November
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1156. Saturday, 15 November 1997. [1] From: Kristine Batey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 13:07:02 -0600 Subj: Hamlet's Election and Cladius [2] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 15:01:20 -0500 Subj: Re: Hamlet's Inheritance [3] From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 15:59:17 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1148 Re: Hamlet as Gertrude's Heir [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kristine Batey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 13:07:02 -0600 Subject: Hamlet's Election and Cladius Larry Weiss wrote: >The new king acts quickly and decisively to: (a) prepare >the country for war, and (b) initiate a diplomatic overture that >promptly bears fruit by (i) avoiding war, and (ii) turning the invasion >against a traditional enemy. What a king is this! In one of my undergrad courses, the prof suggested that "Hamlet" is really a tragedy about Claudius, given a quarter turn. Try switching the perspective, and think what the play would be like as Claudius the central character: an able, talented second son, doomed to stand in the background while his brother screws up the country. On top of this, he's in love with his brother's wife-and she with him. She's trapped in an arranged dynastic marriage to the brother of the man she really loves. She did her duty and produced an heir for him 30 years ago; no kids since, so probably no whoopie to speak of, contraception being what it was in those days. With the barbarians at the gate, and things falling apart, Claudius decides to solve his personal problems and the kingdom's problems at the same time: get rid of the bad brother, marry the girl of his dreams. He's basically a decent, well-meaning person: a good enough guy not to do a Richard III and off his nephew and stepson-at least at first-and lets him mope around the palace. The nephew's a waste as a potential king: a perpetual grad student, probably not as intellectually capable as his friend Horatio, whose philosophy he sneers at. (Has anybody ever played a 20-year-old Horatio to a 30-year-old H?) Hamlet's a brooding, superstitious, oversensitive, indecisive mess. He's 30 and heir presumptive, but they haven't been able to marry him off to another royal house. When he isn't hanging around the University, being a pain, he's at home being a pain and messing around with the daughter of the King's chief advisor. So here's Claudius, trying to straighten out his late, basically unlamented brother's kingdom before everything falls apart. Suddenly, this no-longer-a-kid kid of his wife's starts becoming dangerously erratic, and finally murderous, so the King talks a couple of the nephew's friends, good friends of the family, just to watch the guy. Once H murders a high-level courtier, however, major scandal looms on top of all the other stuff pulling apart the kingdom. There's no adult residential psychiatric care available for another 800 years, and things could get ugly if he just locks the guy up in the dungeon, particularly since Gertrude still loves him, even though he's a pill. So Claudius, beginning to sweat it now, talks to his courtiers and they agree that, for the sake of the Kingdom, this Hamlet must die, quietly, offstage. Things get worse and worse for Claudius, as he tries desperately to hold everything together. There's nothing he can do: this is a tragedy, he's a tragic hero, he has the fatal flaw and has committed the fatal sins, so there's no way he can hold everything together. Kristine Batey [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 15:01:20 -0500 Subject: Re: Hamlet's Inheritance Scott Shepherd asks what authority would back up Claudius's declaration that Hamlet is most immediate to his throne if, in fact, the Witan elected the king. The answer is "very little." And this lack of certainty may be one of the things that inspires Hamlet's reaction. In any case, there can be no doubt that the king was elected. Hamlet refers to Claudius having popped in between the election and his hopes; later he prophecies that the election lights on Fortinbras and give him his dying voice (vote); etc. As for Gregory Koch's observation that Hamlet actually liked Polonius until he caught him spying, I find no textual support, and much to the contrary. The idea that he must have liked the old man because he loved his daughter is intriguing. I suppose it is universally true that all men love their fathers-in-law. Larry Weiss [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 15:59:17 -0500 Subject: 8.1148 Re: Hamlet as Gertrude's Heir Comment: Re: SHK 8.1148 Re: Hamlet as Gertrude's Heir >I did recently read an article that deals with the possibility that >Claudius becomes King of Denmark because he marries Gertrude. Check out >Manuel Aguirre's "Life, Crown, and Queen: Gertrude and the Theme of >Sovereignty" *Review of English Studies* 47 (1996): 163-74. This was the position taken by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival in their recent production of <italic>Hamlet</italic>. It can work on stage, and certainly gives Gertrude a greater position of power. Yours, Bill Godshalk
