March
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0248. Monday, 27 March 1995. From: W.L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 26 Mar 1995 21:29:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: Early Modern Subjectivity Recently I've been troubled by the word "subjectivity." I asked several people at the SAA meeting what precisely "subjectivity" means. I got several different answers, and I remain honestly puzzled. When someone talks about "early modern subjectivity," what are they talking about? Yours, Bill Godshalk
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0247. Monday, 27 March 1995. (1) From: David Skeele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 26 Mar 95 21:19:23 EST Subj: Re: SHK 6.0218 *Goodnight/Morning* (2) From: Don Foster <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Mar 1995 11:54:17 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0237 Re: Killing Duncan (3) From: Pat Buckridge <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 28 Mar 1995 12:23:52 +1000 Subj: Hamlet's Book (4) From: Marty Jukovsky <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 95 15:01:28 -0800 Subj: Fwd: Shakespeare Musicals (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Skeele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 26 Mar 95 21:19:23 EST Subject: 6.0218 *Goodnight/Morning* Comment: Re: SHK 6.0218 *Goodnight/Morning* A brief reply to Norman Myers' query regarding American productions of Goodnight Desdemona/Good Morning Juliet. There was an excellent production at the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in Pittsburgh in 1991. It was performed by their second company (called the Young Company) in a tiny performance space called the Pit. The mainstage was simultaneously doing Othello, and the cast of Good Morning attended numerous rehearsals and managed some very funny parodies of the leads. I also remember reading about a production in New York, though I can't remember where. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Don Foster <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 27 Mar 1995 11:54:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 6.0237 Re: Killing Duncan Comment: Re: SHK 6.0237 Re: Killing Duncan Scott Shepherd: "Did Don Foster really mean it, that 'sticking a knife in the king's body' is a noningredient in Macbeth's horror?" A: No, of course not, nor did I say that it was a "noningredient." Mystification of the king's body was not invented by Shakespeare or Macbeth, nor can Macbeth escape it. That much is a "given" of the culture. What's at stake here is the oppositional thinking displayed so richly in Scott Shepherd's note--a critical dialectic that insistently casts *Macbeth* into a simple morality play. (note Shepherd's own language: "noningredient".... "Precisely the reverse is true!" ... "[Macbeth] does nothing in that speech but..." Is there still room in Shakespeare studies for such reductive thinking? To hear in Macbeth's horrorific soliloquies only the voice of conscience is to hear only what any provincial vicar could have said in writing a *Macbeth* narrative. Precisely because regicide is a kind of cosmic crime, Macbeth's ambition invests the deed with tragic sublimity at the very moment when self-creation comes into doubt. In Kenneth Burke's terms, murder (more intensively here, regicide) is a crime that "smokes God out" of the woodwork, dares the metaphysical order to assert itself. In the end, of course, Macbeth is not unlike Zarathustra's pale criminal. He isn't big enough for his deed. As a "bad" man, Macbeth isn't bad enough to live with his crime. But one tires of these arguments about "why doesn't he just sit around and wait to become king, it would be, like, so much *easier.*" A *Macbeth* for the herd. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Pat Buckridge <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 28 Mar 1995 12:23:52 +1000 Subject: Hamlet's Book The book Hamlet is reading when Polonius greets him was first identified, with great plausibility, as long ago as 1845 by one Joseph Hunter, and the identification has since been confirmed by Lily B. Campbell and Hardin Craig, among others of lesser fame. The case rests on numerous close verbal parallels between this book and Shakespeare's plays, especially *Hamlet*, including one quite remarkably long and detailed parallel with the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, and a satirical passage on the unpleasantness of old men's company, to which Hamlet surely refers in his banter with Polonius (re plumtree gum, plentiful lack of wit, most weak hams, etc). The book is not Boethius' *Consolation of Philosophy* but a sixteenth-century work, *De Consolatione* by the Venetian mathematician Jerome Cardan, Englished in 1573 by Thomas Bedingfield as *Cardanus Comfort* (with - as it happens - a Dedication to the Earl of Oxford and a lengthy prefatory epistle by him to the translator). Pat Buckridge (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Marty Jukovsky <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 95 15:01:28 -0800 Subject: Fwd: Shakespeare Musicals Some more cross-postings from the musicals list. Martin Jukovsky Cambridge, Mass.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. **************************************************** Did anyone mention "Music Is"? I believe this was an adaptation of "Twelfth Night" produced in the early 1980's....featuring the last score by Richard Adler (Pajama Game/Damn Yankees)...It only ran for a few performances on Broadway. ************************************************ "Rockabye Hamlet" had a very shortlived run on Broadway back in the 70's. It did however feature Meatloaf, Beverly DeAngelo and some other's who have made a pretty good name for themselves. The show was directed by Gower Champion. "Boys From Syracuse" is a great show. Did anyone mention "West Side Story". Not a bad little adaptation. "Kiss Me Kate", a big Cole Porter show. There was a little show called "Sensations" that was based on Romeo and Juliet. It was produced in NY in the early Seventies. "Two Gentlemen of Verona"
