March
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0346. Wednesday, 12 March 1997. [1] From: Julie Blumenthal <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 17:04:06 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line [2] From: Brad Morris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 16:42:28 -0500 (EST) Subj: Tromeo... [3] From: Richard A Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 18:08:39 -0500 (EST) Subj: Tromeo and Julet [4] From: Virginia M. Byrne <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 19:44:38 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line [5] From: Joseph "Chepe" Lockett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Mar 1997 03:39:38 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Julie Blumenthal <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 17:04:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line Comment: Re: SHK 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line > PS Would it really be so bad if they said, "ban-ished" instead of > "ban-ish-ed"? Well Jim, it depends on how much of a purist you are, I guess. It's "ban-ish-ed" because of the scansion, which people usually make arguments for keeping up with because Shakespeare did write it to scan a particular way, and if ignored it can cause jarring accents-in-weird-places sorts of issues. But there are certainly those out there who don't seem to stick with it. Iambically, Julie Blumenthal [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Brad Morris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 16:42:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: Tromeo... << PPS Anyone heard of Tromeo and Juliet? what is it? >> I think it's a porno flick. Just from what I've heard in passing conversations. I understand it's rather disgusting, whatever it is. Anyone else? Brad [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Richard A Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 18:08:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: Tromeo and Julet Tromeo and Julet was recently and favorably revewed n the NY Tmes. There's a webste at troma.com. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Virginia M. Byrne <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 11 Mar 1997 19:44:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line Comment: Re: SHK 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line Re: Tromeo and Juliet...check the second issue of SHAKESPEARE (the new magazine) inside the front cover addresses this weird version of R&J.As a director of Shakespeare...these big speeches just become another piece to be said by the character...if your actors are into the characters they see it that way also...they flow from the character. [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph "Chepe" Lockett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 12 Mar 1997 03:39:38 -0600 (CST) Subject: 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line Comment: Re: SHK 8.0345 Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line A former professor of mine recalled his Shakespearean acting debut, as a freshman newly arrived at college from Big Spring, TX (pronounce that "Big Sprang"!), playing Romeo in an outdoor production. (This probably would have been in 1953 or so). I hope he'll forgive my passing it along. After the Capulet's party, escaping from Mercutio's conjurations, our hero leapt over the hedge... but his sword caught in the branches, he tangled in his pumpkin-pants, and fell flat upon his face. And then, of course, had to arise and deliver "He jests at scars that never felt a wound...." Having negotiated the audience's titters at that, our Romeo beheld the arrival of Juliet, and what should emerge from our young Texan's mouth but: "What light from yondo winder breaks...." Not a terribly serious response to the original question, but the one that comes to mind.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0345. Tuesday, 11 March 1997. From: Jung Jimmy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 18:32 -0500 Subject: Romeo and Juliet / Shakespeare's toughest line Just saw Romeo and Juliet up in Baltimore (and they're doing fine). and I got to thinking about those Shakespearean lines that have become so familiar that it borders on impossible for an actor to make them sound new or natural. You know, "to be or not to be ..., " "all the world's a stage ...." But the one that always sounds to lamest to me is "what light through yonder window breaks ?..." I was wondering how the actors and directors coped with these "BIG" speeches in an attempt to make them sound like something a person might say, instead of like text that we've studied at length? The Baltimore show, at Center Stage, is most notable for its casting of one man, Robert Dorfman, as the Chorus, Friar John, the Apothecary, a handful of servants, and toughest of all, as the nurse. While the rest of the cast is costumed in period attire, he performs all the parts in a white man's suit; and it really is his show. The other interesting thing is the screeching, mostly by Juliet. But I mean screeching in a good way. I'm so used to petite Juliets who exude awe at the new experience of love. This one gives it a loud in-your-face quality. A very different kind of Juliet, that caught me by surprise. jimmy PS Would it really be so bad if they said, "ban-ished" instead of "ban-ish-ed"? PPS Anyone heard of Tromeo and Juliet? what is it?
