The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0426 Monday, 3 August 2009
[1] From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 3 Aug 2009 10:39:29 -0500
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0419 Updating Shakespeare's Plays
[2] From: Julie Sutherland <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 03 Aug 2009 09:01:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0414 Updating Shakespeare's Plays
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 3 Aug 2009 10:39:29 -0500
Subject: 20.0419 Updating Shakespeare's Plays
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0419 Updating Shakespeare's Plays
Terence Hawkes writes: "What an enlightened literary criticism needs is
an analysis which dissects these productions, rejects their
preconceptions, and considers seriously the state of mind which they
imply. This won't enable us to connect with Shakespeare's history, which
in many aspects remains thankfully unavailable. But it will reveal a
number of truths about our present."
I find myself in agreement but with certain qualifications.
Dissection of literary works (read or performed) is not done with
scalpel and forceps but with the same words, ideas and process of reason
by which the original work was done. The literary pathologist always has
to keep that fact in mind: he or she is as much a poet or dreamer as the
author. This does not license "junk" criticism, or suggest that
anybody's half-baked impressions are as useful as a well-reasoned
interpretation by a knowledgeable and insightful reader. But it is (if
remembered) a useful corrective to arrogance and obscurity.
Preconceptions need not be rejected so much as recognized and overcome.
The grosser prejudices (racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and such) we
reject out of hand, of course, but we have to guard against our
antagonism to them distorting our judgment. Treating a late 16th mind as
if it were trying to think like an early 21st century mind gets us
nowhere. We will either judge it unfairly (because it fails to do so) or
misinterpret it (to make it seem like it does).
The phrase "truths about our present" makes me a trifle uneasy. It
sounds a bit grand for the likes of me. Clearly these truths are a lot
of what Hawkes and all the rest of us are looking in for in Shakespeare,
whether in reading, or watching, or acting it. But stating it that way
might lead the unwary into a kind of interpretation that (as I
understand him) Hawkes is trying to prevent. ("I know more about
Shakespeare and what he means because I am God; other professors drop by
my office from time to time to ask me to clarify passages they're
uncertain about. Or they ought to.")
I hope I haven't either misread or trivialized what TH was getting at --
correction, I have I haven't misread him too badly. His preconceptions
and my preconceptions remain in place despite what we think -- or think
we've thought. The lunatic, the critic and the poet are of imagination
all compact, as Peter Quince goes on to prove.
Cheers,
don
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Julie Sutherland <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 03 Aug 2009 09:01:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 20.0414 Updating Shakespeare's Plays
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0414 Updating Shakespeare's Plays
I also agree there have been some very poorly chosen settings into which
Shakespeare's plays have been thrown, which make the company's agenda
seem too strong and feel as though Shakespeare's play takes a back seat
to the politics at hand.
I don't think, however, that these things are never done with more
recent plays. I do agree that we aren't typically as drastic as putting
"Death of a Salesman" in war-torn Kosovo, etc., but I would argue we
haven't YET because we're still too close to the period in which Miller
or Williams or Hellman wrote their plays. A time may come when we will
'update' these plays, or transfer them to a different period. In the
mean time, we still interpret them, it would seem, through an updated lens.
I have seen productions of "Death of a Salesman" in which Linda Loman is
not a loyal and loving wife, patient about her husband's wild dreams and
infidelities. I have seen a production of You Can't Take it With You in
which Rheba and Donald were Irish immigrants rather than black servants.
I'm not necessarily saying these interpretations were brilliant -- but
it does suggest our inventive minds are at work when we feel that a
representation that seems uncomfortable or inaccessible in 2009 needs to
be re-assessed.
Regards,
Julie Sutherland
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