December
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 898. Sunday, 5 December 1993. (1) From: Roy Flannagan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 4 December 93, 09:57:00 EST Subj: Masques (2) From: Georgianna Ziegler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 04 Dec 1993 13:25:43 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0896 Q: Masques (3) From: A.G. Bennett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 4 Dec 1993 13:36 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0896 Q: Masques (4) From: Stephen Orgel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 4 Dec 1993 17:24:34 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0896 Q: Masques (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Roy Flannagan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 4 December 93, 09:57:00 EST Subject: Masques On unambiguous masques: if Stephen Orgel is listening, he can remember for us where he modified some of his earlier opinions, in an an article he wrote about 1991? David Norbrook has also written very capably on the political subtexts of masques, as in his essay "The reformation of the masque," in {The Court Masque}, ed. David Lindley (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984). Roy Flannagan, Ohio University (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Georgianna Ziegler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 04 Dec 1993 13:25:43 -0500 Subject: 4.0896 Q: Masques Comment: Re: SHK 4.0896 Q: Masques For at least one other non-Orgelian discussion of Jonson's masques, see the article by Marion Wynne-Davies, "The Queen's Masque: Renaissance Women and the Seventeenth-Century Court Masque," in GLORIANA's FACE... ed. Wynne-Davies and Cerasano (Harvester, 1992). (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: A.G. Bennett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 4 Dec 1993 13:36 EDT Subject: 4.0896 Q: Masques Comment: Re: SHK 4.0896 Q: Masques Dear James McKenna: Barbara Keifer Lewalski's latest book, _Writing Women in Jacobean England_ (1993) has some interesting things to say about Jonson's masques and the roles James' queen, Anne, played in them-- both as a participant in performance and behind the scenes in commissioning works. Although the logical inference here is still that the masques supported the institution of monarchy, Lewalski does some interesting things with the contention that Anne "foster[ed] cultural myths and practices which enhanced her own dignity and power." The masques may have been pro-monarchical, but they didn't have to be pro patriarchy, seems to be the point. Just a thought.... Alex Bennett (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephen Orgel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 4 Dec 1993 17:24:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: 4.0896 Q: Masques Comment: Re: SHK 4.0896 Q: Masques C'mon now, I don't believe I ever claimed that masques were unambiguous. On the contrary, my argument in the last chapter of INIGO JONES was that, like most symbolic forms, they meant what the observer wanted them to mean. But anyway, times have changed--big Inigo was written in 1972; so David Norbrook argues that the masque is always an adversarial form--this strikes me as overstated, but on the right track. You could also look at a recent piece of mine on OBERON in a collection called SOLICITING INTERPRETATION, edd. K. Maus and E. Harvey. There are many essays on the subject in a volume edited by David Lindley, the title of which I forget. The most startling work on the doubleness of Jonson's masques is Dale Randall's book on The Gipsies Metamorphosed. What we, as modern literary critics, tend not to take seriously in a form like the masque is the realities of the patronage system, and we tend to think that writing to the order of a patron is a violation of the artist's integrity (whereas, eg, writing something a publisher will buy because it will sell isn't). But that's an anachronistic notion of artistic integrity; when Jonson told Drummond he wouldn't flatter though he saw death, he wasn't being disingenuous; he didn't think of himself as flattering the king. What he was doing was as old as Horace and Virgil: laudando praecipere. Nuff. Next person who compares me to Tillyard gets a custard pie in the kisser. S. Orgel
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 897. Saturday, 4 December 1993. From: James McKenna <MCKENNJI@UCBEH> Date: Friday, 03 Dec 1993 22:17:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: Renaissance manuscript culture Dear All, In digging for information about Gascoigne's use and misuse of manuscript conventions in _Master F. J._, I found much on Gascoigne and and quite a bit on _F. J._, and, so far, nothing on the structure of circulating manuscripts. Has anyone done any work on this? What I'm interested in is analysis of audience expectations and some general idea of what _really_ circulated in the late sixteenth century. I'm looking for more than the commonplaces distinguishing aristocratic writing from commercial writing. Daniel Javitch has an interesting article (_Genre_ 15(2-3): "The Impure Motives of Elizabethan Poetry") that claims that Elizabethan poetry is about self-advertising and rhetorical ability ("I can make anything look like anything else, so hire me to write your speeches"). That really has me