February
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0062. Wednesday, 1 February 1995. (1) From: Ben Schneider <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 Jan 1995 11:08:04 -0600 (CST) Subj: Portia's Voice (2) From: Dudley Knight <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 Jan 1995 19:35:50 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0059 Re: *MV* Ongoing Discussion (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ben Schneider <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 Jan 1995 11:08:04 -0600 (CST) Subject: Portia's Voice Dear Phyllis Rackin: Thank you very much for calling my attention to Portia's self-proclaimed "bad voice." She has just commanded the music to stop, and is about to begin the jest of the ring. In this context her voice won't be musical. But even here the music bursts through. Answering Bassanio's defense, in which every line ends with the word "ring," comes her riposte, in which the firt four and the last end with "ring." If your spirits are attentive you may hear a bell tinkling in these lines, and they may remind you of Shylock tolling "bond," "bond," "bond," at the ends of an earlier series of lines. But of course if you read the ending as Portia establishing domination over Bassanio, your spirits will not hear any music. Yours ever, BEN SCHNEIDER (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dudley Knight <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 Jan 1995 19:35:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: 6.0059 Re: *MV* Ongoing Discussion Comment: Re: SHK 6.0059 Re: *MV* Ongoing Discussion To Phyllis Rackin: There's another possibility, which I am somewhat timorous to suggest. Maybe- just maybe--Portia has a sense of humor (in the contemporary sense, which may not last too long from current indications). Dudley Knight University of California--Irvine
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0061. Wednesday, 1 February 1995. From: Christine Mack Gordon <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 31 Jan 95 16:15:57 -0500 Subject: Hamlet in Winnipeg Well, fellow Shakespeareans, I had an absolutely transcendent experience in Winnipeg. I loved the city, its museums, restaurants, and people. I had a wonderful time with the busload of Twin Cities folks (and one North Carolinan) with whom I travelled. And the play was magnificent. I've seen numerous filmed Hamlets (Burton, Olivier, Gibson, Kline, Jacobi) and a few on stage, but I've never seen a production that worked as successfully as this one. From the magnificent pre-show to the enthralling and exciting conclusion, it was a riveting experience. As far as I could tell (I haven't gone back to the text to check), it was also one of the most complete *Hamlet* productions I have seen. I was only occasionally aware of missing lines while I was watching it, and I didn't note _any_ missing scenes (though there may have been some). I thought the cast was excellent overall, although I was disappointed by Liisa Repo-Martell, who played Ophelia (this tended to be true of most of the people I talked with). She simply didn't seem to have a clear insight into her character, and although she was somewhat better in the nunnery and the mad scenes than she was earlier, she still didn't quite pull it off. Claudius (Stephen Russell), Polonius (Robert Benson), Gertrude (Louisa Martin), and the Ghost/Player King (Gary Reineke) were superb. I thought all the smaller supporting roles were excellent as well, especially Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Roger Honeywell and Richard Hughes) and the two gravediggers (sorry, I lost the inserted slip that had their names). Laertes (Andrew Akman) was OK, as was Horatio (Donald Carrier), although I'm especially picky about the latter since it's a part for which I feel a certain affinity, having played it in high school some thirty years ago. And then there was Hamlet. (Caveat: I _like_ Keanu Reeves. I first saw him in *My Own Private Idaho* and was sufficiently impressed to go out and rent all his earlier films.) I thought he was splendid: from the controlled, tormented, long-haired prince of the opening scenes to the shorn and bedraggled madman to the betrayed lover and son to the resigned avenger, I thought he played a remarkable number of variable tunes on his instrument. Others considered the comic and active scenes more successful, but I think that's because they are comic and more active. I do think the soliloquies were not all they might have been, though I think that has as much to do with the director's choices as with the actor's. They were delivered, for the most part, from a single spot with little or no movement--and that didn't work well. But there were moments in all four soliloquies that came alive for me in new ways, even in "To be or not to be," which I thought the least successful. Mr. Reeves's reading of certain lines gave me a whole new sense of the speech and Hamlet's thinking at the moment. I thought the nunnery scene was successful, with Hamlet attentive and concerned intially and then angry and outraged, and then (momentarily) distraught and appalled. The closet scene was also wonderful. He murdered Polonius not with a rapier but much more deliberately with a dagger (though he still couldn't see who it was) and his interaction with his mother ranged from almost comic intially to full-blown rage to despair. Their contract was sealed with a mutual, but amazingly non-erotic, kiss (very unlike Oliver or Gibson). The scenes throughout with R & G were played for comedy, but comedy with a clear edge; we always knew that Hamlet was wary and watching. When they escort him in to see Claudius after the murder of Polonius, his hands were covered with blood and he very deliberately licked one of his fingers: a horrifying but apt touch. And the entire final sequence was exquisite: the graveyard scene both funny and moving. Hamlet and the gravedigger _sang_ the lines Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t'expel the winter's flaw. --something I'd never seen done and which moved me in ways that I am still not able to articulate. The final sequence was brilliantely staged--the fight one of the best I've seen: again, it combined some nice comic touches with a true fierceness. And when Hamlet murders Claudius, he first stabs him with the tainted sword, then forces the remaining drink down his throat, _then_ slits his throat with his dagger. Once he got to this moment, he wasn't taking any chances. He uses the last of his energy to prevent Horatio's suicide, then takes his rightful place in the throne, grasps the hand of his dead mother, and dies. Horatio's "Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest" was the play's final line. The