The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0215 Wednesday, 6 May 2009
[1] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 02 May 2009 17:06:24 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
[2] From: Ward Elliott <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 2 May 2009 14:13:05 -0700
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
[3] From: Bill Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 2 May 2009 17:30:19 EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
[4] From: John W Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 02 May 2009 22:21:02 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
[5] From: Peter Holland <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 3 May 2009 03:07:22 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
[6] From: Gary Taylor<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 04 May 2009 21:57:24 -0400
Subj: Cardenio
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 02 May 2009 17:06:24 -0400
Subject: 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Arnie Pearlstein says that Charles Hamilton's assertion that The Second
Maiden's Tragedy (almost certainly by Middleton)
>is still the most plausible one out there. I have not seen a
>single convincing refutation of his claims.
I have commented on Hamilton's contention in prior posts, which can be
obtained from the SHAKSPER archives. For what it's worth, here is a
summary of my reaction to Hamilton's book (citations are to his book, C.
Hamilton, Shakespeare with John Fletcher, Cardenio or The Second
Maiden's Tragedy [Glenbrdidge Pub. 1994]).
? Hamilton (then 82 years old) held himself out as a palaeographer, not
a Shakespearean scholar; and, indeed, his knowledge of Shakespeare
appears shallow.
? The play called "Cardenio" by Hamilton is attributed to others by more
qualified Shakespearean scholars, most recently, and with a general
consensus, to Middleton. See Hamilton Ch. VII.
? The main plot bears little or no resemblance to the Cardenio tale in
Don Quixote (Chs. XXIV, et seq.), even as summarized by Hamilton
(190-93, 195), but the subplot dramatizes another tale interpolated in
the Cardenio episode of Don Quixote (Chs. XXXIII-XXXV) and it employs
some of the imagery from that novella (see Hamilton 199-200, 203-04).
? The Second Maiden's Tragedy is generally a poor play, not up to the
worst of WS's early output. It is as Senecan as Titus Andronicus. In Act
III the heroine happily commits suicide to prevent her abduction, and
her lover gleefully murders a minor character. Then, in V.i, there are
five killings within the space of twenty-five lines. The rapid-fire
deaths evoked nothing but laughter from the audience at a performance I
attended. And all this says nothing about the Tyrant's necrophilia.
Finally, the Tyrant dies as a result of kissing the lips of the dead
lady to which the hero has applied poisoned paint. Yet Hamilton insisted
on calling this a "romance," akin to Per, Cym, WT, Tem and TNK and
asserted that his attribution was based on that "fact," not on the
palaeographical evidence he emphasized in his book.
? Hamilton argues that The Second Maiden's Tragedy contains numerous
neologisms, which he cites as evidence of its Shakespearean origin.
Actually, Hamilton seems to be confusing neologisms with terms not
commonly used elsewhere in the Canon, such as <Life>used as a mild oath,
and unusual contractions, such as "alate."
? There are numerous other points of major distinction between this play
and the generally recognized canon. For example: (1) This play has no
locus in quo; (2) Major characters ("the Tyrant" and "the Lady," and
"the Wife" in the subplot) have no names; (3) The villains in both plots
are motiveless; except possibly by unexplained lust, and there is very
little sense or inevitability in the actions of other characters; (4)
the main plot and subplot, while parallel, do not have points of
connexion; (5) the characters speak in trite expository fashion, almost
entirely devoid of expressive poetry; (6) related to this, the language
does not have a Shakespearean flavour and, as noted above, the author
frequently uses casual terms not appearing elsewhere in the Canon.
? As for Hamilton's "palaeographic" analysis, he said in response to a
question in the post-performance discussion on March 17, 1996 that he
did not perform a handwriting analysis. But his book does heavily
emphasize that sort of analysis. Hamilton seems to rely only on the fact
that the secretary hand in the MS of The Second Maiden's Tragedy
resembles the secretary hand in the body of WS's will. Hamilton believes
that WS himself wrote out the will, which seems improbable. He also
believes that WS had a stroke and/or was poisoned during the composition
of the will; and I have a difficult time seeing how this advances his
argument. It does not appear that Hamilton examined any other WS
holographs except the other signatures. A comparison with Hand D in STM
would be more useful than a comparison with the will (unless Paul
Werstine is correct that Hand D is scribal). I surmise that secretary
hand, being so different from modern, round or italic script, will look
the same regardless of the scribe. In fairness, Hamilton's alphabetical
comparison of words and letters in WS's will and the MS of The Second
Maiden's Tragedy (Hamilton 139-40). makes them look more similar to each
other than they do to the plate in Work, 2d ed. at p.1791, albeit they
are the same kind of script. I suppose it is possible that the scrivener
who copied WS's will was also employed to make a fair copy of The Second
Maiden's Tragedy.
? Ward Elliott and Robert J. Valenza's stylometric analysis produced 22
rejections for this play, tied with Locrine and Fair Em for the most
rejections of all the apocryphal plays subjected to the tests. "Two
Tough Nuts to Crack: Did Shakespeare Write the 'Shakespeare' Portions of
Sir Thomas More and Edward III?" (available on-line at
(http://govt.claremontmckenna.edu/welliott/UTConference/2ToughNuts.pdf)
at 9. Thus, it appears that this play cannot be by Shakespeare.