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0344. Tuesday, 11 March 1997. [1] From: Richard A Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 15:45:30 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0334 Re: Desdemona's Guilt [2] From: David Jackson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 18:19:37 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.0325 RE: A Lover and his Lass [3] From: Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 97 18:54:59 Subj: Re: SHAKSPER Digest - 4 Mar 1997 to 5 Mar 1997 [4] From: Joseph "Chepe" Lockett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 16:54:53 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0337 TWT in Houston, TX [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Richard A Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 15:45:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.0334 Re: Desdemona's Guilt Comment: Re: SHK 8.0334 Re: Desdemona's Guilt On Desdemona, check out Stephen Greenblatt's chapter on _Othello_ in _Renasisance Self-Fashioning_. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Jackson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 18:19:37 -0500 Subject: 8.0325 RE: A Lover and his Lass Comment: Re: SHK 8.0325 RE: A Lover and his Lass I accidentally erased some of my recent e-mails before reading them; Is someone looking for a setting of "It Was a Lover and His Lass"? The Finzi version is available on the Chandos label's "If There Were Dreams to Sell", which in addition to having the five Finzi settings of Shakespeare songs, also has three Shakespeare songs set by Roger Quilter. Stephen Varcoe is the singer, with Richard Hickox conducting the City of London Sinfonia. The catalogue number is CHAN 8748, and I don't know if it's still in print, but it's a great CD. Incidentally, I also wrote a setting for "IWALAHL" and the other AYLI songs (plus a complete underscore for the Wedding scene/Hymenfest) for a production I directed several years ago; I would be glad to make a tape for interested parties (I think I also have it in MIDI format). David Jackson [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 97 18:54:59 EST Subject: Re: SHAKSPER Digest - 4 Mar 1997 to 5 Mar 1997 Facsimiles . . . Whoa! . . . Slow down a little about idealizations and texts and the veil of print and all the implications of the differences between the Hinman Facisimile and a "real" mixed one assembled and bound in some grotty bookshop in Early Modern London. We're really talking about books, I think, as tools, as objects with writing that we then use for other things. Like reading. Or like governing or at least suggesting stage presentations, or (as they were originally intended, don't ya' know) as filmscripts. The value of having facsimiles is so that we can see what the editors have been working on. We can see their brilliant successes, and we can see their egregiously ignoramic blunders. It takes immense linguistic and imaginative inventiveness for readers and actors and directors to make a script come alive. That is true whether they're inspiring a modern edition or a photofacsimile. The modern editors' regularizations, stage directions, or notes sometimes help wonderfully. Sometimes they ring flat and dull. Same with the earliest versions. But having the alternatives encour ages us to think "differentially." If one text gives a speech as "My Lord." and another version reads "My Lord?" then we theatre loonies can jump alert, thinking, "That's something I want my actor to try out." Students LIKE stuff like that. It helps them to translate written code into speech act. The grim-jawed economy of scarcity that refuses so steadfastly to grant the pleasures of textual diversity seems to carry the day. That's sad, given the dancing possibilities. Look at the Werstine-Mowat introductions to the New Folgers, for example. Happy multiplicities get sneered at and stigmatized if they happen to occur in the arenas of multiple texts. We can't reproduce 1623 experience. But we can watch the dancing possibilities as we compare 1603, 1605, 1623, and 1997 reprintings of the moments before Ophelia enters mad. Each different, each play-ful. Why the heck not? Line 'em up on a page in the appendix. The why not, I fear, touches on imaginative parsimony within the contexts of immense scholarly generosity. Ho hum, I will go sing. ever, Steve never-quite-the-original-but-not-a-bad-quarto Urkowitz [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph "Chepe" Lockett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 16:54:53 -0600 (CST) Subject: 8.0337 TWT in Houston, TX Comment: Re: SHK 8.0337 TWT in Houston, TX Best wishes to Jay T. Louden on his production of THE WINTER'S TALE at UC Irvine (and to the other by A Noise Within). California is a bit far off for me, but I'd like to invite any Southern Shakespeareans to Rice University's Houston, TX production of THE WINTER'S TALE, the twenty-seventh year of Baker Shakespeare Theatre. We run Thu-Sun Mar 13-16 and Wed-Sat Mar 19-22. Box office is 527-4040. For further information, our web site (and budding historical archive) is: http://www.rice.edu/BakerShakespeare I, too, would welcome any ensuing feedback. I'm quite pleased with the comic turn we've given the first half of V.ii, among others.