October
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0786. Sunday, 15 October 1995. (1) From: David Jackson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 13 Oct 95 10:02:50 EST Subj: Re: SHK 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings (2) From: Peter Herman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 13 Oct 1995 15:51:11 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings (3) From: Gavin H Witt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 14 Oct 95 0:20:20 CDT Subj: Re: SHK 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings (4) From: Chris Gordon <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 14 Oct 95 17:04:30 -0500 Subj: Recreational Reading (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Jackson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 13 Oct 95 10:02:50 EST Subject: 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings Comment: Re: SHK 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings From a production point of view, if the already suggested works have been read, I would suggest Charles Marowitz's "Recycling Shakespeare", which may raise the hackles of some, but he always has interesting insights, he is pragmatic, and he doesn't suffer fools gladly. As a supplement, I would add Peter Brook's Shakespeare materials in "The Shifting Point". Of course, everyone has his/her favorite, and it will be interesting to see how many (if any) people suggest the same book. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter Herman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 13 Oct 1995 15:51:11 -0400 Subject: 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings Comment: Re: SHK 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings My nomination would be Stephen Greenblatt's _Renaissance Self-Fashioning_. More than ten years after its initial publication, it's still the most suggestive, and certainly among if _the_ best written, critical book I've read. Peter C. Herman Dept. of English Georgia State University (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gavin H Witt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 14 Oct 95 0:20:20 CDT Subject: 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings Comment: Re: SHK 6.0782 Re: Suggested Readings For a single book to open up a study of Shakespeare's plays, I have found John Barton's _Playing Shakespeare_ to be a bible when considering issues of performance. Even better if you can get your hands on the accompanying videos. It is scholarly without being academic, historical but incidentally so; not for a theoretical or literary critical reading necessarily, but truly indispensable if you need access to issues of how the texts are brought to life on a stage. Including some generally useful guides to close reading of the plays. Just a thought from a different angle.. Gavin Witt University of ChicagoThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chris Gordon <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 14 Oct 95 17:04:30 -0500 Subject: Recreational Reading For those Shakespeareans who enjoyed Stephanie Cowell's first novel, *Nicholas Cooke* (which centered on a man who is a member of Shakespeare's company), the second volume (it's designed as a trilogy), *Physician of London,* is being published by Norton in November. I found a copy in a bookstore today, however, and wish I had time to read it right now. Stephanie will also be reading from the novel in NYC in November. Chris Gordon
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0785. Friday, 13 October 1995. (1) From: Christine Mack Gordon <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 09:35:35 -0500 Subj: SHK 6.078 Re: Marlowe Novels (2) From: Michael Best <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 08:52:53 -0700 Subj: In Defence of Approximate Spelling (3) From: Jeff Goode <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 12:50:36 -0400 Subj: Laughter in Mac (4) From: Leslie D. Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 19:33:00 PDT Subj: Shakespeare Multimedia Project Web Page (5) From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 13 Oct 1995 07:56:31 -0400 Subj: *WT* Production (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Christine Mack Gordon <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 09:35:35 -0500 Subject: Re: Marlowe Novels Comment: SHK 6.078 Re: Marlowe Novels As one of the obsessive Marlowe novel readers, I wanted to thank Douglas Abel for his post, but also to let other interested folks know that the Playwrights Union of Canada has a new phone number (and the 800 number doesn't seem to work when calling from the U.S.): (416) 703-0201. They take VISA but not MasterCard. (I'm ordering your play, Doug, as soon as I can borrow my partner's VISA card!) Chris Gordon (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Best <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 08:52:53 -0700 Subject: In Defence of Approximate Spelling O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience. (_Hamlet_, somewhere) While it's good to know that academics are human (bleed and flame and so on), I'd like to offer a gentle defence of misspellings, typos, vague references to books, and such informalities. It is important (to me anyway) that we all be free to dash of a quick response to a thread without running it through our spell checkers, grammar checkers, culture checkers, and so on before posting. The level of formality on this list is already higher than on most (we are after all proud of our wordsmithing and our sensitivities). Can we agree to do without the dreaded "[sic]" as we comment on each other's postings? (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jeff Goode <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 12:50:36 -0400 Subject: Laughter in Mac Jimmy: Without seeing the scene, it is, of course, difficult to guess, but... I would like to note that there is quite a bit of humor in MACBETH (and not just the Porter) and all of it is appropriate. There tends to be a modern misconception that the three unities are Time, Space, and Mood. This is a belief that the Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights did not share. Their eclectic style embraces comedy even in the tragedies. There can be no doubt that Juliet's Nurse is a comic character, but that doesn't in any way diminish the tragedy of R&J. The comic moments in (pick a title) are not flaws in the text, but an integral part of how the play works. Example: When I was researching 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE, I found that historically many directors have tried to remove the extraneous comic subplot involving Bergetto and Poggio, or downplay their humor in keeping with the mood of the main story. I also found that historically the critics, in those cases, generally found the play to be OVERBEARINGLY tragic. The clowns are critical to the success of the play, because the lighter moments keep the audience comfortable as they are drawn deeper into the depravity of the main story. The death of Bergetto is MORE tragic if he is our beloved clown. And after his death, the audience finds itself inextricably caught up in Jacobean bloodbath that is the more horrific for it's absent comedy. Romeo & Juliet works in exactly the same way. So I would like to suggest (only for the sake of argument) that an other possible explanation is that you were caught off guard by the audience' laughter because you had preconceptions about the moment, which the rest of the audience did not share, so they were more able to go along with the director's (and possibly the playwright's) sense of humor in that scene. ...JEFF (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Leslie D. Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 19:33:00 PDT Subject: Shakespeare Multimedia Project Web Page Hi, Folks. Last Fall, I had my Shakespeare students use multimedia authoring software to annotate passages from a Shakespeare play of their choice. They worked in small groups, with each group responsible for a passage from one of the plays we read during the semester. (I described the project to the list last year.) The idea was to make them "editors of the future," choosing what words to annotate, what useful graphics to include, and so on. I've created a Web page about the project, whose URL changed recently. (My Computer Center let me know that a few folks have tried to access the page at the old address.) Here's the new URL: http://www.susqu.edu/ac_depts/arts_sci/english/lharris/shakweb/shakmult .htm I've included some documents related to the project, along with a few screen captures from a sample student project on "the Scottish play." Happy viewing! Leslie Harris Susquehanna University (5)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 13 Oct 1995 07:56:31 -0400 Subject: *WT* Production Re our production of WT: Part I is breathtaking. Our Leontes is worth your time to drive to Newnan, GA. Part II still needs work, but it too will cause the audience to suck wind. Details I think you might appreciate: when the Shepherd picks up the baby, I've told him to do all those "pretty one"s as baby talk to the baby--and suddenly there's the warmest moment in the play so far. It almost seems to become the turning point of the play. Our Hermione doesn't put it on her resume, but early in her career she was a living mannikin at a major mall. So not only is she able to do the statue thing, but when we perceive she moves, it is truly startling. We have her all the way upstage R on our wide and shallow stage, with the rest of the cast on the other side; it's parallel to the staging of the trial scene. We can take a vote on this one: when Autolycus tells the Shepherd and the Clown that he's going to "look on the hedge," we have him doing just that: taking a leak upstage and finishing his speech over his shoulder. It's ridiculously vulgar, truly funny, but should we do it? Our audiences are unflappable, by the way. When you do this play, costume it in jeans and t-shirts. Trust me. I don't think I've mentioned that the costuming for this show is being supported by several grants and donations under the title of the NCTC Elizabethan Costume Project. After WT is over, the costumes will become part of a project wherein we loan them to area high schools as a part of an integrated curriculum approach to Shakespeare, literature, and history. Each school will get a notebook of lesson plans, handouts, and research projects [written by me--I'm also an educational designer] that