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ward Elliott <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 2 May 2009 14:13:05 -0700
Subject: 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Neither of the extant candidate Cardenios, The Second Maiden's Tragedy
nor The Double Falsehood, tests anywhere near Shakespeare. Taken as
whole plays, they and all other plays from the Shakespeare Apocrypha are
in different stylometric planets or galaxies, far too discrepant from
core Shakespeare to be could-be's by our tests. The Second Maid's
Tragedy has 22 Shakespeare rejections in 48 tests, The Double Falsehood
has 11. No play in our Shakespeare core has more than two Shakespeare
rejections.
http://govt.cmc.edu/welliott/UTConference/Oxford_by_Numbers.pdf,
Appendix One, p. 403.
This does not rule out the possibility that Shakespeare might have
written parts of each play, as most people now think is true of Edward
III and Sir Thomas More. So do we of Edward III; STMO still seems
doubtful to us, but at least both plays have consensus "Shakespeare"
parts for us and others to test. We know of no such consensus on The
Second Maiden's Tragedy, nor on The Double Falsehood.
Yours,
Ward Elliott
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bill Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 2 May 2009 17:30:19 EDT
Subject: 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Arnie Perlstein says: "I have looked very closely at Hamilton's claims,
I've read [The Second Maiden's Tragedy], Theobald's Double Falshood,
and the Maid's Tragedy, and considered all of them in relation to
Cervantes, on the one hand, and Shakespeare and Fletcher, on the other
hand, and, all things considered, I think that Hamilton's claim [that
Second Maiden's Tragedy is identifiable with Cardenio] is still the most
plausible one out there. I have not seen a single convincing refutation
of his claims."
I am surprised that in Arnie's canvassing of this matter "there is not a
single word mentioned regarding" the (to my mind) overwhelming
linguistic and other stylistic evidence that Thomas Middleton was the
author of Second Maiden's Tragedy. And that's not just a Gary Taylor
thing, although he has included SMT (as The Lady's Tragedy) in his
edition of Middleton's works. Middleton's authorship is widely accepted
and was demonstrated pretty convincingly by David Lake and Mac Jackson
when Taylor was still an undergraduate.
As to Hamilton's arguments, the connection of SMT to Don Quixote is
marginal at best. The subplot of SMT is based on a inset tale told by a
character in the tale of Cardenio (which is itself an inset tale of the
larger Quixote narrative). The characters of the Cardenio narrative
proper do not appear in the tale used by the author of SMT, so it is
hard to imagine why he would call his play after the not-quite-source of
his subplot. And a large part of Hamilton's argument is his
identification of the handwriting of the SMT manuscript with that of
Shakespeare. This identification has not been accepted.
Theobald's Double Falsehood on the other hand does follow the actual
Cardenio narrative from Quixote and, although it's not a slamdunk, there
are significant circumstantial and stylistic arguments to be made for
its identification as a revision/adaption of the Shakespeare/Fletcher play.
Bill Lloyd
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 02 May 2009 22:21:02 -0400
Subject: 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
From: Arnie Perlstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
>I just browsed the link you provided, Stefanie, and was
>disappointed, but not surprised, that among the various abstracts
>provided, there is not a single word mentioned regarding Hamilton's
>claims that The Second Maiden's Tragedy (TSMT) is the missing
>Cardenio. I have looked very closely at Hamilton's claims, I've read
>TSMT, Theobald's Double Falshood, and the Maid's Tragedy, and
>considered all of them in relation to Cervantes, on the one hand,
>and Shakespeare and Fletcher, on the other hand, and, all things
>considered, I think that Hamilton's claim is still the most plausible
>one out there. I have not seen a single convincing refutation of his
claims.
You are not convinced by the facts that:
* the A plot of 2MT has no resemblance worth mentioning to the Cardenio
story?
* it concludes with the villain being assassinated by the application of
poisoned cosmetics to a corpse
that he proceeds to kiss?
* the B plot is clearly based on a /different/ episode from "Don
Quixote", but changes it from a cautionary tale to an out-Heroding
bloodbath that ends with /all/ the characters killing one another, so
that the hero of the otherwise completely unconnected A plot has to drop
in order to command the servants to clear the dead bodies off the stage?
* and that this remarkable gorefest is supposed by Hamilton to have been
written by Shakespeare at about the same time as "Cymbeline", "The
Winter's Tale", and "The Tempest"?
Pfaugh! The only material hand Shakespeare could have had in the thing
would be if he had written it for the King's Men's annual Midnight
Follies show -- only the King's Men didn't have an annual Midnight
Follies show.
One might further add that the characters all have either no names at
all, or pseudo-Latinate type names, that the play is set in no
discernible time or place, real or fictitious, that Hamilton's argument
is based on paleographic arguments he was wholly unqualified to make,
and that Middleton scholars agree 2MT to be his. One might also point
out Hamilton's Pelion-on-Ossa attempt to make "Double Falshood" derive
from 2MT.
