Shakespeare Electronic Conference, SHK 7.0714. Tuesday, 1 October 1996.
(1) From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 30 Sep 1996 21:11:58 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 7.0707 Re: The State of the Profession
(2) From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 1 Oct 1996 05:04:56 -0400
Subj: Granville-Barker
(3) From: Clark Bowlen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 01 Oct 1996 14:41:14 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 7.0706 Re: Granville-Barker
(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 30 Sep 1996 21:11:58 -0400
Subject: 7.0707 Re: The State of the Profession
Comment: Re: SHK 7.0707 Re: The State of the Profession
Gabriel Egan writes:
>All around the globe the north and west consume the wealth of the south and
>east, and condemn the majority of the world's population to abject misery. The
>computer I'm typing this on was constructed by a slave-child manacled to a
>work-bench. Just exactly how is Shakespeare going to set him/her free?
I imagine that Gabriel is looking for a certain answer to his question:
Shakespeare--long dead--is not able to free the slaves of the world. Even his
extant scripts are incapable of taking arms against a sea of capitalism.
I think we have to make a distinction here between inert scripts and active
humans. It is possible that certain humans who read Shakespeare's scripts or
see his scripts acted may be thus motivated to take certain humanitarian
actions. Who knows? But I doubt if Shakespeare's scripts or Marx's books will
radicalize the masses. I certainly would be surprised if they did.
Nevertheless, I'll bet that Gabriel feels just rotten to be criticizing Kezia's
position while using a computer that he KNOWS has been built by slave children.
My computer, in contrast, was built by ants in Africa.
Yours, Bill Godshalk
(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 1 Oct 1996 05:04:56 -0400
Subject: Granville-Barker
Dear Harry Hill, It's hard to see how Granville-Barker's tinkerings with the
so-called 'thrust' stage and his other ill-conceived gestures in the direction
of early modern performance square with his ultimate commitment to
psychological realism. The modes of the one undermine the principles of the
other. Needless to say, this contradiction flawed many of his productions, not
least the one at the Old Vic in London in 1940. Gielgud, who gave a grateful
nation his King Lear therein, offered the fatuous comment 'It seemed to take
our minds off the awful things that were happening in France'. 'Ja', as Goethe
used to say. That's precisely what was wrong with it.
Terence Hawkes
(3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Clark Bowlen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 01 Oct 1996 14:41:14 -0500
Subject: 7.0706 Re: Granville-Barker
Comment: Re: SHK 7.0706 Re: Granville-Barker
Granville-Barker's staging ideas were a reaction to the late Victorian
carpenter's holiday productions of Shakespeare in huge, rigorously proscenium
theaters, with tons of naturalistically rendered scenery flying in and out for
every scene. Barker's instinct was for simplicity and for flow, for emphasis on
the actor and the text. Like William Poel before him, he turned to the stages
of Shakespeare's time as a means of achieving that. Barker, through his
influence on Tyronne Guthrie and Tanya Moiseiwitch, can be give more than a
little credit, not only for the bare-stage style of Shakespearian production
that Guthrie/Moiseiwitch pioneered in Stratford Ontario, but for the very shape
of the stages in many (most?) regional theaters in this country. No small
legacy.
