July
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0497. Wednesday, 3 July 1996. (1) From: Ann Flower <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 1 Jul 1996 11:27:18 -0400 (EDT) Subj: The Fair Maid of Clifton (2) From: Tunis Romein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 2 Jul 1996 23:13:39 -0400 Subj: Textual criticism question (3) From: Laura Cerrato <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 3 Jul 1996 10:21:01 ARG3 Subj: Chaos and Order (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ann Flower <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 1 Jul 1996 11:27:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Fair Maid of Clifton I am writing my dissertation on portraits in Renaissance drama and have read that William Sampson wrote a play called The Fair Maid of Clifton with a portrait in it. I have been unable to find this play anywhere, and was wondering if any of you have read it or seen it anywhere. I believe it was written/entered in S.R./acted around 1629. If you know of a publisher or anthology with this play, or recall other little known plays with portraits in them (paintings, sculpture, effigies, etc.), I would greatly appreciate any information. My e-mail address isThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Ann Flower (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tunis Romein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 2 Jul 1996 23:13:39 -0400 Subject: Textual criticism question. I would like to give students in my literary criticism class (beginning in September) an exercise in textual criticism and would appreciate suggestions on how I might do this with a scene from Shakespeare. Does anyone know of a scene from Shakespeare, preferably one that isn't of great length, that has presented textual critics with interesting problems in determining an authoritative text? What I would like to do would be to give my students three versions of a scene--the first folio version and, ideally, two quarto versions, and ask them to construct a plausible edition of that scene based both on internal and external evidence--but mainly internal. I have no idea about whether this is a practical assignment, but any suggestions or comments would be appreciated. Perhaps these should be sent to me directly since this issue may not be of interest to most people who subscribe to this list. Tunis Romein Charleston, SC USAThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Laura Cerrato <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 3 Jul 1996 10:21:01 ARG3 Subject: Chaos and Order Could anybody recommend recent bibliography on the problem of CHAOS AND ORDER in Shakespeare's drama? Thank you. Laura CerratoThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0496. Wednesday, 3 July 1996. (1) From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 1 Jul 1996 08:16:33 +0200 Subj: Shakespeare and Marlowe (2) From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 1 Jul 96 15:17:06 EST Subj: Hubert and John (3) From: Marga Munkelt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 02 Jul 1996 10:34:26 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 7.0492 Qs: Hubert & Arthur; Shakespeare and Marlowe (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 1 Jul 1996 08:16:33 +0200 Subject: Shakespeare and Marlowe Jennifer Formichelli asks about Shakespeare and Marlowe. The best study is Charles Forker's chapter in a new book from Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, ed. John W. Velz and called *Shakespeare's English Histories: A Quest for Form and Genre*. Also in that book check out A. Elizabeth Ross on *Henry V* as a reaction against the old-fashioned heroics of Marlowe's plays. Forker shows what Marlowe learned from Shakespeare's H6 plays and what Shakespeare borrowed from Marlowe in *Richard II* and many other plays. John V. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 1 Jul 96 15:17:06 EST Subject: Hubert and John The proposition that Prince Arthur's death on the rocks at the foot of Hubert's castle's walls culminates an elaborate practice designed to supply Hubert with "deniability" must take account not just of the basic facts but the actual development of the episode in the text. It has many puzzling features--most particularly the conversion of John's death sentence into the blinding by hot irons with which Arthur is threatened in 4.1. This issue aside, however, some less uncertain features remain. The first is the question why Hubert would want or need deniability. The play interestingly transforms the historical Hubert de Burgh, one of the richest and most powerful nobles of the time and holder of various high offices, into a person of no particular importance who catches John's attention as a potentially useful subordinate and is recruited in terms that make him John's personal servant. (Note that in 4.3.87 Bigot assails him for daring to attack a nobleman.) Although in principle servants were supposed to refuse to carry out orders that violated human and divine laws, and could be held accountable for criminal acts committed at their masters' behest, the primary obligation of servants was obedience, and in practice they tended not to be punished for carrying out their orders. Thus none of the hirelings who