August
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0423 Thursday, 29 August 2013
From: Larry Weiss <
Date: August 27, 2013 3:19:40 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Review of SBD
>I clearly remember the first lecture on Shakespeare at university.
>Open swung the door and in came the lecturer waving in her
>hands a journal with Shakespeare’s signatures and portraits
>and out flew, self-consciously, the first sentence: “Shakespeare
>never wrote those plays!” What followed was a dismissive rant
>about Shakespeare and Stratford-upon-Avon.
I was about to ask if that lecturer still has an academic posting, but then Dr. Martirosyan answered the question:
> . . . Time has passed. My former Oxfordian lecturer is a
>colleague today and, as I have discovered of late, favours
>Roger Manners - 5th Earl of Rutland, now. It speaks volumes
>about anti-Shakespeareanism, doesn’t it?
Yes it does, and it says even more about the discernment of university English departments. Please tell us if this person is still employed, where, at what academic rank and whether she has tenure.
[Editor’s Note: The response should be directly to Larry Weiss. –Hardy]
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0422 Thursday, 29 August 2013
From: Larry Weiss <
Date: August 27, 2013 4:26:37 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Shylock
David Bishop’s post illustrates a crucial fact about the Shylock controversy and, indeed, about every similar issue in the Canon: Where we stand depends on where we sit. As Bishop points out, for example, our evaluation of Jessica’s morality depends in large measure on whether we believe she was aware that the turquoise was her mother’s premarital gift to her father, which he cherished, and whether the restraints Shylock imposed on her were in care of her or to abuse her. Seen one way, Jessica’s theft rankles worse than the bite of a serpent’s tooth; she is more ungrateful with less cause than Goneril and Regan. Viewed another way, Jessica was merely obtaining needed recompense for the life of abuse she had been subjected to. Shakespeare doesn’t tell us if Jessica knew the provenance of the ring, or how restricted her life was, or whether the restrictions were out of a sense of paternal care of her or for some less meritorious motive. (By the way, contrary to Bishop’s assumption, we don’t know that Shylock kept her “immured from . . . marriage”; it is a fair presumption that, like Jews through the ages to and including today, he would have regarded his daughter as dead if she married outside his religion, but that is not the same thing as saying he prevented her from entering into marriage with a Jewish man. Again, Shakespeare is silent on the matter, leaving it for us to decide.)
Was Portia a racist? When Morocco chooses the wrong casket, she expresses relief: “let all of his complexion choose me so.” Whether or not we regard that as racist depends not on what Portia said but, rather, on whether we think it is racist to prefer to marry within our own race. If you think that is obnoxious, do you also regard the Jewish taboo of marrying outside the religion with the same distaste? These issues depend on the hearers’ feelings, not on the words Shakespeare wrote for the actors to say. He was usually very careful not to take sides; not out of political cowardice, but because it made for better theatre.
We really don’t know, and can never know, whether Shylock acts out of malice or justifiable outrage. Shakespeare doesn’t tell us; or, more accurately put, he tells us contradictory things (thus reflecting the actual human condition) and we can choose for ourselves how to harmonize or synthesize them. Harry Berger is spot on in making a similar point, as is John Drakakis although he differs in nuance.
Tell me about the critic and I will tell you what he or she thinks of Shylock. David Basch, for example, insists that Shylock is a commendable hero, the only admirable person in the play, who intends all along to save Antonio and sacrifice himself in order to assure Jessica’s patrimony, and Basch revises the action of the play to fit this theme. Surprising as this view is, we could predict that Basch would hold some such opinion once we learn that he has elsewhere urged the Israeli government to adopt a final solution to the Arab problem by absorbing the entire territory of the Palestine Mandate and expelling every last Arab from it. (He does not tell us where they should go or what should be done with them if they don’t go; be we can guess.) He has also defended Baruch Goldstein for murdering 29 Palestinian men, women and children at prayer in a mosque in Hebron, because Goldstein might have thought some of them called him a “dirty Jew.” Can we be surprised that someone who canonizes Goldstein would have a favorable view of Shylock?
I suppose John Drakakis was unaware of Basch’s other writings when he said that “Basch is too humane to be a liberal neo-con.” (As a neo-con myself [if I understand the term aright], I object to including Basch in the club. I would blackball him, but he would undoubtedly accuse me of anti-Semitism.)