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1155. Saturday, 15 November 1997. [1] From: Rick Jones <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:36:31 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1147 Re: Cleopatra [2] From: Kristine Batey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:39:44 -0600 Subj: Cleo Defended [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:36:31 -0600 (CST) Subject: 8.1147 Re: Cleopatra; Love Comment: Re: SHK 8.1147 Re: Cleopatra; Love I must respectfully disagree-vehemently-with Andy White's comment that A&C is "not as well written" as _All for Love_. AfL is, to be sure, about as good a Restoration tragedy as there is (I could never work up much interest in _Venice Preserv'd_, although the scholarly powers-that-be say I should), more coherent (or monolithic, depending on one's point of view) in its way, certainly more neoclassical in structure and characterization than A&C. But I find it difficult to regard these characteristics as inherent strengths. The very scope of A&C is what fascinates me: the way it trods unheedingly on all those neo-Aristotelian conventions, yet manages to present a unified aesthetic sensibility. Twenty years ago I saw the two plays performed on successive nights at the Old Vic. AfL got much the better production (the company was also doing _Hamlet_, and that was where the Shakespearean energy was channeled), and I had only standing-room for A&C, but A&C was still the better experience: Shakespeare's characters and plot alike were diminished rather than focused by Dryden's "regularization." I have since taught the two plays in juxtaposition several times, and I have yet to have a student-even those who (as I was at their age) are determined to de-mythologize Shakespeare-who professed to preferring Dryden. So Andy's comments interest me: I'd like to hear more about why he finds AfL the superior play. I doubt that I'll agree with the conclusion, but I may well grant much of the evidence. Finally, two questions, one semi-facetious, the other serious: Does anyone want to dispute my claim to being the only American to have seen two different John Dryden plays performed by two different companies within a 48 hour period? Has anyone suggested A&C in particular as a structural antecedent for Sturm und Drang? Rick Jones [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kristine Batey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:39:44 -0600 Subject: Cleo Defended >After completing my Master's thesis on Antony and Cleopatra (Immortal >Longings: Voluntary Death in A& C-a real page turner!) I have to beg to >differ with the definition of Cleopatra as wicked woman who used her >wiles for political selfish ends. I have come to be a great admirer of >Cleo . . . My only published Shakespeare paper was on A&C, discussing the play's theme of overripeness. I, too, became a confirmed Cleopatra fan after writing about the play. C is so brimful of life, and intelligence, and sexuality, and intrigue-how could she accept being humiliated and limited? C's death is no more suicide than the biblical Samson's: she's far above and beyond her would-be captors. > Why should we think that she would not >choose death with dignity in the Roman tradition as her final statement >to the Roman world? Right! >Lest we forget-much of what we readily know of Cleopatra was written by >the victors, and they are known for telling history to suit themselves. Kristine Batey
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1154. Saturday, 15 November 1997. [1] From: Louis C Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:20:35 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1149 Re: No Matter [2] From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 15:55:42 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1149 Re: No Matter, Never Mind [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Louis C Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:20:35 -0600 (CST) Subject: 8.1149 Re: No Matter Comment: Re: SHK 8.1149 Re: No Matter Julia MacKenzie writes: > On the question of 'matter', I am reminded of the use of the word in "As > You Like It": > > The Duke Senior says of Jaques - "I love to cope him in these sullen > fits,/ For then he's full of matter", in which case 'matter' can be > interpreted as thoughts, ideas, arguments, emotions. This > interpretation can also be placed on both Troilus' and Hamlet's lines. > "Mere words, no matter from the heart" - empty words, not real thoughts > or ideas from the heart, and Hamlet's "words, words, words" being only > that, with no meaning or emotion. > > What do you think? I think it depends on the immediate and play-wide contexts in the play. What do those contexts favor - or, if you are a director, what do they allow? L. Swilley [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 15:55:42 -0500 Subject: 8.1149 Re: No Matter, Never Mind Comment: Re: SHK 8.1149 Re: No Matter, Never Mind Dave Evett writes: >Beatrice's remark about words as "foul wind" suggests a contrast between >mere moving air and something more substantial, closer to the sense of >matter as solid material. "Foul wind is but foul breath" (Bevington 5.2.52-53), says Beatrice. Isn't she playing with the idea (how can I put this delicately?) of "breaking wind"? I'm not sure that she's playing with philosophical distinctions. Remember that Early Modern thought was almost completely materialistic: God and heaven were material entities. The soul could be seen leaving the body. Angels could dance on the head of a pin (apparently). If everything is material, are some things more material than others? Julia MacKenzie writes: >The Duke Senior says of Jaques - "I love to cope him in these sullen >fits,/ For then he's full of matter", in which case 'matter' can be >interpreted as thoughts, ideas, arguments, emotions. Yes, true, but Jaques (as jakes) might be full of another kind of matter, and the Duke may be punning-and inviting a laugh. Shakespeare apparently likes to play with "matter." When Polonius asks Hamlet, "What is the matter, my lord?" (2.2.193), Hamlet replies, "Between who?" (194). As Bevington points out Polonius means "subject" matter, and Hamlet playfully understands "cause for a quarrel." Playing with matter, I remain, Bill Godshalk
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1153. Saturday, 15 November 1997. [1] From: David Joseph Kathman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 12:57:33 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? [2] From: Paul Nelsen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 17:01:19 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? [3] From: Jason Rosenbaum <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 17:54:38 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Joseph Kathman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 12:57:33 -0600 (CST) Subject: 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? Comment: Re: SHK 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? Laura Fargas wrote: > Could someone tell me whether the old Globe was north or south of Maid > Lane? The books I have available seem to be very firm on the point -- > both ways. I would appreciate learning the current state of the > scholarship. The Globe was south of Maid Lane. This was a matter of considerable controversy early in this century: quite a bit of evidence seemed to indicate that the Globe was south of Maid (or Maiden) Lane, but then in 1910 or so Charles Wallace found a series of legal documents which quite clearly stated that it was *north* of Maid Lane. There was a lively debate in the scholarly literature for more than a decade, and then in 1921 W. W. Braines published *The Site of the Globe Playhouse Southewark* (with an expanded edition in 1924). Through a painstaking examination of all the known historical evidence, Braines showed that all of Wallace's documents which described the Globe as north of Maid Lane ultimately were copied from the description in a single original document (a common practice at the time, especially in legal documents involving property). He further demonstrated that every single compass point in this original description was mistakenly *reversed* from what it should have been-that is, what should have been "north" was rendered as "south", and vice versa. This probably resulted from a legal clerk (or somebody like that) having a map oriented the wrong way when he was writing the description. Braines' conclusions were generally accepted, and when the remains of the Globe were discovered in the late 1980s, it turned out that he was exactly right: the Globe was *south* of Maid Lane, not north. A nice example of an archeological find confirming an elaborately argued case of scholarly deduction. Dave KathmanThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Nelsen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 17:01:19 -0400 Subject: 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? Comment: Re: SHK 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? Laura Fargas asks, "Could someone tell me whether the old Globe was north or south of Maid Lane?" The first and second Globes were situated to the south of Maid (also Maiden) Lane-now known as Park Street-on the South Bank of the Thames. The Rose (just a stone's throw down the lane) stood on the north side, closer to the river. Evidence presented by W.W. Braines in his 1924 essay "The Site of the Globe Playhouse" put a hush on most disputation about the precise location of Shakespeare's playhouse. In 1989, archeological excavation of a tiny portion of the site authoritatively squelched any remaining doubts. The remains of the Globe's foundations are still there-to the south of the former Maid Lane-awaiting further archeological investigation. Paul Nelsen Marlboro College [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jason Rosenbaum <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 17:54:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? Comment: Re: SHK 8.1150 Q: Location of Old Globe? Location maps of the original (and new) Globe Theatre can be seen on the website of the International Shakespeare Globe Centre-go directly there with: www.reading.ac.uk/globe/data-base/images/globe/archaeology/southwark1.html
