December
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1244 Sunday, 6 December 1998. [1] From: Harry Hill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 09:36:56 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1234 Re: Rhetoric [2] From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 20:08:26 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1222 Rhetoric [3] From: Catherine Fitzmaurice <cfk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:18:36 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: Rhetoric [4] From: C. David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 5 Dec 1998 13:43:27 -0500 Subj: RE: SHK 9.1234 Re: Rhetoric [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harry Hill <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 09:36:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 9.1234 Re: Rhetoric Comment: Re: SHK 9.1234 Re: Rhetoric Ros King is as right as Dale Lyles on the need for a grasp of pattern in actors who would play Shakespeare. There is so much emphasis in contemporary voice training on "the voice beautiful" [which Dorothy Parker might have reviewed as "the performance ugly"], and on what has come to be termed "rooting" and "centering" that vocabulary and syntactical structure are thrown out with all that vocal bath water. At the American Voice Association once I attended a workshop in an air-conditioned Sheraton where to my astonishment many participants were wearing scarves. When I enquired about this, two of them wailed "My Instrument!!!". I wondered whether they had ever been inside a real theatre, or investigated the workings of a real sentence. When John Barton visited North America he spent most of his time asking his actors the meanings of words. Harry Hill Montreal [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 20:08:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.1222 Rhetoric Comment: Re: SHK 9.1222 Rhetoric If by rhetoric you mean, a study of what is essentially an oral form of presentation, then yes I think it is important. My mentor (a mamber of this list) will sit down with you and analyze the text for rhetorical patterns as well as grammatical ones. Frankly, people who downplay the rhetorical in Shakespeare end up with performances that make musical sense, or primitive, Stanislavskian "through-line" sense, but miss the points of their speeches because they haven't bothered with the rhetorical aspects. But my sense of 'rhetoric' is a bit fuzzy, so I could be way off on this. Andy White Arlington, VA [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Catherine Fitzmaurice <cfk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:18:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Rhetoric Of course rhetoric (as well as what one writer perhaps disparagingly calls "new-agy stuff") is part of actor-training. We just don't call it that. Balancing ideas and sound patterns is essential for clarity. But it doesn't need to be imposed from above, or from a literary perspective. I went through three years of actor training at the Central School of Speech and Drama, and taught there for two years before coming to the United States without ever hearing the word "scansion," let alone "rhetoric." We worked on meaning (and let the post-modernists have their field day with that assumption) in its complexity, and as informed by thought, feeling, sound patterns, images, associations, verse structure (such as the stychomathia between Mac and Lady M re the owl), intention, character, and ALSO one's own nature in its rhythms of the "presentist" moment. It's called acting. And voice work has always worked both the "natural" voice and the voice in context of the demands of text, space, and circumstances, taking into consideration the fact that the speaking voice uses a breathing rhythm which is always DIFFERENT from a "natural" breath. (I continue to argue endlessly about that one!) Just some actors do all this better than others. (oops, value systems at work.) Catherine FitzmauriceThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: C. David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 5 Dec 1998 13:43:27 -0500 Subject: 9.1234 Re: Rhetoric Comment: RE: SHK 9.1234 Re: Rhetoric I certainly agree that recognizing rhetorical figures in language (whether one learns the "official" names or not) is important and helpful for actors and other readers of the text. However, in my class and when I direct Shakespeare (or any play, for that matter) the issue of the play *as* rhetoric also becomes important. Furthermore, acting itself contains a rhetorical component in that the actor makes use of the available means (varied as they are in different circumstances) in order to persuade an audience that he or she is such and such a character in such and such a place. Actors, therefore, benefit not only from understanding the forms of rhetoric used by the characters in the fictive world of the play, but also how the playwright and the directors/actors/designers use rhetoric in the dramaturgical and theatrical worlds. cdf