wondereing what was in those manuscripts in terms of marginalia and commentary. Did any responses get recorded in manuscripts? What sort of works got grouped together _in manuscript_, not in imprinted miscellanies. If you've got any ideas or have seen some somewhere, write to me on the list or privately. Thanks, James McKennaThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 896. Saturday, 4 December 1993. From: James McKenna <MCKENNJI@UCBEH> Date: Friday, 03 Dec 1993 21:48:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: Query about masques Dear Everybody, I'm doing some work on Jonson's masques with Inigo Jones, the early ones in particular, and I'm finding lots by Stephen Orgel, and not much by anyone else. This is okay, since Orgel's analysis is beautiful, but I'm finding what looks like a circularity in Orgel's arguments about the masques, and I'd like to see what some other minds have thought. The problem I've encountered is that Orgel neatly defines away ambiguity in the masques by claiming that they a priori support and justify the monarchy. But what is Jonson doing writing these flat praises for James and the monarchy at the same time he is utterly deflating every other human pretension? I begin to hear echoes of Tillyard in his argument as it expands. That's not bad in itself, but I thought our ideas had gotten dicier since Tillyard. Ben Jonson wrote a _lot_ of masques at the same time he was writing his plays. His poetry is a little easier to justify with the plays because of its famous ambiguity. The masques, however, _appear_ to be unambiguous, just like Orgel says they are. What do we do with a guy who writes _Epicoene_ and _The Masque of Queens_ in the same year (1609)? As Orgel points out, masque "is the opposite of satire." I can think of some ways to fit all this together, but it's so weird that I'd love to see what someone else thinks. If you've got any ideas or have seen some somewhere, write me on the list or privately. Thanks, James McKennaThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 895. Saturday, 4 December 1993. (1) From: Chris Kendall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 3 Dec 1993 15:06:43 -0700 (MST) Subj: Shakespeare spinoffs (2) From: Laura White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 03 Dec 1993 21:58:47 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0888 Spinoffs (3) From: John Gouws <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 3 Dec 1993 22:31:00 +0200 (EET) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0887 Re: Death in *Hamlet* and *Julius Caesar* (4) From: William Godshallk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 03 Dec 1993 21:47:37 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0884 Q: Pantomime (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chris Kendall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 3 Dec 1993 15:06:43 -0700 (MST) Subject: Shakespeare spinoffs If you're including works about Shakespeare himself you might look at William Gibson's play "A Cry of Players", loosely based on speculation about WS's early years. Chris Kendall |This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Laura White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 03 Dec 1993 21:58:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 4.0888 Spinoffs Comment: Re: SHK 4.0888 Spinoffs Thanks so much for all the Spinoff help, List members. I'm saving everyone's suggestions! Laurie White (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Gouws <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 3 Dec 1993 22:31:00 +0200 (EET) Subject: 4.0887 Re: Death in *Hamlet* and *Julius Caesar* Comment: Re: SHK 4.0887 Re: Death in *Hamlet* and *Julius Caesar* An obvious source to consult on death and Hamlet is Roland Mushat Frye, _The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600_ (Princeton, 1984). Coals to Newscastle, no doubt. John Gouws - Department of English - Rhodes University P.O. Box 94 - Grahamstown 6140 - South Africa Internet:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Telephone: (0461) 318402 or 318400 (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Godshallk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 03 Dec 1993 21:47:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: 4.0884 Q: Pantomime Comment: Re: SHK 4.0884 Q: Pantomime Dear Denis Knowles, The Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC) puts on a English-type panto each holiday season. This year, it's LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD. You might call them (513-421-3556) for more information. My kids love the panto. Bill Godshalk
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 894. Saturday, 4 December 1993. From: Fran Teague <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 03 Dec 93 11:27:27 EST Subject: Euonyms This morning I puzzled over a description in the Atlanta _Journal-Constitution_ that said a gardener had used "yellow, euonymous, gold-splashed aucuba leaves" (Sect. C, p. 1). And when I pick up my e-mail, SHAKSPER provides me with an explanation of "euonym." I think the journalist believes "aucuba" is somehow cognate with "aurum," but since I'm not turning "aucuba" up in my desk dictionary I'll have to keep puzzling over it. Whether "euonymous" was chosen in error or not, I appreciate the serendipity of having a working definition!