The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0152 Wednesday, 1 April 2009
[1] From: John W Kennedy <
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Date: Monday, 30 Mar 2009 20:38:39 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
[2] From: Bob Grumman <
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Date: Tuesday, 31 Mar 2009 07:07:19 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
[3] From: Joseph Egert <
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Date: Tuesday, 31 Mar 2009 14:51:36 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W Kennedy <
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Date: Monday, 30 Mar 2009 20:38:39 -0400
Subject: 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
Mari Bonomi <
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>Perhaps you do not find the drama inherent in family
>to be as significant as drama about kings and princes.
If so, that puts a rather severe restriction upon American drama from
the outset, seeing that America has few equivalents. To treat, e.g., the
Vanderbilts so would be merely vulgar, and few American politicians
have merited it, except for George Washington -- and George
Washington had become too sacrosanct to write about even in his own
lifetime. He appears, perforce, as a character in "Andre" [1798], but is
referred to throughout as merely "The General", apart from one
third-party reference in a speech hurriedly inserted after the first
performance. He appears in Fenimore Cooper's novel "The Spy" [1821], but
contemporary opinion expressly condemned that as being, per se, in bad
taste. I'm afraid that, like Jesus, Washington is not regarded as, in
Sayers' phrase, "really real".
My wife has just written a verse tragedy on the Parkman-Webster case.
Perhaps Harvard professors are nobility, of a sort.
On the other hand, how many British plays have dealt seriously with
kings and nobles since the Glorious Revolution?
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bob Grumman <
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Date: Tuesday, 31 Mar 2009 07:07:19 -0500
Subject: 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
Short response because I just floated an opinion, then a little
elaboration, not intending to argue it, which would take a book to do right.
I mentioned a handful of world-class plays and playwrights, though I may
not have called them "world-class." Twelfth Night would be one. They
should be enough to indicate what the ones on any list of fifty would be
like.
One: many more comedies than tragedies.
Two: The tragedies would have heroes whose downfalls were of more
significant consequence to the world than Willie Loman's. When Macbeth
died, the world lost someone more important than a salesman: it last a
poet. Nobility not required. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus is world-class, for me.
Three: preferable though not mandatory would be some attention to diction.
Four: screw naturalism and Ibsenism.
A last comment: what happens in families is meaningful and good plays
can be made about it, but the best plays are about what happens in the
world. A play can be about both, as some are, but none that is
explicitly about family only can be, in my view, a great play.
No more.
-- Bob G.
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Joseph Egert <
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Date: Tuesday, 31 Mar 2009 14:51:36 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0148 50 Best American Plays
Ms Bonomi writes:
>Simply because the heroes of American plays do not meet the
>Aristotelian conception of "nobility" (being kings and queens of
>their families rather than their nations), they are not robbed of
>the potential to be "great" men/women.
Indeed! In the most edifying of British plays, the kings, and by
extension their fellow lordlings, are robbed of that very potential
because they are kings and lords.
About ten days ago here in Freedom's Land, public television (PBS)
broadcast the Nunn production of KING LEAR, originally staged 2007 in
the UK, starring Ian McKellan in the title role. The Village Voice
review from 2007 still applies.
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/211338
The mismatched class accents grated on the ear, and Garai's pedestrian
Cordelia underwhelmed. Perhaps we need a musical adaptation like WEST
SIDE STORY to fully realize its operatic potential for our time.
In McKellen's post-play commentary, I was struck by his limited
interpretation of Lear's character, clearly a product of his ruling
class breeding. The actor fails to note the author's own judgment on the
king through Regan: "he hath ever but slenderly known himself." Lear
later explains why: "They told me I was everything." Like Joseph's
brothers, Cordelia's sisters are in part their father's creatures. They
and Edmund 'word' their fathers by tongue and pen. Lear arrives at
com-passion only through a personal Passion that strips off his royal
lendings to reveal yet one more fellow mortal, that other of the king's
Two Bodies. The play depicts this education (or 'reason in madness')
through Nature's purging storm in excruciating detail. At last, Lear
understands that words may not wield the matter: "tis a lie, I am not
ague-proof." Lesson learned.
Joe Egert
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