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1243 Sunday, 6 December 1998. [1] From: Carol Barton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 10:36:24 EST Subj: Re: SHK 9.1235 Re: Presentism [2] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 10:52:41 -0500 Subj: Re: Presentism [3] From: Carol Barton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 11:09:38 EST Subj: Re: SHK 9.1235 Re: Presentism [4] From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 09:41:43 -0800 Subj: SHK 9.1235 Re: [5] From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 11:17:19 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1225 Re: Presentism [6] From: Hugh Grady <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 15:57:48 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1215 Re: Presentism [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Carol Barton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 10:36:24 EST Subject: 9.1235 Re: Presentism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1235 Re: Presentism For Jason Vernon Starnes, who offered that: "More respect for and consideration of undergrads like myself would be greatly appreciated in the future. Some of us are listening . . . ." Jason, as David Lindley has tried to explain several times, his comment was neither as dismissive nor as pejorative in context as it has been construed to be, out of context. Those of us who term after term encounter the sort of student who would plagiarize from the textbook assigned to the class (I had one of those, an Ed major senior who was planning to teach English at the high school level that following fall), and who would buy term papers, as another thread on this list has suggested, must face the harsh and disappointing reality that scholarship as we know and love it is not a universal principle. Increasingly in our collective experience, students are degree rather than learning oriented: a respected colleague at a decent middle-class school who has been teaching for thirty years was horrified recently to be accosted by some young women who determined that the grades he had given them were "unsatisfactory" (*not* that their work merited better), and I was physically threatened by one young man who bellowed in broken English, "That's *my* money going down the drain!!" after he failed to attend half the classes that quarter, and (surprise, surprise) failed the midterm and final. The quest for high GPAs has in too many cases supplanted the thirst for knowledge, especially as academia becomes increasingly consumerist: universities competing for enrollment and run by business people rather than academics are pandering to the notion that learning power should equate to earning power, and those of us who see a higher value in the work we do than merely to contribute to someone's potential bottom line are much dismayed by the trends that are developing. It was to those students (increasingly the norm, though mercifully for us on the other side of the desk, there are still some left like you) that David's comments were directed. Neither he nor anyone else on this list has contempt for good students per se . . . you are the future of our profession, and each and every one of us knows that. David is of course capable of making this defense on his own behalf, but coming from a colleague who sees the world from the same perspective, perhaps it won't ring as hollow as it might if it came across as simple "damage control" on his part. I hope he will excuse my presumption. Carol Barton [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 10:52:41 -0500 Subject: Re: Presentism Stephanie Hughes writes > It seems to me that one of the great values of history, perhaps to > the true historian the greatest (and one of the main reasons why > we go into the discipline in the first place), is the depth of > perception that comes from seeing with both eyes, our own, and > with those of our forbears in a way that isn't possible with > current events, or even the events of the recent past. I am moved by this image of a pair of eyes spaced across the wide bridge of historical difference, one eye "our own" and the other "our forbears". This is matched in gorgeous absurdity only by "She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled". But I'm troubled by the spelling "forbears". Shouldn't that be "forebears"? You don't suppose "Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear, / To dig the dust enclosed here!" means the grave's occupant claims Jesus as an ancestor? I don't mind these aristocrats stealing our national poet, but surely our religion is safe from their depredations. Gabriel Egan [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Carol Barton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 11:09:38 EST Subject: 9.1235 Re: Presentism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1235 Re: Presentism > A distinction must be made between social morays In the manner of "physician, heal thyself," I would like to take back the embarrassing beam in my own eye (call it end-of-quarter fatigue): I did not mean fraternizing sea serpents here, but _mores_ (as an esteemed colleague gently chides). (O tempus, o mores! Guess I'm getting old.) Carol Barton [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 09:41:43 -0800 Subject: Re: Comment: SHK 9.1235 Re: I am ever impressed with David Lindley. His, as usual, kind, reasonable, and even practical response to that unwarranted attack upon him should serve as a lesson to the surlier members of this list. (Myself included on an occasion or two.) I note that the portion of David's response about undergraduate understanding of complex theoretical issues was parallel to the sad discussion about whether or not children could read Shakespeare with adequate understanding. Anything that can by taken for elitism brings out the knives of some members of this list, and surliness results. Perhaps this is a good illustration of David's point. Those who do not understand such subtle distinctions seldom realize it. They barge in, condemning right and left, and think