March
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.031. Wednesday, 5 March 1997. [1] From: Hugh Davis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 4 Mar 1997 22:04:28 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0314 Qs: Branagh's "To be" [2] From: Chris Gordon <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 4 Mar 97 21:10:11 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 8.0314 Qs: Branagh's "To be" [3] From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 5 Mar 1997 00:49:09 -0500 (EST) Subj: To Be Or Not To Be, Nunneries [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hugh Davis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 4 Mar 1997 22:04:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.0314 Qs: Branagh's "To be" Comment: Re: SHK 8.0314 Qs: Branagh's "To be" I thought the scene was indicating that Hamlet knew they were there. I am not sure why, except that Hamlet went directly to that mirror out of the many choices. --Hugh Davis [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chris Gordon <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 4 Mar 97 21:10:11 -0600 Subject: 8.0314 Qs: Branagh's "To be" Comment: Re: SHK 8.0314 Qs: Branagh's "To be" This scene is one to which I paid particular attention, since I think the staging and the acting of it is quite complex. My reading is that Hamlet is legitimately suspicious when he initially enters but is _not_ aware that Polonius and Claudius are lurking behind the two-way mirrored door. He thus delivers the speech to himself, although we (as privileged viewers) are allowed to see the response from behind the "arras," which I found quite effective. When Hamlet encounters Ophelia, I felt that their initial response to one another was absolutely heartfelt and genuine on both parts. I noticed that when Ophelia was about to begin (or had begun) what I always think of as her "set speech" (one it almost seems Polonius might have penned for her), she glanced toward the room, almost as if to alert Hamlet to the presence of the others. The interchange that followed seemed curiously formal and "acted," as if the two of them knew they were playing a game for the auditors. Not until Hamlet asked Ophelia flat out (but in a whisper in Branagh's interpretation), "Where's your father?" did I have the sense that he was finally testing her, and finds her wanting. She does not whisper back, "Hiding in one of the rooms," and that's the moment when Hamlet seemed to become genuinely enraged, rather than conveying the somewhat wounded anger I saw him as playing up until that point. I found the entire scene marvelously detailed and moving, right up through Hamlet's final gentleness with Ophelia, her wonderful soliloquy, and Polonius's apparently genuine concern for her. This is one reason I keep going back to see the film again. Chris Gordon, four viewings and counting (who would also like to present a metaphorical Oscar for best delivery of a single line by an actor to Rufus Sewall for the power and menace with which he says, "Go softly on.") [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 5 Mar 1997 00:49:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: To Be Or Not To Be, Nunneries My chief problem with most interpretations of this scene, including Branagh's, is that they ignore the fact he has been sent for. He is supposed to walk into the lobby after being told by someone offstage, 'there's someone to see you'. He walks in, reading a book, dealing with questions of taking action against a sea of troubles. By SHEER coincidence, Ophelia shows up, the one girl he has been unable to see for months. She proceeds to accuse him of breaking up with her, when both know perfectly well that it was the other way around ... Which is as much as to ask, Has anyone seen a production of Hamlet in which the meaning of the lines and context of the scene were taken seriously? Andy White Arlington, VA
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0315. Tuesday, 4 March 1997. [1] From: Kenneth S. Rothwell <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 09:46:14 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0304 Re: MV Film [2] From: Tom Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 10:21:02 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.0289 Re: Shakespeare on the Great Lakes [3] From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 13:22:27 +0200 Subj: Shakespeare on the Great Lakes [4] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 23:00:18 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 8.0295 Ideology [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kenneth S. Rothwell <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 09:46:14 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.0304 Re: MV Film Comment: Re: SHK 8.0304 