commit violence on behalf of Shakespeare's machiavels--Tyrrell and his underlings in _R3_, the murderers in _Mac_, the captain in _Lr_--are charged with or punished for their crimes, except perhaps by their own consciences. When they have done their dirty work they disappear. Hubert, hangs on, however; he escapes extra-legal execution at the hands of Salisbury and Bigot, apparently manages to persuade Fauconbridge of his innocence, and survives to bring us news of his master John's poisoning. Indeed, I think he becomes a much more interesting character if and when he chooses to disobey his master even at severe cost to himself. The second problem is that no such plot is explicitly devised. Neither John's request nor Hubert's assent says anything about concealment or public opinion. In the scene that follows John's request, it is Cardinal Pandulph, not John or Hubert, who explains to the Dauphin, Lewis, why John needs to murder Arthur, explores the public relations aspects of the situation, and outlines a plan for exploiting them to French advantage. The exchange reminds us that Shakespearean practice almost invariably lets the audience in on all the significant details of machiavellian schemes, from the intriguing of Suffolk and Richard of Gloucester in the first tetralogy, through the plots of Macbeth and Edmund, to that of Antonio and Sebastian in _The Tempest_--a practice that is not followed if Hubert's behavior is a charade. In the next moment Hubert is threatening to blind Arthur. In this scene Hubert repeatedly expresses his fear that his resolve will not stand up to the boy's appeal: "with his innocent prate / He will awake my mercy," and so on. Modern editors usually mark these as asides; if Hubert is trying to persuade the _audience_ that he is truly soft of heart, the speeches violate another general Shakespearean practice, in which machiavellian hypocrites--Richard of Gloucester, Iago, Edmund--reveal their hypocrisy to the audience in aside or soliloquy. An alternative possibility is that the speeches are really addressed to the "Executioners" laid on to help with the revolting task, who will then become witnesses in Hubert's defense. The question then becomes, why does he not only dismiss them during the crucial part of the scene, in which he actually grants Arthur mercy, but then propose to "fill the dogged spies with false reports" of Arthur's death? Beyond that, why tell John that Arthur is dead when he is not (4.2.68 ff.) and then, when it transpires that John has changed his mind, that he lives (4.2.251), without showing any anxiety that the change has come too late? The most plausible explanation for all this is the traditional one, that the play is exploring the political and moral vicissitudes that attend on a commitment to amoral _realpolitik_, and especially when that commitment is incomplete, and is undermined by a correspondingly incomplete commitment to high moral principle, and that the exploration is underlined by the piercing irony of Arthur's unwilled suicide just at the point where his reprieve has been sounded--a trial run for the even more painful irony of the murder of Cordelia. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Marga Munkelt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 02 Jul 1996 10:34:26 EDT Subject: 7.0492 Qs: Hubert & Arthur; Shakespeare and Marlowe Comment: Re: SHK 7.0492 Qs: Hubert & Arthur; Shakespeare and Marlowe Query: the dropped letter 'h' in Antony: See the first commentary note (0.1, p. 5) in the New Variorum Editiin of *Ant.*, ed. Marvin Spevack. M.M.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0495. Monday, 1 July 1996. (1) From: Susan Mather <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Jun 1996 01:12:22 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 7.0477 What Emilia Knew (2) From: Adrian Kiernander <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Jun 1996 16:21:27 +1000 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 7.0489 Re: What Emilia Knew (3) From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Jun 1996 21:46:10 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 7.0489 Re: What Emilia Knew (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Susan Mather <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Jun 1996 01:12:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 7.0477 What Emilia Knew Comment: Re: SHK 7.0477 What Emilia Knew I have found this latest topic on Emilia interesting for I don't think there is enough study done on the "minor" characters. I quote minor only because there does not seem to be any character that should be overlooked in Shakespeare's dramas. I am getting the sense that Emilia is both friend and foe...that while she is close to Desdemona, she nevertheless harbors envy in her heart at the same time for Othello & Desdemona have a relationship that perhaps she had once known with Iago. Maybe I see this because I've been watching too much Days of Our Lives & Another World instead of doing my homework...hmmmm, could be, but, just a thought. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Adrian Kiernander <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Jun 1996 16:21:27 +1000 (EST) Subject: 7.0489 Re: What Emilia Knew Comment: Re: SHK 7.0489 Re: What Emilia Knew A recent collection of postings on the question of what Emilia knew seem to me to provide an unusually neat caution on the dangers of trying to make definitive statements about characters from Shakespeare's or just about anybody's playscripts outside the context of a given production. Thomas E. Ruddick's opinion that "Emilia's character does not possess high ethics, if her declarations to Desdemona during the unpinning scene are any indications. Emilia would not use her husband so by this holy light--but she might do it in the dark (chuckle). Desdemona would not do such a thing for the world--but Emilia insists that the world's a great price for a small vice. These lines contrast Emilia's selfish motives to Desdemona's pure ones, and they establish Emilia as concerned only for herself." may provide a recognisable description of some Emilias but certainly not of others that I've seen. In any case it requires a selective deafness to Emilia's follow-up, "Ud's pity, who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for't." Is "selfish" the only way to play these lines? Tunis Romein then quotes >Othello: You have seen nothing then? >Emilia: Nor ever heard, nor ever did suspect. >Othello: Yes, you have seen Cassio and she together. >Emilia: But then I saw no harm,and then I heard > Each syllable that breath made up between them. as evidence that Emilia must realise that Othello suspects Cassio. Yes and no. It might equally well be argued, on the basis of Othello's reaction in performance to this interchange, (which in any case goes on for much longer than this quote, and gives Emilia the chance to defend Desdemona's relationship with Cassio in great and convincing detail) that Emilia thinks that Cassio has been proven innocent and is now no longer a suspect. Romein's various responses to the question ("How do we explain Emilia's behavior? Does she consciously withhold this information out of some vicious antagonism toward Desdemona? Do we label her a passive-aggressive co-culprit? Do we blame Shakespeare for sloppy writing?") are all possible but not exhaustive, and different Othellos and Emilias in different productions may well suggest a wide range of other interpretative options. Or it may well not even be an important question at all. Finally, Dan Lowenstein's, "I wonder, though, if there is any way for a director to communicate this understanding to a modern audience, which will not understand the words "ta'en out" to mean "copied". Who is to say what a modern audience (which consists of a wide range of different people) will understand? (Having played Cassio myself, and worked as assistant director, in a production many years ago, I remember that the New Penguin Edition which we used then has a note on this line saying that "ta'en out" means "copied", and I would understand it in this sense. Dan Lowenstein's reading about removing identifying marks would never even have occurred to me--though after this it probably will the next time I see the play.) Some members of a modern audience will be familiar with the fairly standard reading of "ta'en out" as "copied". Others won't. In some productions it will be such a minor point as not to be worth worrying about, but if an actor or director wants to make a big deal of it and can find a way of doing so, then they'll surely go for it. I'd agree that it might make a difference for the actor playing Emilia if s/he thinks that Emilia is just borrowing the handkerchief, but the point could pass more or less unnoticed in performance with not much damage being done, and the director can spend valuable time and energy on questions which will have a greater effect on the audience. Adrian Kiernander (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Jun 1996 21:46:10 -0400 Subject: 7.0489 Re: What Emilia Knew Comment: Re: SHK 7.0489 Re: What Emilia Knew Several of us have commented on the seeming contradictions in Emilia's character as being the result of Shakespeare's sloppy writing. In our company, we have always referred to the "Shakespearean flaw," that stunning contradiction which a close study of the text will reveal in every single one of his plays. Our solution to all of the flaws is to shrug our shoulders, smile indulgently, and get on with the business of turning the script into a play, secure in the knowledge that the audience will never notice it. I've never had an actor unable to deal with the fact that there are apparent inconsistencies; most of them just play each scene "at the moment," if that makes any sense, and the text just sweeps us and the audience along. Dale Lyles Newnan Community Theatre Company