they make substantive contributions. I carried my undergraduate haziness into grad school. I was blessed with a professor who took me aside and told me that my comments revealed I didn't really understand the complexity of the issues. I heard something, assumed it meant something I already understood, and reacted from there. It was a great lesson. I don't know to what extent I have overcome that. That is really for others to judge, and those who know my view of Presentism will feel I still have a ways to go. I do try to understand if I am hearing a new idea or an old one. I do try to understand the reasons for a new idea before judging it. I do try to absorb whatever part of it is practical for me, if I can. (BTW, my lack of passion for Presentism is not because I find it invalid. I find it obvious. I also find it a dead end. Where do you go from there? I have not heard an answer I find satisfying. If I am bound by my old habits and am missing the point, please enlighten me.) For anyone to react with such vehemence to David's post is to assume that most undergraduates have the same grasp of the subject as a grad students and even professors. Do you really believe that? If so, why bother with advanced degrees? Mike Jensen P.S. Any one know where I can get a copy of the Maurice Evans/Hallmark Hamlet? [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 11:17:19 -0800 Subject: 9.1225 Re: Presentism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1225 Re: Presentism Bill queries: > Do > we judge political criminals from fifty years ago by their standards or > by ours? There's another way to put this, of course, in the form of the query posed by Vladimir Jankel
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1242 Sunday, 6 December 1998. [1] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 09:23:14 -0500 Subj: Re: Plagiarism [2] From: P. Dolan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 09:35:05 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism [3] From: Jamie Brough <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 12:12:44 EST Subj: Re: SHK 9.1232 Re: Plagiarism [4] From: Carol A Cole <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 12:55:15 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism [5] From: David Maier <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 10:36:19 -0800 Subj: Plagiarism [6] From: John V Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 17:02:32 EST Subj: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism [7] From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 20:34:48 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 09:23:14 -0500 Subject: Re: Plagiarism This morning I received my $6 essay "Othello-A Racist Play?" from the plagiarism website. I wouldn't give it above a 'C' if an undergraduate turned it in. (Roughly a lower second in British academic currency.) Here's a taste, being the whole of the second paragraph: Most racist comments in the play are said by people that are angry or upset. For example, when Emilia found out that Othello had killed Desdemona she was extremely mad and she called Othello a "Blacker devil", this was the only time in the play that she had said anything racist about Othello. The main characters that have racist attitudes are Iago, Brabantio, Roderigo and Emilia, with the hatred of Othello as the basis for their racist actions and comments towards him. Iago is the most racist character in the book as he has it in for Othello right from the start. What sparks off Iago's hate towards him is the fact that when Othello chose his lieutenant, it was Cassio who was chosen instead of Iago. What made Iago angry was the fact that Cassio had no experience in war when he did and Cassio was chosen instead of him. Iago does not say anything racist to Othello's face but he has a lot to say against him behind his back. He schemes to destroy Othello and anything in his way including Cassio and Desdemona. The first time we hear one of his racist comments is when he's talking to Brabantio about Othello and Desdemona, "Even now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe". Should I send them the $6 I promised? Is it worth more than a 'C'? (More probingly, is a 'C' worth $6?) Gabriel Egan [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: P. Dolan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 09:35:05 -0600 (CST) Subject: 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism As several of the responses note there are any number of things that we as teachers can do to make it difficult to fulfill our assignments with plagiarized material. Extensive in-class writing, working with drafts and, in general, getting to know the students and their intellectual interests and style, for a start. It also helps if our assignments go beyond the mind-numbing as well. But the whole problem does point to a larger issue, worth thinking about. Education and Shakespeare are both commodities-we can't do anything about that in the short term. So how do we deal with them without completely, as we used to say, "selling out" at the same time as we take account the real desires and concerns of our (sometimes) economically and socially terrified students. Especially in a world where ronin scholars may be economically and socially terrified ourselves. Cheers, Pat [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jamie Brough <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 12:12:44 EST Subject: 9.1232 Re: Plagiarism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1232 Re: Plagiarism >I must be very