Re: MV Film Dear Friends, Brooke Brod is probably correct about the Welles MV. It's listed in the British Film Institute on-line catalog as an "unfinished project circa 1969." More interestingly we're also told that "footage from this project can be glimpsed in Oja KODAR'S 1988 feature, JADED." I've been meaning for some time to track down JADED to see for myself, but I've been too busy tracking down the current crop of Shakespeare movies. Ken Rothwell [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tom Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 10:21:02 -0500 Subject: 8.0289 Re: Shakespeare on the Great Lakes Comment: Re: SHK 8.0289 Re: Shakespeare on the Great Lakes Harry Hill writes of his memories of various people quoting Shakespeare >My French Canadian neighbours in Montreal do it, my >friends in Norwegian mountain villages do it, I heard a German >hitchhiker get quite far with "Sein oder nicht sein; das ist hier die >Frage". The ones for whom it is far less of a habit have been, I think, >my students, but I intend to ask them tomorrow, and tomorrow. I think I hear a song coming on: "Old do it, youth do it, educated and uncouth do it, Let's do it; let's quote the Bard. Actors whenever you look do it; Joseph Banks and Captain Cook do it; Let's do it; let's quote the Bard. "In Montreal the PQ does it, but they do it in French, Jacques Chirac too does it, though it makes him blench; Norwegians fishing on the fjords do it, People say in London even bawds do it. Let's do it, let's quote the Bard." You can all continue on your own. Tom [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 13:22:27 +0200 Subject: Shakespeare on the Great Lakes The correspondence on this subject has been edifying. However, I want to correct Andrew White who thinks expurgated Shakespeare postdates the great days of Shakespeare on the minds and tongues of ordinary people. Not so. Bowdler's first *Family Shakespeare* (in which all the hells and damns are gone but some of the best bawdy undisturbed, as his sister, who did much of the work, did not understand it) appeared in 1807, if memory serves. At the very time Shakespeare was being disseminated by the countless thousands of fascicles (ancestors of modern paperbacks) by Charles Knight (first edn. 1838-43), the expurgated ("bowdlerized") texts were also proliferating. Note that the two movements are related to each other. It is precisely because Shak. had the potential to become a household property that the Bowdlers felt impelled to make him safe for maiden ears (yes, ears; Knight intended that the plays should be read *aloud* en famille, as the installments of Dickens's novels were in the same years). And cf. the title *Family Shakespeare*. Note that the process the Bowdlers started is still alive: V-chips for kiddies of some families in our time to block some of the sex and violence on t.v. We laugh at the Bowdlers for missing the bawdy and catching the irreligious expletives. But we tolerate intolerable violence while up front sex is rated R. My wife dared to teach Romeo and J. out of an unexpurgated edn. to 9th graders 30 yrs ago in Montogmery County MD. The beginning highschoolers responded quite well, on the whole. But that was a different time from both the 1840s and the 1990s. Cheers! John [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 23:00:18 GMT Subject: 8.0295 Ideology Comment: Re: SHK 8.0295 Ideology Sean K. Lawrence comments > One assumes that students who felt that there was > nothing worth commenting on [in Shakespeare's texts] > would not sign up for the course. Paul Hawkins's comment was that he merely enabled students to form their own ideas about literary texts. As Lawrence notes, the existence of a course presumes that there is value in commenting, and signing up for the course indicates acceptance of this proposition, which is itself an idea about literary texts. > Even to say that "there is nothing worth > commenting on" would be to comment. But it would be nothing more, and so would not attract high marks. > I would even say that all teaching, even lecturing, is > a sort of dialectic between my concerns and those of > my students, in which their responses condition me as > much as mine conditions them. Really "as much as"? The students know you are paid to be there, for which they might expect a certain amount of guiding. If you're pointing them away from blind alleys (such as the temptation to treat a play as merely a poem) and towards the richer pastures, you're conditioning them more than they are conditioning you. Paul Hawkins maintains the position that 'anything goes': > I tell my students that in my class and in > their papers, any response is in order, as long as it > can be developed and argued. Sexist, disablist, racist, and homophobic attitudes can all be developed and argued by students in their essays. Might these be "in order", or should they be noted and refuted? (I don't mean statements that suggest that texts contain these attitudes, but rather statements which are themselves offensive. "The English win the war because the French, then as now, are too effeminate" might be an example.) Gabriel Egan