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0494. Monday, 1 July 1996. (1) From: Rinda Frye <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 96 14:36:36 EDT Subj: SHK 7.0475 Re: Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2) From: Armstrong Eric <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 1996 15:05:46 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 7.0488 *SNL* Spring 1996, Shakespeare Summer Festivals (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rinda Frye <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 96 14:36:36 EDT Subject: Re: Oregon Shakespeare Festival Comment: SHK 7.0475 Re: Oregon Shakespeare Festival I thought that Libby Appel was about to move to Ashland, I assumed as artistic director. If so, that should bode well for the festival. I just saw her production of The Tempest at the Indiana Rep last month and it was quite good. The production used just 7 actors, rather elegantly--Ariel and Miranda doubled, as did Caliban and Antonio, which made for some interesting psychological permutations in their relationship with Prospero. The cast was multi-racial and the Trinculo/Francisco doubling was performed by a woman--all of which seemed to underline the theatrical magic of the piece. The stage was largely bare--occasionally an actor dragged on a huge piece of driftwood to sit on, and Ariel at one point sat on the proverbial swing which seems to defend from the flies of so many Shakespearean productions these days, and the stage space was defined by screens which functioned as scrims when lit with rear projections from behind (for the banquet and Juno masque). All in all, though, it was a lovely production, well spoken, with an emphasis on the language and the actors' ability to transform themselves as needed by the play, rather than on pageantry and elaborate costume. Sorry I don't have the cast list in front of me in my office. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to share that. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Armstrong Eric <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 1996 15:05:46 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 7.0488 *SNL* Spring 1996, Shakespeare Summer Festivals Comment: Re: SHK 7.0488 *SNL* Spring 1996, Shakespeare Summer Festivals I would like to include two productions not really in Festivals but based in Toronto this summer. 1. Shakespeare in the Rough, at Winslow Park 1 blk south of the Danforth, between Logan and Carlaw, presents WT outdoors Friday, Saturdays and Sundays, Jul 19 - Aug 25 '96 at 2:00 p.m. Free, with a pass the hat at the end. Dir. Dawn Mari McCaugherty. 2. Shakespeare in the Park, (Canadian Stage Company) , at High Park, presents MND. [sorry don't have dates or times]. Also pay-what-you-can. Regards, Eric Armstrong.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0493. Monday, 1 July 1996. (1) From: Rick Jones <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 1996 11:15:03 -0500 (CDT) Subj: Back to Shylock (2) From: Thomas E. Ruddick <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 96 14:55:21 EST Subj: RE: SHK 7.0490 Re: Michael Kahn's Comment (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 1996 11:15:03 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Back to Shylock I said I wouldn't post again on the whole Michael Kahn business; I hope the following constitutes enough of a new spin to mean that I'm not breaking my word here. Since I seem to have created the diversion which steered us away from a potentially very interesting thread, perhaps it is my job to bring us back. Milla Riggio says that Michael Kahn did not in fact say what I said she said he said. (Whew!) Fine. At least that invalidates my conditional sentence, "If [he] in fact said...", which itself was, I grant, pompous and/or foolish (to coin a phrase). But I'd like to return to my original question, in context. The discussion was about Shylock in Act I: has he yet decided that he will kill Antonio if given the opportunity? What, in other words, does he mean by "feed fat the ancient grudge"? It was at this point that Milla Riggio cited Michael Kahn. Let us for the moment grant that in Shakespeare, characters "say what they mean and mean what they say" (I'm not sure this is always true, but it is certainly more true in Shakespeare than in modern drama). But how does this advance the argument or bring us to an even tentative answer? Someone (sorry, I've forgotten who) said something to the effect that Shylock's line means that the "merry bond" isn't so merry after all: that he's hoping to kill Antonio in revenge. There's some evidence for that, but I choose a different interpretation, which I think also has textual (and historio-cultural) support. I suggest that both interpretations have merit, and that one reason the play has survived for 400 years is precisely this multiplicity of possible, valent, readings. I infer that Milla Riggio sees a clear textual "answer," else why bring up the Kahn paraphrase? But she doesn't say what that answer is, and I just don't see a single "correct" response. Obviously I'm misreading, misinterpreting, or otherwise just not understanding her point. Would she (or someone!) help me out, here? Rick Jones (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Thomas E. Ruddick <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Jun 96 14:55:21 EST Subject: 7.0490 Re: Michael Kahn's Comment Comment: RE: SHK 7.0490 Re: Michael Kahn's Comment Milla: I believe I now understand you to be saying that you have misrepresented Michael Kahn in your original post? If so, I direct my umbrage at your silly misrepresentation rather than at Mr. Kahn himself. Not to get too Freudian, I hope, but are you sure you didn't personally want to express such an idea, and did so under the guise of your (mis?) understanding of Kahn? So, what (if you care to share) are *your* beliefs? Also, just for the record, what did Kahn *really* say? Thomas E. Ruddick