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0246. Monday, 27 March 1995. (1) From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 26 Mar 1995 19:19:40 +0100 Subj: RE: Phrasing, Caesura, and Run-on Lines (2) From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 26 Mar 1995 13:27:55 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0244 (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 26 Mar 1995 19:19:40 +0100 Subject: RE: Phrasing, Caesura, and Run-on Lines I don't think much can be determined of Shakespeare's intention concerning the speaking of lines from the punctuation in a play like WT. The King's Men's scribe Ralph Crane, when preparing copy for the printers of the Folio, changed punctuation quite freely and idiosyncratically. T H Howard Hill showed the Crane frequently altered commas in his source to colons, and one of the compositors occasionally changed them back whilst the other did not. Gabriel EganThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 26 Mar 1995 13:27:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: 6.0244 Comment: Re: SHK 6.0244 About caesurae. I've noticed an awful lot in Shakespeare's verse as well. Do you think it might have to do with the tradition from which he's writing? I mean, caesurae are extremely important in OE, and have a resurgence in middle English, as well. They're among the few peices of punctuation in Chaucer manuscripts, for instance. Paul Fussell, somewhere or other, comments that iambic pentameter continues to influence experimental efforts at quantitative verse. Might the heavy importance of caesurae in Shakespeare show the continuing influence of an OE (or ME) alliterative line? In other words, could the older half-line be as important to Shakespeare as the newer Marlovian iambic pentameter? Just a thought. I'm interested in what others might think. Cheers, Sean.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0245. Sunday, 26 March 1995. (1) From: William Russell Mayes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 25 Mar 1995 18:06:33 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 6.0243 Re: Blood in *Titus* (2) From: William Proctor Williams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 25 Mar 95 18:11 CST Subj: Re: SHK 6.0243 Re: Blood in *Titus* (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Russell Mayes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 25 Mar 1995 18:06:33 -0500 Subject: 6.0243 Re: Blood in *Titus* Comment: Re: SHK 6.0243 Re: Blood in *Titus* Cynthia Moravec brings up the possibility of satire--or the more modern campiness--in Titus Andronicus. I think there might be satire, but not because the violence is overdone. It seems to me that the play shows a horrific realization of Petrarchan imagery. Shakespeare shows the violence of these images and refuses to let us forget. As far as performance, I have no idea what Shakespeare intended or what the stage would have shown (though I suspect it was quite vivid, from evidence I've seen), but it would be a shame to remove the violence from the play for a modern audience. Students at the University of Virginia did a bloody version of the play about two years ago, and since the blood was not wiped up between scenes, it accumulated as the play progressed. It was quite memorable, and several of my students who saw it really liked the play. _Titus_ is often called one of Shakespeare's lesser achievements, but I think if all of his plays were turned into movies (and there was no such thing as "Shakespeare"), Titus might well be one of his most popular (not to say greatest). If Jonson's complaint about audience's taste is indicative, than Titus and Kyd's Spanish Tragedy were quite popular. W. Russell Mayes Jr Dept. of English University of Virginia (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Proctor Williams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 25 Mar 95 18:11 CST Subject: 6.0243 Re: Blood in *Titus* Comment: Re: SHK 6.0243 Re: Blood in *Titus* Both David Knauer and Sarah Cave are right. Blood was a very good thing for the Elizabethan theatre (and we must remember that Q1 +Titus+ is about our only +pure+ Rose Theatre play, look at the dates in Henslowe, SR, RSTC, etc.) I have never had any problem with the blood in +Titus+, but what has always bothered me, aside from Lavinia's apparent lack of knowlege about her engagement to Bassianus (I have an essay on this in Philip Kolin's new collection on +Titus+ from Garland), is the SD, enter Lavinia, her tongue cut out, her hands cut off, and +ravished+ I have asked any number of classes what this means--none have given me an answer. However, the points made by both Knauer and Cave are correct, in their circumstances. It may also be of interest to know that the "third" Arden has been recently reviewed in the Saturday "Independent" of 18 March by Frank Kermode who was one of the "second" Arden editors and had to find a way to make changes in sterotype plates which replaced "I well remember when I was a boy in Warwickshire. . . ." with exactly the same letters. and also Jonathan Bate's description of the Arden project in the +Indepedent on Sunday+ of 19 March 1995--a nice return from his illiberal abberation to the +Telegraph+ In any case, +Titus+ contains just about as much blood as you can imagine, and perhaps more than of us can! William Proctor Williams Department of English Northern Illinois University