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.1152. Saturday, 15 November 1997. [1] From: William Williams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:18:20 -0600 Subj: Complete Works [2] From: Stephen Boyd Fowler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 11:20:02 -0400 (AST) Subj: Re John McWilliam's search for definitive editions [3] From: Evelyn Gajowski <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:09:37 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: Complete Works [4] From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 14:59:56 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 8.1141 Re: Ordering Arden Editions [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Williams <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:18:20 -0600 Subject: Complete Works Joke, or no, there is certainly no definitive edition of Shakespeare, and there never will be. There are "kinds" of editions, and there will ever be more "kinds." A starting place would be _Which Shakespeare?_ edited by Anne Thompson, et al. (Open University, 1992). I'm not sure if it ever was published in the USA. Of course, things have moved on since then with The Norton, Arden3, Folger2(?), but it's a good start. By the way, I don't think Riverside was ever _the_ scholarly standard edition. Most US academics cited it because they used it as a textbook, but the same would not be true from non-US scholars, and even in the US many scholars cite Arden, New Oxford, New Cambridge, Bevington, Pelican, etc. That's why we keep on writing footnotes, endnotes, or works cited, to tell our readers what textual choices we have made. If I cite Norton I have made a whole bunch of critical choices which are different from the choices I have made if I cite Riverside. For buying for reading I think I would plump for the second printing of Norton, which I am told is being done on more "robust" paper. William Proctor Williams Department of English Northern Illinois University [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephen Boyd Fowler <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 11:20:02 -0400 (AST) Subject: Re John McWilliam's search for definitive editions This may be a little late, but in response to the query on a definitive edition of Shakespeare's complete works I would like to suggest the 1997 *Norton Shakespeare*. It is not "definitive"-there is and can never be a definitive edition for obvious reasons-but it is comprehensive. There are alternate readings for all of the texts including a number of different versions of *King Lear* and others. The work also includes many great bibliographic references chosen to assist the 'would-be' Shakespeare scholar in beginning his or her research. The Honors Seminar that I am currently enjoying uses this text and I have found it extremely useful. So, for those of you who want ONE collected edition, my vote is for the Norton. (But do try to enjoy it none-the-less!) Stephen [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Evelyn Gajowski <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 09:09:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: Complete Works To John McWilliams: I recommend the following edition of Shakespeare's complete works: *The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition*. Gen. ed., Stephen Greenblatt. Introductory essays by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. Norton, 1997. The original Oxford Text on which this edition is based is prepared by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, gen. eds. The General Intro. by Greenblatt and the introductory essays to the plays by Greenblatt, Cohen, Howard, and Maus incorporate the most recent theoretical/critical developments in the discipline. Strengths and weaknesses of this edition were discussed on this list earlier this year, if I am not mistaken. Regards, Evelyn Gajowski University of Nevada, Las Vegas [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 14 Nov 1997 14:59:56 -0500 Subject: 8.1141 Re: Ordering Arden Editions Comment: Re: SHK 8.1141 Re: Ordering Arden Editions >Any bookshop in the USA can order Arden Shakespeare titles from ITPS >Customer Services, 7625 Empire Drive, Florence, KY 41042, tel 606 525 >6620. For other ordering information please see our website at ><<http://www.ardenshakespeare.com> I called ITPS today, and they carry only nine titles (I think it was nine) in the Arden series. I moved to the web and ordered <italic>2 Henry IV</italic> in hard cover, which is listed as in print at the Arden homepage, but which is not carried by ITPS. We'll have to see what happens. Yours, Bill Godshalk