will show the teachers how to use not only the costumes but also music, dance, and art in the regular classroom. Any ideas you might have for this notebook would greatly be appreciated. Our Mamillius is going to be charming, even if I do report it who should be silent. In casting my own 7-year-old son, I thought it was important to have a Mamillius 1) who could read; and 2) whose TV privileges I could revoke. The sheepshearing scene keeps getting shorter and shorter, Fortune be praised. For future reference, you can cut two pages between Florizel's "where we're going you don't need to know" and Camillo's "Have you thought of where you might go?" without serious damage. The satyr dance is short and satisfying. I've given the actors carte blanche to decorate their burlap ponchos any way they choose, and they've responded with all manner of furs, animal head, horns, twigs, leaves, etc. All in all, the more the show comes together, the more apparent it is how incredibly complex and rich its universe is. My only fear is that it appears that way to us because of concentrated study, but that we will fail to make it immediately apparent to our audiences. But then, that's always my fear. :) Exhaustedly, Dale Lyles Newnan Community Theatre Company
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0784. Friday, 13 October 1995. (1) From: Joseph M Green <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 11:49:56 -0500 (CDT) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio (2) From: Leslie D. Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 15:24:00 PDT Subj: FW: Antonio and *MV* (3) From: Shirley Kagan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 11:04:47 -1000 Subj: Re: SHK 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio (4) From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 17:44:17 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio (5) From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 22:57:53 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0776 Re: Antonio and *MV*: Gaberdine (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph M Green <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 11:49:56 -0500 (CDT) Subject: 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio Comment: Re: SHK 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio Regarding William Godshalk's question as to why Shylock is converted -- the answer seems to be that he is converted because this was considered a good thing. This is too well-known to need much elaboration. As for why Antonio wasn't provided with a priest... not much can be made of this. WS didn't want one cluttering up the stage. A priest isn't needed if confession has already been made. WS didn't want to call attention to the Catholicism of his Christians. He didn't think about it. The priests were busy burning liberal humanists. Anent this last term and the whole sequence of events that one reader is grateful for because it shows this and that person's humanness... I've tried for some time to avoid the inference that the players in the drama I have been "viewing" for the last years (by trudging home with "Materialist Shakespeare" or by reading a liberal humanist screed obtained from the closed stacks by means of a false name and a false beard that makes me look a bit like Erasmus) would, in "real" life actually use these sorts of epithets. That's why I have avoided the MLA: I didn't want to see some poor old fellow blinking into the void as he tried to find a place at table and someone to talk to only to overhear, in a stage whisper, hissings of "Oh, that's Professor Blank -- the liberal humanisty essentialist." But, things are as they are, and I would like to suggest that, since this is so, some sort of system might be devised so that one can only read postings by ideological sisters and brothers and, of course, so that liberal humanists might be identified and appropriate action taken. A system of virtual icons would do the job -- the icons identifying the ideology of the writer and her place in the food chain. Liberal humanists would be represented by a tiny Polonius face (easy to find, I would think) and this would appeal to their sense of irony and, for others, tell us all we need. Old Historicists are represented by a crown; New Historicists by a Crown over a Death's Head (indicating their powerful critique of the "absolute" rule of the Tudors); Cultural Materialists might want to choose the dagger Macbeth saw before him, or they might (I think this is best) choose a simple wheel of fire. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Leslie D. Harris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 15:24:00 PDT Subject: FW: Antonio and *MV* Fellow SHAKSPERians: I've read the thread about Antonio and *MV* with tremendous interest, primarily because I'm as appalled by _Merchant_ as those African-American students who were silenced by "ethiop." I think Shakespeare's culture is at times disgustingly racist, and the depiction of Shylock (along with Barrabas before him, in a more intentionally egregious way) is one example of that racism. I think Shakespeare does give us a sense of the hypocrisy of the Christians, though, since we learn of Antonio's abusive behavior towards Shylock. One of the basic critiques against money-lending was that it violates Christian charity. If we are to be true Christians (and if we are all brothers under God--and I choose "brothers" intentionally, since the world of commerce in the play is a male one), then we should help one another in need. We should give to others out of the kindness of our hearts, and we should not profit from that charity (otherwise it's not true charity). Shylock's money-lending violates that principle (along with the related medieval idea that money should not breed, and that usury involved money producing more money). What's interesting to me, though, is that money-lending is condemned as a violation of Christian charity, but making a profit on one's merchandise is not condemned. Antonio buys at one price, sells to others (including his fellow Christians, I assume) at a higher price, and thereby becomes a wealthy man. He expends a certain amount of money, and his return is a greater amount of money. The goods that people buy from him intervene in this equation, but I wonder to what extent they are necessities and to what extent they are fineries. We learn that Antonio's vessels (that founder) are "richly fraught" (II.viii.30) and that his "ship of rich landing" (III.i.2) wrecked itself. Does that mean that they are heavily laden with objects (and therefore collectively of great value), or does that mean that they are full of objects that are collectively *and* individually "rich" (in other words, luxuries)? If we are all supposed to be "brothers" in our faith, why do we profit at our brothers' (and sisters') expense? Leslie HarrisThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Shirley Kagan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 11:04:47 -1000 Subject: 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio Comment: Re: SHK 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio I'm coming in for another round. John Owen's recent posting included the following: "Recall, Shirley, that Shylock represents the penalty as a joke and that Antonio treats it that way, calling it a "merry bond". He would certainly not do this if he had any idea that he would have to pay this insane penalty, or that Shylock would insist on it. Yes, Antonio is stupid above and beyond the call of the plot for not recognizing the level of hatred he has provoked in Shylock, but murder is not justified by the foolishness of the victim." John also urged me to produce examples of the Antonio apologia and anti-semitism that I had mentioned in my previous post. Let me try and get one thing clear first. When this discussion first started (by Sam Schimek, I believe) the questions clearly referred to MOV in production and the implications of Antonio's characteristics IN PRODUCTION. I have treated this discussion from beginning to end within that context and it is within that context that I speak of Antonio apologia and justifications of anti-semitism. I couldn't care less if Shakespeare was anti-semitic within the context of this conversation. The only element I am concerned about is how we read his problematic script in production TODAY as per the original post's request. Having said this I will refer back to your most recent post, John, and say that in my opinion it is not at all clear that the bond is a total joke. If it is, why do they go to the bondsman to seal it? If it is, why does Bassanio balk at it? It is also not clear that Antonio accepts it out of mere stupidity. He may be acting out of other motivations which have already been discussed. I am not insisting on one reading or another here, nor am I saying that your interpretation of the script (because that's what it is - a performance script) is incorrect. All I am saying is that NOTHING is clear here, and can be played several different ways with different implications. For me, however, the Antonio apologia and anti-semitism enter the debate when Antonio and the Chriatians' side is taken out of some belief that that is what the text requires us to do or clearly states. As modern interpreters of a performance script I think it is our duty to view "Merchant of Venice" as a fluid entity, open to multiple readings. The next step from that is to see why and where it fits into the context of our own society, otherwise, why stage it at all? Finally, I will venture that what has kept Shakespeare alive and vital in performance to this day is precisely the interpretability of the scripts. I would suggest that this is why we see many more performances of "Merchant" than we do of "Malta". Thanks for the attention span. Shirley Kagan (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 17:44:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio Comment: Re: SHK 6.0777 Re: Re: *MV* and Antonio Since we apparently have plenty of steam left for discussing Antonio and Shylock, I'd like to point to two passages (both from the Riverside): (1) *MV* 1.3.133-159: In this passage, Antonio asks, "when did friendship take / A breed for barren metal of his friend?