Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0949. Thursday, 7 December 1995.
(1) From: Valerie Gager <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 08:48:00 -0
Subj: John Pritt Harley's Feste
(2) From: Porter Jamison <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 16:23:49 -0800
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0940 Qs: *Ham.* Texts; *AYL*
(3) From: Kila Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 15:16:30 -0500 (EST)
Subj: Branagh's Hamlet
(4) From: Chris Stroffolino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 06 Dec 1995 16:35:59 -0500 (EST)
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0945 Re: Silent Reading and Soliloquies
(5) From: David Glassco <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 10:42:12 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0944 Re: Nothing;
(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Valerie Gager <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 08:48:00 -0700
Subject: John Pritt Harley's Feste
Neil Novelli asks for sources on stage interpretations of Feste. Charles
Kean's opening bill in his 1850 season at the Princess's Theatre is a landmark
Victorian production of *Twelfth Night*, in which John Pritt Harley played
Feste. George Henry Lewes reviews the production in *The Leader* on 5 October
1850. Charles Dickens comments on the performances of Harley and Robert Keeley
(who played Sir Andrew Aguecheek) in an obituary, `Robert Keeley', published in
his periodical *All the Year Round* on 10 April 1869. Odell also covers Kean's
production in *Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving*.
Valerie L. Gager
Carroll College
(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Porter Jamison <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 16:23:49 -0800
Subject: 6.0940 Qs: *Ham.* Texts; *AYL*
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0940 Qs: *Ham.* Texts; *AYL*
>I am co-directing AYLI at at HS in Virginia. We are changing the
>forest of Arden into a more contemporary urban ghetto setting, with a
>directorial emphasis on the "character building benefits of
>adversity". One problem we are finding is how to translate the
>shepherd references in the story. I want to leave them intact;
>letting them stand as analogies (for ex. if Corin were to
>become a street preacher, "flock" has applicable Christian references.
>If you have any ideas or comments I'd love to hear from you.
Taking the directoral emphasis as a given-- though it seems to distort a
portion of what Shakespeare seemed to be saying-- it sounds intriguing. (The
Snake and Lioness of the Oliver redemption scene could be rival gang members, I
suppose, and tagging could replace Orlando's carving on trees.) The problem of
the sheep is, however, insurmountable as a Christian reference unless you want
him to be a Bakker type (sheep, land, and cote being on sale, handling ewes
with greasy fells, etc.), which seems to be inconsistent with the "good
shepherd" indicated by the text.
(3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Kila Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 15:16:30 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Branagh's Hamlet
There was recently a documentary at the Smithsonian(?) on the filming of
Branagh's Hamlet. I only saw the article out of the corner of my eye, but I
would guess filming has started.
Kila
(4)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Chris Stroffolino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 06 Dec 1995 16:35:59 -0500 (EST)
Subject: 6.0945 Re: Silent Reading and Soliloquies
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0945 Re: Silent Reading and Soliloquies
Dear Tom----Thanks for elaborating on your (dramaturgical?) reading of R2's
soliloquy. The last time I saw the play, at the EDITH WHARTON MOUNT---they
actually started the play with the soliloquy and made the whole play into a
flashback, as it were framed by RICHARD in prison. I'm curious what you'd think
of such an interpretation. Personally, I thought it located the play TOO MUCH
in the "person" or "conscious- ness" of Richard and totally cut the Aumerle
conspiracy scenes, etc (just as too many critical readings of the soliloquy
do). Yet your point was different. I agree with you about the entrance of MUSIC
as a change in tone in the soliloquy, and its connection with "bid time return"
(I tend to want to link it with say SONNET 94---to see the soliloquy as
structured in a similar octet-sestet split). Yet I am still curious as to what
ENDS you are taking your findings about Richard's micorcosm-macrocosm
distinction. I would like to foreground the IMPERSONAL aspects of the
soliloquy, just as much as you do-- the aspects that to a certain extent break
down the theatrical allusion that Richard is a real historical person and in
which his peopling of the world only has relevance as an indication of his
state of mind. (Just as I see LEAR as to some extent an impersonal force, an
anthro- pomorphization of the very storms and tempests he finds and loses his
SELF in). And, thus calling attention to the isolation of the speaker, in
prison, by the means of soliloquy as a specific rhetorical act---rare in this
play--it seems that Shakespeare, or at least a director, can call attention to
a different MODE of consciousness and of creative being that had been banished
from this play---as if to say to the audience "OKAY, NOW WE'RE GOING TO TAKE A
STEP BACK AND CONTEMPLATE ON WHAT WE'VE SEEN" and of course Richard's thought
processes are not exactly an accurate summary of the play AS SUCH, nor do I
believe (as some critics have argued) that he finds HIS TRUE SELF here, but I
do believe that as he himself says, the mode of the soliloquy allows him a
certain "scope" (and one may think of Pound and Wilde--and other writers who
wrote their best stuff in prison) that invites the audience to identify with
him by showing, at least rudimentarily, our own ambivalence to the historical
personages of the main plots. The soliloguy provides a different perspective,
and like the Aumerle conspiracy scenes, constitutes one of the things that
OFFICIAL HISTORY does not take into account. This is why I think there is
subversive potential in this soliloquy. For just as the Aumerle scenes tend to
make it quite clear how DOMESTIC issues have been ignored by "the march of
events" so does Pomfret soliloquy call attention to how what's called history
partakes in what Neitzsche said is a process that "man forgets he is an
artistically creating subject"..... Curious what you think, chris
(5)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Glassco <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 6 Dec 1995 10:42:12 -0500
Subject: 6.0944 Re: Nothing;
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0944 Re: Nothing;
I, like Stephanie Hughes, have not been following the "nothing" thread...so I
too ask for indulgence if this is merely repetitious. But nothing is indeed the
'O' which is also the "wooden O" which is the Globe which is what an
extraordinary profusion of life comes out of...