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0244. Saturday, 25 March 1995. (1) From: Ron Macdonald <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 1995 10:54:38 -0500 (EST) Subj: Hamlet, Boethius (2) From: Eric Grischkat <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 1995 06:56:53 -0800 (PST) Subj: Phrasing, Caesura, and Run-on Lines (3) From: Frank Savukinas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 1995 12:41:30 -0500 (EST) Subj: Edmund and Richard III (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ron Macdonald <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 1995 10:54:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: Hamlet, Boethius Thanks to John Cox for his plausible suggestion concerning a Boethean source for Hamlet's "nothing either bad or good but thinking makes it so." Perhaps the same background informs Gaunt's consolatory advice to the just-banished Bullingbrook, _RII_, I.iii.227ff.: "Teach thy necessity to reason thus: / There is no virtue like necessity." Coming from the aging Gaunt to the pragmatic and Machiavellian Bullingbrook, it has in this context a distinctly old-fashioned ring. I am reminded, at least I think I am, that my graduate Chaucer professor, the late Talbot Donaldson, once mentioned a stage tradition that designated the _Consolation of Philosophy_ as the book Hamlet is carrying when he encounters Polonius in II.ii, the one in which he finds "words, words, words." It's not clear to me how (or if?) the title of the book would be made clear to an audience. Anyone ever heard about this? Ron Macdonald <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Eric Grischkat <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 1995 06:56:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: Phrasing, Caesura, and Run-on Lines A number of us on the theatre-theory list (Harry Hill, Paul Kassel,Sean Lawrence, and Michael Faulkner) have been discussing the clues an actor can receives from the verse, run-on lines, and mid stops in Shakespeare. Camillo's speech from *Winter's Tale* has a number of interesting examples in it. I'm interested to read Shakespeare list response. Here is an interesting passage from Act1 sc 1 WT I took the script from the complete Shakespeare on ALEX have added on the side some changes/differences from the Folio (Applause Books edition). CAMILLO O miserable lady! But, for me, F: But for me, What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner Of good Polixenes; and my ground to do't F:Of good Polixenes, to do't, Is the obedience to a master, one F: one, Who in rebellion with himself, will have All that are his, so too. To do this deed, Promotion follows. If I could find example F: Promotion follows: Of thousands that had struck anointed kings F:Kings, And flourish'd after, I'ld not do't; but since F: do't: Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one, Nor Brass,.Stone.Parchmnet Let villany itself forswear't. I must F: Villiany Forsake the court: to do't, or no, is certain F: Court To me a break-neck. Happy star, reign now! Here comes Bohemia. I think many of the run-ons make sense as upward inflection/continuation of thoughts, some, perhaps, are more interesting as breking of the verse to show a racing mind--someone searching for an answer beyond the form of the verse. I'm also curious of what people make of the colon and period caesura. Is it simply a shift in the mind, or is a pause called for? Some say colons, because they are surronded by space in the folio editions by spaces imply a pause - but a pause in the middle of a verse line. I'm curious to hear people's opinions. Of this piece in performance and what clues the caesuras, verse, and run-ons offer to the actor. Eric George GrischkatThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. University of San Diego (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Frank Savukinas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 24 Mar 1995 12:41:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: Edmund and Richard III I just finished my first reading of King Lear and I found it to be truly remarkable, albeit depressing, especially the scene where Lear dies. Anyway, I find that the character of Edmund is quite similar to that of Richard III. First, they both manipulate people to gain material wealth. Secondly, they have no reason to do it other than sheer greed. Finally, they both have "deformities" While Richard's is physical, Edmund's deformities arises in his status (i.e Bastard). Upon suggesting this to one of my professors, she just shrugged it off, disagreeing with me. She gave no reason. She thought that Edmund can be more comparable to Iago in *Othello*. While I see the similarities there too, I think Iago has a genuine reason to do what he does. Am I completely wrong or have I actually said something intelligent?? Just an opinion, Frank SavukinasThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.