Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 58. Sunday, 16 Sep 1990. (1) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 21:27:43 EDT (26 lines) From: Steve Urkowitz <SURCC@CUNYVM> Subject: Re: The Second-Best Bed, Shakespeare's Life (2) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 22:14:26 EDT (26 lines) From: Steve Urkowitz <SURCC@CUNYVM> Subject: Re: Richard Levin, Classic Criticism (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 21:27:43 EDT From: Steve Urkowitz <SURCC@CUNYVM> Subject: Re: The Second-Best Bed, Shakespeare's Life About the bed: We are what we eat, and we also are what we look at. Facts, such as the appearance of the 2nd-best bed in Will's will, are indeed appealing, but we may not be able to weave them into our particular narratives. If we spend a lot of time looking at the compositors of Q1 *King Lear* then we may want to make the compositors the most important figures in our stories about how that text took its peculiar shape. When I chose to look at the theatrical sensibility behind entrances and exits in that same text, some critics felt that I was looking at unimportant things, mere stagecraft, actors' concerns. But I spun out my narrative that touched on lots of stage events. By choosing what we eat or what we look at we shape our worlds. Perhaps because I grew up looking at odd places and eating odd things, I'm not so upset when I see other people's very different choices. You want to do testamentary beds? Fine! You think they're silly? That's your option. But too much of the limited supply of academic good will often seems to me to be squandered as one group of vegetarians castigates a different group of duck-roasters. The delightful satires generated by Richard Levin may serve as a helpful antidote to our sometimes too-fierce condemnations of other critics' sins of commission or omission. Steve Urkowitz, SURCC at CUNYVM (2) --------------------------------------------------------------28---- Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 22:14:26 EDT From: Steve Urkowitz <SURCC@CUNYVM> Subject: Re: Richard Levin, Classic Criticism When I think of the critical texts that most shaped my own critical vocabulary, the items that come to mind are Bernard Beckerman, *Shakespeare at the Globe--1599-1609*, Hereward T. Price, *Construction in Shakespeare*, Michael Long, *The Unnatural Scene*, C.L. Barber and R. Wheeler, *The Whole Journey*, and then a group of essays recently on feminist issues. These include Lynda Boose, "The Family in Shakespeare Studies . . ." Renaissance Quarterly 40 (1987), and others in *The Woman's Part* ed. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz. Other exciting essays are by Stephen Booth, "On the Value of *Hamlet*" in N. Rabkin, *Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama* and Booth's *King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy.* These people seem particularly sensitive to drama as a fluid event manipulating emotional and intellectual power. My earliest training was in math and science, and these folks tapped the same sources of delight that I had found in differential equations and tensors: elegance, rigor, quickness. Do let me know what you think if you try them. Steve Urkowitz English, City College of New York, SURCC@CUNYVM