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0314. Tuesday, 4 March 1997. [1] From: Edna Z. Boris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 03 Mar 97 10:12:15 EST Subj: Branagh's "To be" [2] From: Lim Lee Ching <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 04 Mar 1997 02:08:14 +0800 Subj: Ben Jonson [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Edna Z. Boris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 03 Mar 97 10:12:15 EST Subject: Branagh's "To be" I'm curious to know people's reactions to Branagh's handling of the "To be" speech. Claudius and Polonius are behind a mirrored door in a mirror-filled hall. Hamlet walks directly to that door; they are able to see Hamlet, but Hamlet cannot see them. As he speaks the speech, the camera cuts back and forth from Hamlet to them. At one point Hamlet holds his dagger up to the glass and we see Claudius recoil precipitously. Did anyone interpret this staging as intended to show Hamlet knowing they are there? In Branagh's notes on the scene, he says that Hamlet is "unaware," but he also says that that "Hamlet seems to spell out the whips and scorns as if Claudius was personally responsible." The notes also say that only at "Go thy ways to a nunnery" does Hamlet know they are there when he hears a tiny noise and sees Ophelia's reaction. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lim Lee Ching <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 04 Mar 1997 02:08:14 +0800 Subject: Ben Jonson This may not be the best place to ask, but does anyone know of any good Ben Jonson related materials(other than the texts to the plays) available on the Web. I can be contacted off-list at:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Many Thanks. ching
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0313. Tuesday, 4 March 1997. [1] From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 14:58:03 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: MND [2] From: Julie Blumenthal <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 03 Mar 1997 16:03:54 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 8.0308 Re: MND; Tmp [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 14:58:03 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: MND I understand your distinction and irony between "allowed," etc. However, if you switch Oberon and Titania, then Oberon has no more opportunity to allow or disallow any topping than Titania does in a regular production. I'm having difficulty seeing how an instantly smitten Oberon could be said to "allow" anything. After all, that's the whole point, isn't it? The victim of the juice has no choice. So back to my original question: in what ways would a smitten Oberon be different from the usual Titania? And (this just occurred to me) it is not Hermia and Helena who have the juice applied to them. It is the men. Of course, they awake to bandy about the affections of the women, don't they? It's all too hard a knot for me to untie, so far. Dale Lyles Newnan Community Theatre Company [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Julie Blumenthal <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 03 Mar 1997 16:03:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 8.0308 Re: MND; Tmp. Comment: Re: SHK 8.0308 Re: MND; Tmp. > Hermione's fidelity in *Winter's Tale*, Perdita and Marina's chasteness > - in the latter case almost a palpable force - all connect with the I must step in here and attempt to differentiate between virginity and complete lack of sexualization. To my mind, _all_ of the aforementioned ladies show a marvelous sense of sexuality as a character trait; witness Hermione in I ii or Perdita's flower speech in IV iv, as well as some of Miranda's lines. In this I find a major difference from Marina! Notably, I think, because Marina's major role is as a restorer of the past, vs. a way into the future (Mir. and Per.). In fact, most of the proof of their virginity comes as a show of their honor in not succumbing to their 'earthly desires.' There's a difference between not doing it and not wanting to! Vis a vis Ariel - - the extremely popular RSC MND of a few seasons back had a male and fairly melancholic Puck whose depression quite obviously stemmed from his love (physical and otherwise) for Oberon, and his jealousy over Ob.'s infatuation with 'the Indian boy.' To me, it was a highly effective choice which gave Puck a heck of a lot more depth than anything I'd seen before. I imagine a similar male Ariel-Prospero reading could be interesting. Julie Blumenthal
