April
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 270. Wednesday, 28 April 1993. From: Balz Engler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 93 21:14 +0200 Subject: Shakespeare at Weimar On 22-25 April the two German Shakespeare societies met in Weimar, held their first common meeting for 25 years, and formally re-united. As Ann Jennalie Cook pointed out during the festivities, the new (old) Shakespeare Gesellschaft has more members than all the other Shakespeare associations combined--actually about 2700. The "Shakespeare Gesellschaft" is the oldest literary (not scholarly) association of its kind in Germany, founded in 1864. Members do not only include Shakespearean scholars, but also high school teachers, actors, directors, students, and people who are simply Shakespeare fans. The academic programme was devoted to the topic "Shakespeare and Memory" and included lectures by Aleida Assmann on "The struggle of memories in the Histories" and by Kate Belsey on Bottom's Dream. The colloquium on the topic included contributions by Robert Weimann, Leo Salingar, and Zdenek Stribrny. Geoffrey Hartman lectured (in German) on Shakespeare and the imagination. Some of the contributions will be published in *Shakespeare Jahrbuch* 1994. Starting with the 1993 volume (which is out) Sh.Jb. publishes English summaries with contributions in German, by the way. The 1993 volume offers among other things (does it make sense to mention contributions in German to you out there?): "Recycled Film Codes and the Study of Shakespeare on Film" by Lawrence Guntner and Peter Drexler, "'Beginners, Please'; or First Start Your Play" by Robert Smallwood (on how productions begin), and "'Wormwood, Wormwood'" by R. Chris Hassel, Jr. Balz Engler, University of Basel, SwitzerlandThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 269. Wednesday, 28 April 1993. (1) From: Chantal Payette <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 15:43:51 -0400 Subj: Kenneth Branagh (2) From: Paul Budra <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 93 22:00:49 PDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0267 Rs: Historical Knowledge (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chantal Payette <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 15:43:51 -0400 Subject: Kenneth Branagh Could anyone tell me any details about the Renaissance Theatre Company and Kenneth Branagh. I'm read his "autobiography", but I would like to know more. Thank you ahead of time. You can respond to me directly. ChantalThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Budra <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 93 22:00:49 PDT Subject: 4.0267 Rs: Historical Knowledge Comment: Re: SHK 4.0267 Rs: Historical Knowledge Many thanks to Jean Peterson and Ron Macdonald. Ron's example is particularly helpful--just the sort of thing I'm looking for. Paul Budra Simon Fraser U. Vancouver
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 268. Tuesday, 27 April 1993. (1) From: Jean Peterson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 12:50:01 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0263 More on Branagh's *Ado* (2) From: NAOMI LIEBLER <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 93 09:47:00 EST Subj: RE: SHK 4.0265 *Theater of Envy*; Stepmothers; *TNK* (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jean Peterson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 12:50:01 -0400 Subject: 4.0263 More on Branagh's *Ado* Comment: Re: SHK 4.0263 More on Branagh's *Ado* >Keaton plays [Dogberry] as a psycho--the town loon, who has >been given the constable's job because no one else wants it, and >because the criminally insane might be pretty good at law enforcement. >I liked the violence in the interrogation scene; it made perfect >sense, and helped explain Borachio's confession, which is something >that I've never bought. > >I've always thought that the Dogberry scenes were hard to play >anyway. The change of tone is SO great. Going all the way and >depicting the seed, violent side of the Renaissance underclass as >really seedy and violent was a refreshing change. I found Paul Budra's comments on Keaton's Dogberry quite provocative -- especially since, in the film, class distinctions in the main plot were all but erased. Who could tell the difference between Beatrice & Hero, and the maids (especially since all wore the same gauzy, sexy dresses, were barefoot, and Beatrice's maid was played by Thompson's real-life mom?) So unimpressed is Leonato with his worldly status that he wears his everyday peasantly garb for his daughter's wedding (lines about Hero's rich wedding gown are conveniently cut, and she doesn't bother to change her clothes either). So the distinctions of class are sentimentally elided, and the return of the repressed occurs in the underplot as a demonized & psychopathic underclass...weird. Jean Peterson (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: NAOMI LIEBLER <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 93 09:47:00 EST Subject: 4.0265 *Theater of Envy*; Stepmothers; *TNK* Comment: RE: SHK 4.0265 *Theater of Envy*; Stepmothers; *TNK* For Susan Harris, who wanted to know how Girard's "Theater of Envy" plays in Peoria: By the time he got to "A Theater of Envy," Girard's representation of the mimetic double did indeed come across as reductive, not to mention reiterative. But what he's reiterating there is a theoretical position he had already worked out--and much more carefully and compellingly, I think--in two earlier works, "Deceit, Desire, and the Novel" (Johns Hopkins UP, 1965) and "Violence and the Sacred" (Johns Hoplins UP, 1977), and in books less readily available here, "The Scapegoat" and "Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World." One of the many difficulties "Theater of Envy" presents to the reader is its superficial summation of these earlier efforts. If you want to trace Girard's theoretic, in a form more rigorously worked out than in this latest book, have a look at some of the earlier works. Cheers, Naomi C. Liebler Dept. of English Montclair State College Upper MOntclair, NJ 07043