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0343. Tuesday, 11 March 1997. [1] From: John Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 17:37:33 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0337 Re: LLW [2] From: Gabriel Wasserman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 17:49:05 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.0337 Re: LLW [3] From: David J. Kathman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 23:25:50 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 8.0337 Re: LLW [4] From: Louis Marder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Feb 1997 01:20:09 PST Subj: Re: SHK 8.0333 Qs: LLW [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 17:37:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.0337 Re: LLW Comment: Re: SHK 8.0337 Re: LLW << I share Gabriel Wasserman's fascination with this "lost play" of Shakespeare and tend to agree with his opinion that the other candidates put forth--*Shrew* *Much Ado* and so forth-do not quite fit the bill. After all, LLL ends with the most deliberate, effective "stay tuned for the next episode" cliffhanger of a conclusion that I can think of. Will the men perform their various services? Will they meet together again as promised? Will marriage (the natural conclusion of comedy) ensue? I don't think any of the suggested plays address these questions as they have been asked. Assuming there was a play, now lost, and assuming it was printed in quarto and our bookseller friend had a copy in the early seventeenth century, I ask fellow list members who are expert in Elizabethan printing history, how many quartos were typically printed in a run? Are there multiple copies of all the other known quartos, or only a handful of each? In short, is it within the realm of the possible that something mass-produced (and copied, I would assume, at least hundreds of times) could now have utterly vanished-or more to the point, could have vanished by the time the folio was being assembled? Are there parallels of other known texts that have vanished?>> There are several possible answers to your question. One is several plays in quarto were falsely attributed to Shakespeare ( sometimes as W.S....ring a bell?) in his lifetime. Locrine (1595) by W.S., Thomas Lord Cromwell by W.S (1602), The Puritan or the Widdow..." W.S. (1607) (The title page in the STC of Puritan someone has taken the bait and written S[hakespeare] after the "S." and A Yorkshire Tragedy by William Shakespeare (1608?). At any rate, my point is this, Hemmings and Condell, two friends of Shakespeare, players in his company and the force behind the Folio, probably knew which plays were legit, and which were spurious. Booksellers, on the other hand probably, didn't know, or care, if a play attributed to Shakespeare was real or not, all they wanted were sales. As for the 1603? booksellers list, it looks like this: "marchant of vennis" "taming of a shrew" "knak to know a knave" "knack to know an honest man" "loves labor lost" "loves labor won" Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Won, with plates, ed. T.W. Baldwin, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1957.) The fact that "love labor won" is paired with "love labor lost" proves nothing about its authorship. The two "knak to know.." play are also tucked in with the Shakespeare plays and no one has suggested they are by the Stratford-man. If there was a play called "loves labors won" it was probably not Shakespeare's or it would have made its way into the Folio. If it was real, and lost by 1623, then .... oh well. At any rate book sellers may not be a reliable source for authorship info. Regards John Robinson [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Wasserman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 17:49:05 -0500 Subject: 8.0337 Re: LLW; Comment: Re: SHK 8.0337 Re: LLW; Other known texts that have vanished? How about *The History of Cardenio*, by Messrs. Shakespeare and Fletcher. It was entered in the stationer's register (whatever that is) sometime in the 1640s. (Does anyone know whether entry in the SR means publishment?) Or for that matter, Q1 *Antony and Cleopatra*, or the other play that got entered in the SR but, apparently, not published (I can neuer remember which one). By the way, does anyone have any news about Edmund II (ironside)? [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: David J. Kathman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 23:25:50 +0100 Subject: 8.0337 Re: LLW Comment: Re: SHK 8.0337 Re: LLW Regarding the possibly lost play "Loves Labours Won", Mike Field writes: >Assuming there was a play, now lost, and assuming it was printed in >quarto and our bookseller friend had a copy in the early seventeenth >century, I ask fellow list members who are expert in Elizabethan >printing history, how many quartos were typically printed in a run? Stationers were limited to printing no more than 1000 copies of a book from one setting of type. (I'm pretty sure that's the figure, but I can't seem to find a reference for it at the moment.) This does not mean that they always printed this maximum number, of course. >Are >there multiple copies of all the other known quartos, or only a handful >of each? Quite a few Elizabethan printed texts, including a number of Shakespearean ones, survive only in unique copies. Only a single copy survives of the first quarto of *Venus and Adonis*; the same is true of Q1 *Titus Andronicus*, the only surviving copy of which surfaced in Sweden (of all places) in 1904. The first quarto of *Greenes Groatsworth of Wit* (1592), with its famous reference to "Shake-scene", was also not discovered until this century. There is a published census of all the Shakespeare