/ But lend it {the money} rather to thinne enemy,/Who if he break, thou mayst with better face /Exact the penalty." These lines certainly indicate that Antonio will sign the bond with Shylock even if Shylock presents himself as "the enemy." Shylock goes on to suggest the "merry sport" of a pound of flesh, a sport which Antonio accepts, even after Bassanio's warning (155-159). Antonio tells Bassanio that he will have the money to pay off the bond in three months. No problem. So does Shylock pull any wool over Antonio's eyes by proposing the "merry sport"? Richard Levin (the younger!) suggests that Shylock is seriously trying to make friends with Antonio here, and it's only after the elopement of Jessica that he turns vicious. I doubt that suggestion will be accepted by many. Nevertheless, the question: "Is Antonio deceived by Shylock at this point in the plot?" remains open -- for me. (2) *MV* 3.1.58-73, widely known as the "Hath not a Jew eyes speech?" How does this apparent assertion by Shylock of a common humanity, in which both Jews and Christians participate, square with a vision of this play as basically anti-Semitic? Does this passage complicate things -- at least a little? Shylock seems to be saying that we Jews are just like you Christians -- even down to the faults. Of course, this passages ends with an indictment of the Christians -- an indictment that I find quite telling. Christians are not supposed to seek revenge, and yet they do. That is, Christians have been trying to take revenge on the Jews for the death of Jesus for hundreds of years. How does this square with the basic teachings of Christianity? One further point: Kenneth Myrick used to argue that Jessica's marriage to a Christian undermines the contention that the play is anti-Semitic. Myrick asked, if Lorenzo had genuinely anti-Semitic feelings, would he marry a Jew? Myrick answered his question "no." I realize that the present stage tradition is to represent the marriage beween Lorenzo and Jessica as flawed, but it might just as easily be represented as intimate, teasing, and acceptable to the Christian community. Yours, Bill Godshalk (5)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 22:57:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: 6.0776 Re: Antonio and *MV*: Gaberdine Comment: Re: SHK 6.0776 Re: Antonio and *MV*: Gaberdine Regarding the wearing of the gaberdine, Gila Safran-Naveh writes: The Jewish gaberdine" was and is still worn by orthodox Jews (in NY and Israel) for religious reasons in part having to do with modesty, etc. But it is also true that in some parts of the world, Jews were forced "not" to wear certain colors as well as certain types of fabrics (it had to do mainly with gold fiber, purple colors, etc. Now the Halackhah, the Jewish law, is very clear on the "kosher" types of clothing ( I really mean it) a Jew should/could/must wear For instance, one has to know that the animal whose wool one uses was slaughtered according to the law (least pain, jugular vein, recitation of prayers etc) and that the fabric was woven also according to proper laws. But rest asure that Shakespeare was not interested in this. At least we have no evidence of it (and there were very interesting and intelligent studies done at the Hebrew U and at the Univ of Tel Aviv on the subject.) Oh, well, if you really want to get into it, I might give you the email of a colleague who was very much involved in these issues at the U of Beer Sheva. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) * * * * So much for my idea that the gaberdine was enforced clothing for Renaissance Jews. Sorry if I misled anyone. Yours, Bill Godshalk
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0783. Friday, 13 October 1995. (1) From: John E. Perry <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 10:34:50 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: Importance of Shakespeare (2) From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 17:40:03 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare (3) From: Joseph M Green <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 13:01:38 -0500 (CDT) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues (4) From: Shirley Kagan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 11:34:05 -1000 Subj: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues (5) From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 23:49:40 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John E. Perry <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 10:34:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Importance of Shakespeare Please let me inject some fact (hopefully) into all the (allow me to euphemize a bit) opinioneering going on in this discussion. First, I was taught in my Shakespeare class (25 years ago, I admit) that Shakespeare's work all but disappeared from view for nearly a century after he and his immediate contemporaries died. Is that not so? Second, there is no question that the work of WS's contemporaries, the committee that petitioned King James for formal authorization to publish a new Authorized Version of the Bible, was much better known, and had more to do with stabilizing the English language than all the "literate" publications. It outsold all other books in English for three and a half centuries. So whether the English language worked for good or ill, or was irrelevant, its effect cannot be rationally laid at Shakespeare's feet. Finally, even a cursory look at history will show us that the size of the gun at the beginning of a substantial conflict has little to do with the outcome. Obvious examples are the two World Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the American Revolution. john perryThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 17:40:03 GMT Subject: 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare Comment: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare Dear Paul Crowley, 1. Shakespeare was a playwright. 