April
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0377 Tuesday, 21 April 1998. From: Tim Perfect <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 22:02:45 Subject: The Cleveland Shakespeare Festival Greeting SHAKESPERians: I have a great announcement to make. I am pleased to introduce the inaugural season of The Cleveland Shakespeare Festival. Our season will consist of "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Macbeth" performed outdoors, in repertory from 13 June through 28 June, 1998. In a year that has seen the SAA Conference come to Cleveland, we are very excited to offer these shows free for the public, on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, in the cultural heart of Cleveland, University Circle. We will be casting a central company of actors to perform both shows, and we are pleased to be receiving support from The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanites, Eldred theatre at CWRU and The Cleveland Play House. For those of the collected SHAKESPERians who are in the Cleveland area, you can find out more about auditions by calling 216.732.3311. Find out more about our season and our philosophy (What is "original staging"?). Visit our website at: http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/1777/csf.html Or email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Thanks for your time. We are all very excited, and are glad to share it with you. Sincerely, Tim
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0376 Tuesday, 21 April 1998. [1] From: Paul Franssen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 16:50:55 +0200 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0359 Shakespeare and the King James Bible [2] From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 14:29:32 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 9.0368 Re: Shakespeare as Character [3] From: Chris Stroffolino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 21 Apr 1998 00:45:43 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0356 Re: Beatrice and Don Pedro [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Franssen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 16:50:55 +0200 Subject: 9.0359 Shakespeare and the King James Bible Comment: Re: SHK 9.0359 Shakespeare and the King James Bible I wholly agree with John Velz that the scenario of Shakespeare revising the King James Bible is a highly unlikely one, even though the coincidence of Shakespeare's name "appearing" in Psalm 46 is indeed striking. However, as I have argued in an article in *Connotations* 3.2 (1993-94), it is no more that just that, a coincidence; the AV was based on a number of earlier translations, many of which have very similar wordings in almost (though never exactly) the same relative positions of 46 words from the beginning and the end respectively. Thus, it would only take a small further change in the text for this astounding coincidence to happen. Just like in probability theory: it is in itself unlikely for the roulette ball to light on the black 100 times in a row, but once this has happened 99 times, the chances of another such occurrence, completing the series of 100, are about even. So it is with this coincidence of having "shake" and "speare" in 46th positions in psalm 46. Although this is, therefore, a highly unlikely scenario, it makes for a wonderful anecdote, as Anthony Burgess realized when he made it the centrepiece of his story "Will and Testament," which in itself forms the opening of his novel *Enderby's Dark Lady.* For a reading of this story in relation to Kipling's "Proof of Holy Writ," the other crucial text in this minor genre of "Shakespeare-as-bible-translator" fictions, see my article in the volume on *The Author as Character* (on fictions concerning famous real authors), edited by my colleague Ton Hoenselaars and myself, forthcoming in 1999 with Fairleigh Dickinson UP. Paul Franssen University of Utrecht The Netherlands [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 14:29:32 EDT Subject: 9.0368 Re: Shakespeare as Character Comment: Re: SHK 9.0368 Re: Shakespeare as Character "I'm a post-modernist. And rich, too." That's the main reason I distrust post-modernists. They're all rich. It's a class struggle thing. Dale Lyles Newnan Community Theatre Company [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chris Stroffolino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 21 Apr 1998 00:45:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 9.0356 Re: Beatrice and Don Pedro Comment: Re: SHK 9.0356 Re: Beatrice and Don Pedro I do not want to make TOO much ado about my suggestion that Beatrice might express a slight momentary amorous interest in Don John, and I am sensitive to John Drakakis' point that we must distinguish our READINGS from "the play" (more on this later), but I do believe there is as much of a textual basis for this possibility as there is for any other reading of her first seeming come-on to Don Pedro "I would rather have one of your father's getting...."(2.1.303-05) (although I am not discounting the possibility of other readings). First, I would like to respond to Michael Friedman, who claims that Beatrice's derogatory comments about Don John (in 2.1.134) would invalidate my claim. But she also makes derogatory comments about Benedick, and more than a few readers can "see through" those comments, so that argument does not hold for me. Furthermore, I think it is important to see the similarities between Beatrice, Benedick and Don John in the first two acts of the play (while at the same time being attentive to the obvious differences of the play's "dominant discourse"). All three of these characters are separated from the general hooplah, enthusiasm and courtesy of the Hero-Claudio, Don Pedro-Leonato society. Don John's critical function, often obscured by the fact that he's "a villain", is to test the idea of "love" espoused by Don Pedro and accepted by Claudio and, seemingly, Hero. Beatrice shares many of the same thoughts as Don Pedro (though I don't have time to go into it all here, one could consult my 50 page chapter on the play), yet she expresses