The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0358 Thursday, 7 June 2007
[1] From: Abigail Quart <
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Date: Wednesday, 16 May 2007 05:25:24 -0400
Subj: RE: SHK 18.0341 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
[2] From: Gabriel Egan <
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Date: Tuesday, 15 May 2007 23:00:43 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0341 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
[3] From: Edmund Taft <
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Date: Thursday, 17 May 2007 10:48:03 -0400
Subj: Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Abigail Quart <
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Date: Wednesday, 16 May 2007 05:25:24 -0400
Subject: 18.0341 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
Comment: RE: SHK 18.0341 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
Elliott H. Stone writes:
>"We all puzzle when
>we read the Shakespeare plays and poems over the most pleasing and
>sophisticated thoughts. The depths of the works can never be plumbed in a
>single performance on the stage. We need to read the works over and over
>again. Can we honestly believe that Shakespeare was writing just for an
>uneducated class of yeoman who filled up the yard and rough benches at
the
>Globe?"
Spoken words meant more then. All people had back then were words. We
have a highly visual culture with huge movie screens and vast close-ups
to give details. We have photography. They had perhaps, a few paintings
and sketches, laboriously done. We show, they told. We don't focus on
words the way they did. Our utterances can afford to lack the depth
theirs did because we have other ways to convey meaning. We don't
realize how much that changes us from the people who lived before these
last few centuries.
We have avalanches of books, newspapers, magazines, and the internet to
read. Those that could read then had a few precious books and letters.
We have public libraries. What did they have?
We have freedom of speech. They could be arrested for saying the wrong
thing. Lack of freedom fosters secret languages, codes, levels of meaning we
simply don't bother with because we can come right out and say what we mean.
It's possible that if we could hook up a few Elizabethans to one of our
modern diagnostic machines, their brains would light up very differently
from ours, because words were so much more important, and knowing the
correct meanings of secretive phrases so much more dangerous. They had
no film techniques like panning, or closeups, or intercutting to make
things crystal clear. Just words. Only words. The picture that is worth
a thousand words didn't exist for the common man.
Thus, that "uneducated yeoman" may have understood far more of
Shakespeare's dialog than we do simply because he had a lifetime's
experience of getting the most possible meaning from words he heard
because he had no other way of obtaining information that could be life
or death. Relaxing at a play would not change the way he habitually
listened.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gabriel Egan <
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Date: Tuesday, 15 May 2007 23:00:43 +0100
Subject: 18.0341 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0341 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
Elliott Stone asks a familiar question:
>Can we honestly believe that Shakespeare was
>writing just for an uneducated class of yeoman
>who filled up the yard and rough benches at the
>Globe?
I'll leave the argument from Lukas Erne's work for others to make, and
just want to comment that it's odd to assume that the Globe was full of
uneducated yeoman. Writing about Brome and Heywood's play The Witches of
Lancashire, Nathaniel Tomkyns in August 1634 reported himself surprised
at the number of "fine folk, gentlemen and gentlewomen" he found
watching it at the Globe. They were so numerous, he wrote, that he
thought their number exceeded all that London held of this type at this
time of year, the summer vacation. The play is considerably less
poetically complex than any of Shakespeare's. I imagine the benches were
not rough, since fine folk were content to sit on them.
Gabriel Egan
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Edmund Taft <
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Date: Thursday, 17 May 2007 10:48:03 -0400
Subject: Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
Elliott Stone asks, "Can we honestly believe that Shakespeare was
writing just for an uneducated class of yeoman who filled up the yard
and rough benches at the Globe?"
That's the claim a lot of scholars have made and still make. But it's
too limiting. There's no reason why Shakespeare didn't have multiple
purposes in mind:
1. writing for an immediate audience
2. writing for repeat audiences who want to attend the play again
because it is so fascinating/interesting/puzzling, etc.
3. writing for posterity.
4. writing for himself.
I suspect that Shakespeare had all of these purposes in mind when
writing some or most of his plays.
Ed Taft
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