALLEN"
Roger Allen is noted for many works, but perhaps the best known and most
comprehensive: _The Arabic Literary Heritage_ Cambridge University
Press, 1998 (and in abbreviated paperback form in 2000, as Introduction
To Arabic Literature); an Arabic version of the larger volume is in
press in Cairo. This work has been extremely well received, and many
scholars now regard it as the standard work in the field.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~rallen/index.html
Because the Arabic world is so vast and diverse, the concept of red
headedness being unlucky may nevertheless exist somewhere in it. It is
just not prominent.
--V. Kerry Inman
[6]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Bridgman <
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Date: Wednesday, 22 Aug 2007 09:41:28 +0100
Subject: 18.0548 Redheads
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0548 Redheads
I've been looking at paintings of the Last Supper, and it seems
red-headed Judases only appeared in the 16th century, and in Northern
Europe. Here are two excellent examples:
Hans Holbein the younger (c. 1520-4)
http://www.wga.hu/art/h/holbein/hans_y/1525/10lastsu.jpg
Joos van Cleve (c. 1525-7)
http://www.wga.hu/art/c/cleve/joos/lament2.jpg
Italian Judases from the same period are usually black-haired.
Peter Bridgman
[7]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Edmund Taft <
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Date: Wednesday, 22 Aug 2007 10:13:12 -0400
Subject: Redheads
Larry Weiss writes:
>"So far as I have ever read, the red wig was introduced in the
>McCready/Irving era. I would be very interested in any primary source
>for the notion that it was current in 1596-1600."
That's my understanding too. Unless I've overlooked something, we have
NO evidence that Shakespeare played Shylock with a red whig and/or with
a big nose. As for Portia's comment asking who is who
(Shylock/Antonio), my guess is it's disingenuous not because of
Shylock's physical appearance, but because he would be dressed
differently (less sumptuous, more plain) than the Christians.
Ed Taft
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