these thoughts through WIT (and thus the seriousness of her challenge to much of the dominant values of Messina is obscured by wit, and by the fact that, unlike Don John, she wants to criticize the society while AT THE SAME TIME live merrily within it)--until later in the play when we can see Beatrice express more passionately the same criticisms she expressed comically earlier in the play. Now given this READING of Beatrice's character, and understanding her as not simply a woman whose sole function is to get "hitched" in the happy ending, but who is attracted to Benedick because she believes he too has some of the same skepticism towards the dominant values of this society, and wants an "alliance" with him, but that he is afraid of her (either because she DOES go to far with her witty criticisms, or because Benedick is simply afraid to make the first move), Beatrice is at this point in the play (2.1.) left quite alone ("sigh heigh ho for a husband"). I am aware (in response to Dave Evett) that there is not ALOT of evidence to go on that Beatrice is attracted to Don John, but what DO YOU (plural) make of, for instance, her comic desire for a man to be made "halfway between Don John and Benedick"? Familiarity with Shakespeare has taught me that such statements, though they may seem casual and insignificant, often take on deeper significance on rereading, and since her "proposal" to Don Pedro is INDIRECT, and since she immediately rejects him the second she gets him to propose to her, and since she doesn't express nearly as much interest in Don Pedro as she does in Don John (even though her way of expressing interest in a man is to be contentious), and since she may feel at this point that she too has lost Benedick, or that Benedick has not proven worthy of her, this all adds up to a strong possibility that she may be at least considering Don John as COLUMN 2. Of course it's only momentary, at this point Don Pedro sets in motion his second plot to bring Beatrice and Benedick together. Well I have more to say, and could say this better, but I wanted to clarify and also sound more thoroughly what OBJECTIONS others might have to this argument---even if we can't change each other's minds..... Chris Stroffolino
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0375 Tuesday, 21 April 1998. [1] From: David Levine <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 17:02:34 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 9.0366 Re: RNT Othello [2] From: Jacquie Hanham <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 23:02:52 +0100 (BST) Subj: RNT 'Othello' [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Levine <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 17:02:34 EDT Subject: 9.0366 Re: RNT Othello Comment: Re: SHK 9.0366 Re: RNT Othello Well, Charles Weinstein sure does disagree with me in just about every way. I saw the Nunn production and didn't think there were anything like that many similarities, especially as between McKellan and Beale, who are two very different sort so actors to begin with... but Charles has his notion of the play, after all, and it seems an unchanging one. Yes, Iago might be playable as an "intellectual," but that approach has just never come close to blowing me away, and Beale did. Oh yes, we do agree that Harewood was overparted, in literally the way the term is used when applied to opera singers. It's the old "so-and-so is a tenor and Othello is a baritone" thing, a completely accurate point first enunciated by Orson Welles. Another difference between our two opinions is, of course, that Charles is wrong and I am right, but that should go without saying, right? [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jacquie Hanham <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 23:02:52 +0100 (BST) Subject: RNT 'Othello' I was really saddened to read Patricia Cooke's open letter regarding the RNT's 'Othello'. I wonder what happened in flight because it was a stunning production, and a highly audible one at that, when I saw it in London. I find it difficult to imagine the RNT's 'Othello' working in a space so different from the Cottesloe however, where the intimacy and nuance which the space afforded was so central to the production. Perhaps the fault lies not with the production but with the venue chosen in Wellington by festival orgainsers wanting to make as much financial gain as possible out of the RNT's reputation? Jacquie Hanham
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0374 Tuesday, 21 April 1998. [1] From: Tom Clayton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 08:48:51 Subj: RE: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica [2] From: Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 09:19:20 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 9.0357 Re: Jessica and Ann Page [3] From: Ed Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 10:26:58 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Lawyers and Monkeys [4] From: Kristine Batey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 09:52:05 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica [5] From: Ben Schneider <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 13:03:43 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica [6] From: Chris Stroffolino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 21 Apr 1998 01:30:58 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tom Clayton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 08:48:51 Subject: 9.0367 Re: Jessica Comment: RE: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica Re Clifford Stetner's exposition (9.0367): how do we know that there is an allegorical level, and if there is one that this is what it signifies? [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 09:19:20 EDT Subject: 9.0357 Re: Jessica and Ann Page Comment: Re: SHK 9.0357 Re: Jessica and Ann Page About reconciliations . . . You might want to look at the contrasting ends of the Quarto and Folio MERRY WIVES. Q gives very clear speeches and dictates very obvious actions that pull Ann literally back into the bosom of her family. Embraces, jolly words, talk