'Literature' is something that has been thrust upon him. Listen to your uncle Bill Godschalk (for once) on this issue. 2. Who 'matters' is not a question of historical fact. 'Historical fact' may be a question of who matters. 3. So you left out the words "having understood the ideas". Don't apologise. Given your argument, it was very wise. Terence Hawkes (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph M Green <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 13:01:38 -0500 (CDT) Subject: 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues Comment: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues Ascham's comments anent the Book of the Courtier don't reflect a xenophobia that is particularly English. There may be some cultures that did not fear the foreigner -- but not many. Obviously, for Ascham, fashioning oneself by reading the best Italy had to say about such self-fashioning instead of actually going to Italy and coming back all Italinate and Devil Incarnate made sense. One avoided the allure of Babylon. The attempt -- as it seems to me -- to demonize England and imply that its crimes are not the same sorts of crimes committed by most cultures if they can seems very ahistorical, of a piece with the usual creation of cultural capital that many are abhorring here, and typical. If we ask about the English essence that thinks it can scoot about taking and not being polluted, we should also ask about the many other essences -- including non-european ones -- that think/ thought they could do the same thing. And, alas, there is an inherent connection between literature and individuals. Individuals view/read it, individuals -- even when working as collectives or passing down some Volkish runes -- write it. And, for a good part of its history in the West, it glorified individuals -- either the individuals who wrote it or the individuals remembered in it, or the groups that individuals wanted glorified (catalogues of ships at Troy) or the individual who recited it and wanted some cash/position/favor/admiration from individuals. Also, Shakespeare wrote literature -- whether the term is an invention of 18th century fellows intent on hegemony or a description of a body of writing admired and preserved by whomever off and on in the last few thousand years. As to who gets to decide -- by and large artists decide with critics and kings mucking about, or representatives of the "people" or actual members of "the people" (the folk songs Tolstoy admired), or priests and merchants, or the fellows who burnt the library at Alexander, or the bookworms who chewed up the last remaining scroll of the only social realist epic at UR. And, of course, the individuals in all these situations were not the sort of individuals gadding about assuming that they had ungraspable essences that made for meonic freedom -- but neither were they everywhere persons wholly given over to membership in a collective. Aside from the suspicion that maybe vast forces were moving one's hand across the page, my bet is that there was some "I" felt to be moving the hand. Nameless persons medieval -- no matter how completely identified by whatever hegemony -- felt an "I." Only, it seems, Kings, Popes, and odd bishop here and there, modern demagogues, and, of course, many modern critics, feel/felt the odd "WE" coming on in most situations. To say that the bourgeoise individual was not necessary for literature is trite. Of course not -- since the "bourgeois" individual is a representation constructed (perhaps to achieve a particular hegemony for its creator) and its essence is that it did not exist before so and so (fill in your favorite guess here, do not neglect your specialty of study and the group consensus on the bursting forth of capitalism). (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Shirley Kagan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 11:34:05 -1000 Subject: 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues Comment: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues Dear Mr. Crowley, How can you presume to include "everybody" in this statement: "If I say that only one person mattered in Germany 1933-45, everybody knows what I mean, accepting the over-simplification. Who 'matters' is a question of historical fact." Although I believe I understand who you are referring to here, to assume that I or many others "accept" your GROSS oversimplification as historical fact is beyond shocking. It is historical fact that to myself and to MILLIONS such as myself, the families we have irrevocably and untraceably lost matter a great deal more TO THIS DAY than your person of "historical fact". Shirley Kagan (5)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 23:49:40 +0100 Subject: 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues Comment: Re: SHK 6.0779 Re: Importance of Shakespeare and Related Issues Paul Crowley writes > Professor Hawkes is almost >nitpicking, given the breadth of some of my other statements; certainly he is >on the definition of 'literature' Doesn't literature have to do with the written word? (Latinists please join in). Shakespeare was producing plays for the stage. Sounds like a perfectly clear distinction to me. > Who 'matters' is a question of >historical fact: who had the power, influence, money, votes or voice at the >time; who made the decisions and took the initiatives; whose existence made a >difference to his/her fellows, for good or ill (e.g., Karl Marx). What is a "historical fact"? I thought historians had abandoned such silly notions, and if they haven't they need to. > I can only turn the question back on >Professor Hawkes and ask him why he would never be prepared to tolerate >tyranny. It is, of course, his sense of personal dignity, his sense of history >and national identity, and the affront it would be to the traditions of his >country. Perhaps Paul Crowley knows Hawkes personally, and these are Hawkes's own reasons. If not, and these reasons for resisting tyranny are offered as general ones, then may I demur. Some people's sense of their personal dignity, of history and national identity, and the traditions of the country in which they live, are the very things which have brought about tyranny for many of the citizens of the UK. Northern Ireland is good example: the rhetoric of C17 anti-papism is used by people desperately afraid of losing the priviledges given them in return for supporting the British state. The state's police force (the Royal Ulster Constabulary) has an internal crime rate higher than the population they serve, and it is used to intimidate the civilian population of one religious minority. Tyranny is not very far away for many citizens of the UK, and yet the three theatres in Stratford are frequently packed. > Further, his [Shakespeare's] printed works had >an excellent circulation and were read by those "who mattered". When exactly? Figures for pre-1623 sales of quartos that you've just discovered? Or the fact that the Folio ran to several editions? If the latter then 'death of the author' needs to be considered in all its ramifications. > Nothing he says is taken seriously as >though it were a real person saying something he meant to say in a real >political and historical context. My turn to nit-pick...Shakespeare doesn't say anything, he's dead. The remnants of his plays are available to us through mediated texts which bear some relation to the scripts for performance. The texts are available for interpretation, and those who are interested in political and historical context can claim to do some kinds of reconstruction of these contexts and locate the texts within them. This process is not the same as asking your friend her/his opinion, and can't be taught as such without intellectual dishonesty. Gabriel Egan
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0782. Friday, 13 October 1995. (1) From: W. Russell Mayes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 09:09:20 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0778 Q: Reading (2) From: David Skeele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 12:08:04 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 6.0778 Q: Readings (3) From: Harry J.C. Hill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 13:19:55 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 6.0778 Q: Reading (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. Russell Mayes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 09:09:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 6.0778 Q: Reading Comment: Re: SHK 6.0778 Q: Reading Kay Pilzer asks for _one_ book to assist in the study of Shakespeare and the early-modern period. Before revealing my nomination, I will state that I take this to mean not "the most important book of Shakespeare criticism," but the one that will be the most general help for both WS and the period in which he wrote. That said, I nominate Julia Briggs, _This Stage-Play World_. W. Russell Mayes Jr. University of North Carolina at AshevilleThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Skeele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 95 12:08:04 EDT Subject: 6.0778 Q: Readings Comment: Re: SHK 6.0778 Q: Readings In response to Kay Pilzer, I would have to ask two questions: how early in the Modern period, and are you primarily interested in criticism or production? If you are thinking about early twentieth century and are interested mostly in production, then I would recommend either Cary Mazer's "Shakespeare Refashioned: Elizabethan Plays on Edwardian Stages" or Dennis Kennedy's Looking At Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance." If critical history, then Gary Taylor's "Reinventing Shakespeare" is the bible. Hope these suggestioions help! David Skeele Slippery Rock University (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harry J.C. Hill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 12 Oct 1995 13:19:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 6.0778 Q: Reading Comment: Re: SHK 6.0778 Q: Reading For Kay Pilzer, I recommend one book readily. John Wain's. Why? It strikes me as honest and gifted, the product of a fine ear. Harry Hill Montreal