From: John Cox <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
>I don't know what Gary Taylor has done, but Stephen Greenblatt
>rewrote Cardenio with playwright Arthur Mee. Stephen has a very
>entertaining talk about the play, including the witty line, "Mee and
I . . . ."
They have written a play that has roughly the same familial relation to
"Cardenio" that Stoppard's "Travesties" has to Joyce's "Ulysses", being
a play about a troupe of modern actors performing a newly- discovered
"Cardenio". It is not in any sense a "rewrite", "reconstruction", or
what-have-you. As I remarked here at the time, it is essentially a
piece of literary laboratory equipment for Greenblatt's Mobility Studies.
From: Bill Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
>So, yes he attempted to edit out Theobald's parts and he did (as he
>told the audience before the reading) use Shelton's 1612 Quixote
>translation to re-Quixotify his version.
What he /supposes/ to be Theobald's parts, at least.
[5]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Holland <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 3 May 2009 03:07:22 -0400
Subject: 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0207 Gary Taylor's Cardenio
John Cox mentioned Stephen Greenblatt's co-authorship of a version of
Cardenio. I hope he won't mind my pointing out that the co-author is
Charles Mee, not, as John wrote, Arthur Mee.
For Charles Mee's plays, written as part of 'the (re)making project',
see http://charlesmee.org/indexf.html. Mee makes his plays freely
available for others to rework but, alas, Cardenio is not yet on the
site. On the production of the Greenblatt/Mee version, see for instance
http://www.tcg.org/tools/newplays/details.cfm?ShowID=1 and there is an
interview with Greenblatt about it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN1eoANmAiI&feature=related
Arthur Mee was the editor of The Children's Encyclopedia, a multi-volume
work I read with great joy as a child!
Peter Holland
[6]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gary Taylor<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 04 May 2009 21:57:24 -0400
Subject: Cardenio
I have been working on my reconstruction, on and off, for more than
twenty years. It follows naturally from my controversial "reconstructed
text" of Pericles, published in 1986, much used in the theatre, much
reviled by scholars. There was a rehearsed public reading of my first
draft of "Cardenio" in New York City in the late 1990s, and since 2006
there have been a series of readings (in New York, Williamstown, Florida
State University, Washington D.C., and most recently at the Blackfriars
theatre in Staunton and the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre). My version is
completely independent of, and quite different from, the Greenblatt or
Richards version. I have done two things. First, using the most
up-to-date attribution techniques known to me, I have sought to identify
which elements of "Double Falshood" are the work of Theobald, rather
than Fletcher or Shakespeare, and to eliminate them: sometimes this is a
matter of simple cutting, in other cases of conjectural emendation,
attempting to restore a word that Theobald censored or replaced to suit
eighteenth-century taste. Neither Greenblatt nor Richards attempted this
first stage; indeed, neither was really equipped to do so, because
(despite their many enviable talents as writers and critics) neither is
an early modern editor or a specialist in attribution. Secondly -- and
here I am on much shakier ground, and know it -- where it seems to me
there is good evidence of macro-intervention by Theobald, affecting the
structure of the original play, I have attempted to re-create the
original. Like Greenblatt and Richards, in doing so I have made use of
the 1612 translation of Don Quixote. Unlike Greenblatt, I have not
written a completely new play, loosely based on Don Quixote -- and
certainly, I have made no use of the Tale of the Curious Impertinent
(which the King's Men had already staged in Middleton's brilliant play
"The Lady's Tragedy", aka "The Second Maiden's Tragedy", only a year or
so before "Cardenio", and which they would certainly not have used again
in 1612-13). In any case, this second stage is the "creative" part of my
reconstruction. I have set myself certain rules that the new material
must satisfy, but I don't for a moment believe that those rules will
satisfy all Shakespearians (or Fletcherians).
The two other versions performed over the last year may very well be
more "creative" than my own. People will have to come to their own
conclusions about my relative merits as a poet and playwright. But my
reconstruction has continued to evolve, as I have learned from the
actors, directors, audiences, and scholars involved in the series of
staged readings and, now, the Wellington production which is currently
in rehearsal. So, any reports about my version have to be understood as
provisional. I expect to learn more from the public response to the
Wellington production, and from the distinguished group of scholars,
from New Zealand and around the world, who will see the production and
participate in a scholarly colloquium about "Cardenio". No doubt I will
want to make another set of revisions as a result of these upcoming
events. I will also, at some point, need to read what Greenblatt and
Richards have done (rather than relying on scattered reports). I will
eventually make available the results of my scholarly investigation of
the text of "Double Falsehood", and l will also eventually make public
the text of my "creative reconstruction".
But don't expect to see my "creative reconstruction" in any edition of
Shakespeare's Complete Works!
I don't want to get into a debate about a process that is still ongoing,
and I don't wish to criticize either Richards or Greenblatt. I'm just
doing something different than they have done. Moreover, they have
finished, and I haven't!
Gary Taylor
George Matthew Edgar Professor of English
http://www.english.fsu.edu/faculty/gtaylor.htm
General Editor, The Oxford Middleton
http://thomasmiddleton.org
Director, History of Text Technologies
http://hott.fsu.edu
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