of celebratory feasts and dancing. In contrast, in the Folio only she comes back from the church and asks, specifically, to be forgiven. Ma and Pa Page welcome Fenton into their family, but they don't say a word of welcome to daughter Ann. Nor does she say anything else after her plea. And in F we have none of the "Shakespeare's Festive Comedy" details that make the Quarto so much more Merrie Merrie Olde Englande, like tasty plums and servant-boys. Check it out. (See my essay in the Sam Schoenbaum festschrift for a longer discussion of this scene-end.) So the invisible hands that reshaped the Q/F WIVES texts however-whenever they did (since no transcendent author could have done it?), these author-functionoids seem to have been seriously contemplating some of the issues raised in this SHAKSPER string. As my namesake says in Folio LEAR, "This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time." Hi, John. Ever, Steve Foolowitz [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 10:26:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Lawyers and Monkeys Dear Larry, Maybe the monkey should resent Schneider's analogy. (Just kidding, Larry.) Yours in the law, Ed Taft [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kristine Batey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 09:52:05 -0500 Subject: 9.0367 Re: Jessica Comment: Re: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica >Ben Schneider wrote: > >> Bassiano's giving away Portia's ring to pay back "the lawyer" is an >> analog of Jessica's giving away >> Leah's ring to buy a monkey. And Larry Weiss replied: >I think I should resent that. Wait a minute, Larry. You're a MONKEY? Kristine Batey [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ben Schneider <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 20 Apr 1998 13:03:43 -0600 (CST) Subject: 9.0367 Re: Jessica Comment: Re: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica Larry Weiss thinks he should resent my equating Leah's ring to buy a monkey with Portia's ring to pay a lawyer. If Larry had read further he would have seen that the second transaction took place at a heroic level, in my opinion. The lawyer behaved splendidly and was splendidly rewarded. Yrs BEN SCHNEIDER OK? [6]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chris Stroffolino <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 21 Apr 1998 01:30:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 9.0367 Re: Jessica Comment: Re: SHK 9.0367 Re: Jessica To John Drakakis: I didn't mean to suggest a "sobbing Jessica locked out of Belmont". I certainly am trying to avoid "reducing the competing discourses of the play to a straightforward binary opposition". I am, however, interested in more recent readings of the play which stress the similarities between what Harold Bloom calls the play's mighty opposites: Portia and Shylock- readings that stress the similarities between these characters as outsiders, and thus focus on the differences between Portia's strategic performative dishonesty and Shylock's less effective rigidity, as a way of gaining power amongst the Christian males that dominate this society. Such a reading, I believe, though as partial as any other reading of the play, would figure the much touted "binary" opposition between "Christian" and "Jew" as more marginal than the "binary" opposition between "male" and "female". Yet, I do not wish to erase the Christian-Jew conflict as much as to see it as a subplot. I do not mean to suggest the play TRANSCENDS "the Jewish question" or "patriarchy" for that matter, but I wonder if the tension between patriarchy and anti-semitism which Drakakis, Evett and others have been employing is adequate to explain what happens to Jessica once she is married and Christian in Belmont. What I meant by her disillusionment with Lorenzo in Belmont I take from the way in which she argues with him, about "love", about music, and about his claim to be to her what Portia is to Bassanio.... Jessica is not presented as the most effective arguer. Lorenzo gets the last word with his "music of the spheres" speech, but Lorenzo's "theft" is called into question in other ways...... Yes, what is inexcusable under patriarchy is excused because of Christianity by The DUKE, etc., but THE PLAY (and not just my reading of it) does clearly present Lorenzo as someone who is USING Christianity to win over Jessica's love, and Jessica seems to be getting hip to this fact in her last scenes. The stichomythia that begins ACT 5 does NOT indicate that Jessica feels "saved" by her husband as she did earlier. The earlier dialogue between Gobbo and Lorenzo (in which Lorenzo claims he shall answer better TO THE COMMONWEALTH his elopement of Jessica than Gobbo would be able to defend getting THE MOOR pregmant) places the conflict in a perspective that is more legal than religious, and calls attention to the arbitrariness of laws, and since Jessica is listening to this, we may assume that it informs her subsequent arguments with Lorenzo, and parallels the conflict between Bassanio and Portia which IS the climax of the play and not just a loosening of tensions and an attempt to make the play safer for comedy after the trial scene. I hope this serves as a partial answer to Messers Drakakis and Evett. Chris Stroffolino
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0373 Monday, 20 April 1998. From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, April 20, 1998 Subject: Note to SHAKSPEReans with DIGEST Option Dear SHAKSPEReans with DIGEST Option, About two weeks ago, a power outage corrupted a number of listserv files. I thought that I had fixed all of the resulting problems, only to discover last Friday that those SHAKSPEReans who have their accounts set to the DIGEST option have not been receiving mailings since the April 6 outage. It took me two days, but I have now solved the problem. Anyone who wishes to catch up on discussions you have missed due to this unforeseen interruption should send the following commands toThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. GET SHAKSPER LOG9804A GET SHAKSPER LOG9804B GET SHAKSPER LOG9804C Hardy