The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.027  Wednesday, 21 January 2015

 

From:        John Drakakis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         January 21, 2015 at 5:29:55 AM EST

Subject:    RE: SHAKSPER: Interpretation versus Reading

 

David Bishop’s insisting on an absolute ‘truth’ raises a number of problems, and while issues of ‘reason’ and ‘plausibility’ drive our narratives, we do need from time to time to question them.  Also I take Larry Weiss’s point that what I have labelled ‘caricature’ are the utterances of actual Shakespeare scholars; my response to that is to express no surprise since scholars sometimes say the daftest of things. Robert Appelbaum’s ‘worries’ however should concern us all since they get to the heart of ‘research’ especially in the form of what does and does not get publicly funded. Unfortunately the model for funding seems to be borrowed from the sciences, and privileges empiricism as a method. We need a much more complex model for ‘interpretation’ and ‘reading’ that can substantially challenge the limited historicist (or should I say ‘historical’) mode, since the two are not the same thing and should not be conflated. While some may find this endless definition of terms tedious, I’m afraid that it matters and in areas that take us well beyond the business of trying to understand what we read.

 

Cheers

John Drakakis

 

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