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0312. Tuesday, 4 March 1997. [1] From: John Drakakis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 16:37:42 -0000 Subj: RE: SHK 8.0287 Re: Facsimiles [2] From: Tom Simone <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 11:43:01 -0500 Subj: Folio Facsimiles [3] From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 14:50:12 +0200 Subj: Facsimiles [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Drakakis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 16:37:42 -0000 Subject: 8.0287 Re: Facsimiles Comment: RE: SHK 8.0287 Re: Facsimiles I don't think that the word facsimile is used to describe these editions. They are orthographically modernized reprints of the earliest editions. They are emphatically NOT diplomatic editions. Long "s" for example is modernized, and no attempt is made to reproduce the spacing after punctuation etc. They are designed to give modern readers a flavour of what reading an "original" quarto might have been like, along with errors of various kinds. I did the Q1 Richard III but a number of the variants between Q1 and F which I would have liked to have seen printed in the notes at the end of the volume were cut by the publisher for reasons of cost. I think "Shakespeare Originals" in the plural is about right. John Drakakis [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tom Simone <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 11:43:01 -0500 Subject: Folio Facsimiles Just a note on what I find to be the most nuanced of all the Folio facsimiles, the Sydney Lee version of 1906?. The use of photolithography from a single copy produced a noble volume with far superior resolution of the page than in the Norton/Hinman. Of course, the Lee facsimile was a limited edition of about 1,000 copies and is only usually available in libraries, and it does not pretend to the bibliographic scrutiny of Hinman and his collator. I was, however, recently surprised by the fine quality of print impression in a leaf from an original folio. It retains aura even post-Benjamin. Best, Tom Simone [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Velz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 3 Mar 1997 14:50:12 +0200 Subject: Facsimiles Louis Marder's detailed account of the problems in the Yale Facsimile of F1 obviates most of what I sent off to SHAKSPER before I saw Marder's contribution. I might add to his information and that of Ken Steele some tidbits about earlier facsimiles. Lionel Booth made a type facsimile (1865) of F1 in honor of the tricentennial of Sh's birth. It was a labor of considerable magnitude. He was so proud of its accuracy that he offered a large cash reward to anyone who could find an error in it; no one ever claimed the reward. Of course no one knew in the middle of the 19th century what we now know about variants in F1 copies. I own a copy of this facs. which I bought for a very low price from the Folger when they were selling off some extra copies of such books in the late 1960s I believe it was. Henry Clay Folger bought multiple copies of the four Shak. folios later in the nineteenth century with the idea that having multiple copies in one place would someday enable scholars to learn more about the true text of Shakespeare: an uncanny prophecy of Hinman's work in the 1950s in the Folger Library vault that led to his two-volume *The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare* (Oxford, 1963). I once examined 15 readings in *JC* in the facsimile of F2 in the series of Shakespeare facsimiles that Methuen published early in this century and found that the plates had been tampered with ("sophisticated") to make F2 look more like F1. J. H. P. Pafford had earlier demonstrated that the F1 facs. in the Methuen series had itself been sophisticated. (See Velz "The Text of *Julius Caesar* in the Second Folio: Two Notes" *SQ* 20 [1969]: 95-98; J. H. P. Pafford "The Methuen Facsimile, 1910, of the First Folio, 1623." *N&Q* n.s. 13 [1966]:126-27). Neither Yale, nor Methuen, nor any other facsimile is a safe substitute for the Hinman facsimile from Norton. Now that Norton is bringing out a big moneymaker in their textbook version of the Oxford modern spelling Shakespeare, perhaps they can be induced to serve the scholarly community as they did when the Hinman facsimile appeared in 1968 and scholars were offered a deep discount on a special cloth-bound edn. at the same time that a gift edition was being marketed at several times the price of the scholars' edition. Many of us have been grateful to Norton ever since. It would be a boon to a new generation of scholars if Norton were to make a press run for another deeply discounted edition-again limited to scholars and one-time only. John Velz