quartos and folios. >In short, is it within the realm of the possible that >something mass-produced (and copied, I would assume, at least hundreds >of times) could now have utterly vanished-or more to the point, could >have vanished by the time the folio was being assembled? Are there >parallels of other known texts that have vanished? I think it's possible. In addition to the unique copies of some quarto editions noted above, there are also editions which exist only in fragments of copies. The first edition of *The Passionate Pilgrim* exists only in a fragment which is missing the title page, but which is thought to be from the same year as the second edition, namely 1599. The first edition of *1 Henry 4* likewise exists only in a fragment, which is actually known as Q0, since it was not discovered until after Q1 had been christened in the literature. If some entire editions survive only in single copies, and other survive only in fragments, then it makes sense that some may not have survived at all; and if there was no second edition, that book is lost to us forever. A lot of people have speculated that there was a lost first edition of *Loves Labours Lost*, because what we know as the First Quarto advertises itself as "Newly corrected and augmented", and the text shows signs of revision. Quite a number of works were entered in the Stationer's Register, but are not known to have been printed; some of these may have been printed but have not survived. Dave KathmanThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Louis Marder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Feb 1997 01:20:09 PST Subject: 8.0333 Qs: LLW Comment: Re: SHK 8.0333 Qs: LLW LLL and LLW - Gabriel Wasserman: March 11, 1997. You don't mention it so maybe you might like to know that Thomas W. Baldwin did a book on LLW and LLL about fifty years ago or thereabouts. As I recall, he does a good job with it. Louis Marder avon4@juno. com
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0342. Tuesday, 11 March 1997. [1] From: Nancy N. Doherty <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 18:53:20 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0339 Qs: Richard 3 [2] From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 23:36:53 +0200 Subj: Richard 3 [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nancy N. Doherty <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 18:53:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.0339 Qs: Richard 3 Comment: Re: SHK 8.0339 Qs: Richard 3 Just some thoughts as a director and teacher - acting and the text... RIII's tragedy, historically, has it's seeds in RII. RII is responsible for the death of his Uncle, thereby gaining his crown; Henry IV is responsible for the murder of RII, thereby securing his crown; thus begins the 100 years war, resulting in RIII's death at the hand of Henry VII. Yet, we do not view RII or Bolingbroke as inherently evil or "deformed". It seems your issue gets blurred between evil represented as deformity and evil for evil's sake. Is Buckingham evil? He certainly makes R's rise to power possible yet he has a line he won't cross regarding the princes. Text is subject to interpretation - I suggest the following - in my case to give my students a possible glimpse into R's soul - in his second scene with Lady Anne he states "I'll have her, but I'll not keep her long" It is possible since he is aware of his own limitations, knows she may regret her acquiescence, and is realistic about it, that R is making a statement about his intentions, but about his knowledge that she will not be with him long once she realises what she has done. My possible alternative looks at R as one with a soul - why else feel sympathy - why else have the ghost scene and his lack of finesse with Elizabeth - we can't just gloat over his demise...can we? His deformity was historic - Shakespeare may have exaggerated for effect - it's much more interesting that way. But, can you ignore the history to plead your case? A note on your "Silence of the Lambs" comment. Anne supposedly was a ward in R's household as they were growing up - What does one covet? One covets the thing which one sees everyday and can not have.... [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 10 Mar 1997 23:36:53 +0200 Subject: Richard 3 I consider you right on target; your friend incorrect. See Intro. to David Bevington's edn. of the play in his complete Sh. 1980, 1992. Platonic doctrine says that body apes the soul. Hence evil comes first and Richard's warped body reflects and symbolizes it. You might remind your colleague that the Romantic movement was the first time the disabled were pitied rather than dishonored. Before then "funny as a crutch" was the rule of thumb. Few if any laughed at Franklin D. Roosevelt; many laughed at hunchbacks like our Richard. The Romantics and Victorians introduced the sentimental interest in the unfortunate- by-birth. Before that they were often objects of scorn or laughter, probably for "Platonic" reasons: id est "if he is crooked he must have a crooked soul, so I scorn him." (Note that this cultural assumption about body and soul also lies behind the belief that beautiful people are good. "There once was a beautiful girl . . .") In R's first solil. "determined to prove a villain" can mean either "predetermined . . ." or "bound and determined . . ." Prob. Shak. means something of both. "Since I am predetermined to be a villain, I will be the most villainous villain I can manage to be." Cheers, John Velz