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0421 Thursday, 29 August 2013
From: Joseph Egert <
Date: August 27, 2013 3:17:47 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: 10 Shakespeare Adaptations
Many thanks to Dave and Hardy for the link below to French’s ‘10 best’:
>The Observer: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/jun/01/the-10-best-modern-takes-shakespeare-film
>
>The 10 best modern takes on Shakespeare – in pictures
>As chosen by Philip French
>Saturday 1 June 2013
Here are a few more bests not to miss:
---CORIOLANUS: Manchurian Candidate (62)
---HAMLET: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (91)
---2H6: Spartacus (60)
---JULIUS CAESAR: Godfather (72)
---MACBETH: Deadly Affair (66)
---MERCHANT OF VENICE: Spy Who Came in from the Cold (65)
Fiddler on the Roof (71)
---OTHELLO: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (67)
---PERICLES: Chinatown (74)
---R 3: Incredibles (04)
Law and Order Criminal Intent TV episode: “Fico Di Capo” (04)
---R & J: Grease (78)
Shakespeare in Love (98)
---TEMPEST: Spartacus (60)
View From the Bridge (62)
Chinatown (74)
---All of the above: Theatre of Blood (73).
Enjoy!
Joe Egert
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0420 Thursday, 29 August 2013
From: Steve Roth <
Date: Sunday, Aug 25, 2013 at 11:25 AM
Subject: Shakespeare, Jonson, and the 1602 Additions The Spanish Tragedy
I have a question for the community regarding Douglas Bruster’s “Shakespearean Spellings and Handwriting in the Additional Passages Printed in the 1602 Spanish Tragedy.”
Which is nicely summarized in this recent NYT piece:
Much Ado About Who: Is It Really Shakespeare?
Further Proof of Shakespeare’s Hand in ‘The Spanish Tragedy’
Bruster follows in a lengthy tradition going back at least to Coleridge, arguing (based on handwriting deductions referencing the presumed Shakespeare passage in H8) that Shakespeare, not Ben Jonson, wrote the 1602 Spanish Tragedy additions.
My question: how do those who claim this explain the solid external evidence of Henslowe’s payments to Jonson on 25 Sept. 1601 (“upon hn writtinge of his adicians in geronymo”) and 22 June 1602 (for “new adicyons for Jeronymo”)?
(cf. Foakes, Henslowe’s Diary second edition, pp. 183 and 203.)
If find that Brian Vickers rather skims past this question in his 2012 “Identifying Shakespeare’s Additions to The Spanish Tragedy (1602): A New(er) Approach”:
“It is worth observing that we do not know whether Jonson, or Bird ever delivered these additions”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17450918.2012.660283
And Bruster, in his brief four-page article, never mentions these entries, offering purely internal evidence (unless you consider the H8 handwriting analysis to be external evidence, somewhat removed and inevitably somewhat speculative).
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but am quite curious: if Shakespeare wrote the additions that appeared in 1602, what do people think Henslowe was paying Jonson for?
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0419 Thursday, 29 August 2013
From: Peter Hyland <
Date: August 28, 2013 9:33:11 PM EDT
Subject: American Shakespeare Center
I assume that many members of this group will (like me) be attending The Blackfriars Conference in Staunton, Virginia in October, but I wonder if all members of the group are fully aware of the remarkable work done by the associated acting group at the American Shakespeare Center. This small repertory company, as its name implies, stages Shakespeare’s plays, but it also has an unparalleled record of staging non -Shakespearean plays from the early modern period. Over the past decade or so the company has staged not only comparatively popular plays like The Alchemist, Doctor Faustus, The Duchess of Malfi,and The Roaring Girl, but also plays that few other professional companies in the world can afford (or have attempted) to stage, such as Dido, Queen of Carthage, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, Look About You, and The Custom of the Country. By my count the company has mounted productions of almost thirty non-Shakespearean early modern plays since 2003. All of this is done in a beautiful replica of the Blackfriars Theatre that allows for genuine experimentation with “original practices” and a wonderfully intimate and relaxed experience for audiences.
Although tickets are not expensive, the actual work of staging does not come cheap. Staunton is an oddly isolated town, and the ASC needs all the help it can get, with promotion, and with groups coming to see the plays. If there is any possibility that you can take groups to the Blackfriars, you should surely do so. Check out the possibilities at:
http://americanshakespearecenter.com
It is increasingly true that postgraduate students are looking beyond Shakespeare for research topics, and the ASC provides astonishingly rich resources for facilitating this, including involvement with staging. If you don’t already know about it, look it up, and tell everyone you know.
Peter Hyland
[Editor’s Note: I whole-heartedly second Peter’s remarks. I have followed the ASC and its predecessor the SSE since the 1990 performance of Julius Caesar at the SAA Meeting in Philadelphia. Although I have not participated in one of Ralph Cohen’s NEH Summer Seminars, those who have are prolific authors of essays and books on the intersection of original theatrical practices and Shakespearean performance and criticism. I will be attending the Blackfriars Conference. It is one of my all-time-favorite Shakespeare conferences. If you are a theater professional, Shakespeare scholar or teacher, or lover of Early Modern Theatre, you owe it to yourself to attend this conference in the autumnal Shenandoah Valley, surely one of nature’s most beautiful expressions of color is to be seen at this time of year. Papers are short and to the point. Presenters keep to the agreed upon period lest they hear the ominous thunder sheet, and those who go over their time are carried off stage by THE BEAR! Ya gotta love it! –Hardy]