physical production: set, costumes, lighting all worked beautifully. The set had a heavy, dark medieval feel; a stained glass window above the second level changed to show various scenes (I'm sure of a virgin and child--this is the one Hamlet destroys by throwing his sword through it after he comes upon Claudius praying and elects not to kill him; one was an angel, I think; but there were one or two others. I couldn't see the window well because we had seats in the first row[!]). The costumes were what I guess I would call modified Elizabethan; lots of deep, rich colors. The other remarkable thing about this production is that it absolutely sang: none of this attitude that "this is a sacred text, and we must slow down so the poor beknighted audience can understand every single word." They spoke as if they were speaking and it came through beautifully. My spouse, who says it usually takes him a full half-hour to get into the swing of the language says he was with it right from the start, and none of the younger people (we had some middle and high school kids with us) had problems. I thought the language overall, including the verse, was handled beautifully. Something about the interpretation (and, again, I'm still musing on this) captured both a particular essence of Hamlet the character that I haven't seen before, and conveyed a very contemporary sense of the play. I only wish I could have seen it again, and I sincerely hope that despite the $7 million film offers Keanu Reeves will take on more Shakespeare in the future. Chris Gordon University of Minnesota
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0060. Wednesday, 1 February 1995. (1) From: Piers Lewis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 31 Jan 1995 12:55:16 -0600 Subj: Oedipus (2) From: E. L. Epstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 Jan 1995 23:58:52 EDT Subj: RE: SHK 6.0058 Re: Greek (Athenian) Tragedy, esp. Oedipus (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Piers Lewis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 31 Jan 1995 12:55:16 -0600 Subject: Oedipus I should like to respond to Grace Tiffany's sensitive and intelligent remarks re _Oedipus The King_. For it seems to me that she has, unintentionally, replaced one reductive moralism with another. Where to begin? I keep coming back to the fact that Oedipus has already fulfilled the terrible prophecy that attended his birth when the play begins: he has killed his father and married his mother. That's history and nothing can alter it; and, apparently, nothing he or his parents could have done would have prevented these crimes from being committed. The only question for Sophocles and for the audience is, how or whether these facts should become known. Perhaps, had Oedipus been a different sort of person--less proud, more humble--these facts would not have become known, the great riddle of his identity never solved, but that seems doubtful; for the other fact with which the play begins is that the god, Apollo, is punishing Thebes for allowing itself to be polluted by the presence of King Laius' unknown murderer: as if the god were determined to force the truth about Oedipus into the open, willy-nilly. So it doesn't matter what sort of person Oedipus is: one way or another, the terrible truth about who and what he is will be known. In other words, this play--this monstrous machine as Bernard Knox says, somewhere--is not about moral responsibility at all. For there is no rational connection between crime and guilt and shame in this play, or between crime and punishment. Nor is it about spiritual growth. That's a Christian not a Greek idea. Humility is a Christian virtue. Pride, power, courage--these are the qualities the ancient Greeks admired; and honor and glory is what these intensely competitive people cared about and sought. The heroes of the _Iliad_ are men like Oedipus; Oedipus is made to their measure not ours. The world, the cosmos, of the _Iliad_ is rational: everything is described and explained to the last detail. You always know who is doing what to whom and why and that applies to the gods as well as the people. Actions have predictable consequences. Achilles knows that he can have glory or a long life but not both and he chooses glory. No Greek before Socrates would have thought he made the wrong choice. The same tragic choice faces all the heroes of that great poem. Oedipus is not given a choice. Instead, the qualities that make him great, the qualities that he shares with Achilles and the other heroes of the _Iliad_, are instrumental in closing the trap that fate has prepared for him--for reasons that are not and cannot be known. Sophocles seems to have been willing to contemplate--in this play, if not in the much later _Oedipus at Colonus_--the possibility that the will of the gods cannot be known, that their values and purposes are not commensurate with ours; and that therefore the cosmos may be fundamentally irrational. Or nonrational. This thought makes us very uncomfortable. No doubt, since I don't know Greek, this reading of Sophocles's play is also more or less mistaken. Completely mistaken perhaps-- we know so little about how the tragic drama fit into the festivals to Dionysius in which, for which they were staged. This play has always baffled us and I readily admit it baffles me. Piers Lewis Metropolitan State University (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: E. L. Epstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 Jan 1995 23:58:52 EDT Subject: 6.0058 Re: Greek (Athenian) Tragedy, esp. Oedipus Comment: RE: SHK 6.0058 Re: Greek (Athenian) Tragedy, esp. Oedipus It is not really necessary to produce wild guesses about Athenian attitudes toward Thebes; the historical facts point to the Athenian attitude. Thebes had notably strong walls and had a military tradition of considerable power. It was the Theban general Epaminondas who contributed greatly to Greek military tactics and strategy, more than any other military leader. In fact, it could be said that Epaminondas destroyed the fabulous military power of Sparta. It requires a bit of imagination, I grant, to extrapolate from the walls and Epaminondas to an Athenian impression of a grim and relentless military power, with little of culture, as the Athenians saw it, with the only exception being Pindar, who lived in Thebes. In addition, there was the civil wars between the sons of Oedipus, with the assistance of such great warriors as Tydeus the father of Diomedes, to contribute to the reputation of a place that was both grim and politically unstable. My application of Greek history to American history and the assignment of the roles of Athens and Thebes to Boston and Dallas is not, I think, entirely indefensible.E.L.Epstein