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 267. Tuesday, 27 April 1993. (1) From: Ron Macdonald <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 08:51:00 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Shakespeare and History (2) From: Jean Peterson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 12:29:02 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0266 Q: Historical Knowledge; Re: Stepmothers (3) From: Joseph Lawrence Lyle <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 93 15:38:03 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0266 Q: Historical Knowledge; Re: Stepmothers (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ron Macdonald <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 08:51:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Shakespeare and History I think a moment in I.iii of *1 Henry IV* fits at least the first part of Paul Budra's bill, the moment when it becomes evident that the vehemently protesting Hotspur has either forgotten or never known in the first place that Richard has named Mortimer as the heir presumptive. In reply to Hotspur's assertion that he has seen King Henry "Trembling even at the name of Mortimer," Worcester feigns a kind of diffident uncertainty: "I cannot blame him: was not he proclaim'd / By Richard, that dead is, the next of blood?" (144-46). I have always read this as wholly disingenuous on Worcester's part: this wily old pol knows perfectly well whom Richard has designated as his successor. Trouble is, of course, Shakespeare does not, for, led astray by Holinshed, he is confusing Edmund Mortimer, younger brother of Roger, fourth Earl of March, with Edmund's nephew and Roger's son, the fifth Earl of March and also named Edmund, whom Richard had designated heir presumptive in 1398 on the death of his father. A small and ultimately irrelevant point, but it somehow reminds me of Mrs. Malaprop's headstrong allegory on the banks of the Nile: Sheridan knew, of course, that she should have said "alligator"; we know that *he* should have said "crocodile." --Ron Macdonald <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jean Peterson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 1993 12:29:02 -0400 Subject: 4.0266 Q: Historical Knowledge; Re: Stepmothers Comment: Re: SHK 4.0266 Q: Historical Knowledge; Re: Stepmothers For Paul Budra: for a wealth of knowledge on the subject, and for numerous examples of the complicated interplay of "historical" Shakespearean characters and their own history, you MUST see Phyllis Rackin's *Stages of History: Shakespeare's English Chronicles* (Cornell: 1990). Jean Peterson (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph Lawrence Lyle <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 27 Apr 93 15:38:03 -0400 Subject: 4.0266 Q: Historical Knowledge; Re: Stepmothers Comment: Re: SHK 4.0266 Q: Historical Knowledge; Re: Stepmothers The examples that spring to mind are _The Tempest_ II.i, where Gonzalo is confused about Carthage and _Henry V_ II.i (?) where Nell conflates Arthur and Moses -- but only because those are the plays I just taught. --Jay Lyle
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 266. Tuesday, 27 April 1993. (1) From: Paul Budra <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 26 Apr 93 15:04:56 PDT Subj: historical knowledge in the plays (2) From: Kay Stockholder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 26 Apr 93 17:34:32 PDT Subj: SHK 4.0265 *Theater of Envy*; Stepmothers; *TNK* (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Budra <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 26 Apr 93 15:04:56 PDT Subject: historical knowledge in the plays I have a general question for Shakesperians. I'm looking for moments in Shakespeare in which one of two things happen. Either the characters display an ignorance of history (I'm primarilly interested in English history, but also want to check classical, biblical, and other histories), or Shakespeare seems to be going out of his way to supply historical background information for his audience. I.E. he assumes the audience is ignorant of history. Among the latter might (I'm being tentative here) be included 1.2 of *R2*, in which the Duchess of Gloucester more or less reminds Gaunt of his own family history. An adjunct to this might be scenes in Shakespeare, and the surrounding drama, in which a character seems to have gotten what history he has from dramatic representation. There's a great scene of this in Jonson's *The Devil is an Ass*. I'd appreciate any speculations or examples. I've been looking at this stuff for so long that I'm afraid that I'm missing the obvious. Many thanks. Paul Budra Simon Fraser University Vancouver Canada (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 26 Apr 93 17:34:32 PDT Subject: *Theater of Envy*; Stepmothers; *TNK* Comment: SHK 4.0265 *Theater of Envy*; Stepmothers; *TNK* On stepmothers: One could say that Sycorax was Ariel's stepmother, though he was "born" from her cloven pine after rather than before the fact.