old-fashioned but I find this letter on plagiarism >unbelievable. How any true academic could use someone`s essay under his >own name and reply to such an offer is inconceivable to me. >Perhaps I am naive, >Yours Simon. Quite. Although I assure you, there will be nothing there of _true_ academic value anyhow-especially if, as I suspect, it's an American site. Besides, this site is almost certainly a very bad example. I suspect the best work's to be found on those that deliver _after_ VISA payment. I direct you to www.cheat.com (or something similar). What do you know? You must have a BA (Lit) or higher to submit work for sale! Very interesting. The majority of cheat sites used by undergraduates are these, which suggests that such plagiarism is actually sponsored, to some extent, by professional academics. How much do you think they'll pay for hot essays? To be quite frank with you, I would have little objection to someone paying to distribute my work. Let's be realistic, here. Just suppose I sell a highly stylised, ultra-chic, modish Shakespeare paper for a few pounds, any kleptomaniac that uses this service to plagiaristic ends will only be doing myself a service. Any illiterate schmuck that attempted to claim authorship would busted by any discerning teacher, discrediting him or herself and hence forwarding my own ideas which, although admittedly anonymous, would still be acknowledged. If it were really good, I'm sure they'd visit the site after torturing the URL out of the little pilferer and hunt down the genius responsible... The idea that you need this SHAXICON invention seems strange. Although it will likely be able to analyse individuals word usage mathematically, it will have no capacity to understand abstract reasoning. Any good teacher will recognise the stylistic tags and quality of ideas specific to their individual students without having to feed the work into some silicon number-lumberer. I will be putting all my A grade A-Level essay on the web shortly. All are welcome to read them, print them, distribute them, feed from them and live for them. Just keep the copyright notice intact-that's all I ask. URL to follow. Have a good one! J. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Carol A Cole <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 12:55:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism All the discussion about plagiarism on this and other lists has got me wondering: Those of you who are teachers, about what percentage of the student papers you receive do you know or strongly suspect to be substantially plagiarized? Carol [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Maier <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 04 Dec 1998 10:36:19 -0800 Subject: Plagiarism For those who did not see it, this thread feeds very nicely into a quite well written article on intellectual property in the Atlantic a couple of months back. The author presented interesting viewpoints on the nature of intellectual property, and on whether creation should be owned at all. The article articulately pointed out the drawbacks of a policy which is either too restrictive, or too lenient with respect to the ownership of a creation. The spawning of the Internet and the increasing number of sites such as the one under discussion in this thread, is causing quite a hubub in the halls of Congress, and it would behoove anyone who isn't aware, to start reading up on the debate so some informed legal policy can be enacted. The Atlantic article is a great place to start. [6]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John V Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 17:02:32 EST Subject: 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism << I wondered whether the academic community generally is taking any action on these sites. I understand that there are complex issues of net censorship involved. But even if these sites are not to be driven off the net, shouldn't the academic community at least be filling up their email inboxes with messages telling them how we feel about what they are doing? >> Well...the most obvious answer is for everyone who feels this way to e-mail the site and request several essays then stiff them on their fee. Since it seems to be based on the honor system, that will drive them out of business faster than e-mailed complaints. no? I think I'll start today. [7]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 4 Dec 1998 20:34:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1233 Re: Plagiarism Since we regularly ask students to write, for an Introduction to Theatre course, on the subject of the Renaissance, I would greatly appreciate it if we could start sharing lists of web sites where these papers can be bought. I've already received several papers that were suspiciously well-crafted, and hesitated to call the students on it because I didn't have the time to check their work more fully. There are other means of testing them in our class, the essay is one small portion, so for this semester I let it pass. Next semester, however, I hope to be prepared. Thanks in advance for any more tips, Andy White
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1241 Friday, 4 December 1998. From: Paul S. Rhodes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 3 Dec 1998 20:11:22 -0500 Subject: Ban Shakespeare now! On Talk of the Nation today there was a discussion over whether Shakespeare should be required in the school or no. This got me really, really angry, so I fired off this e-mail which did not make it on the air. Since it was not read on the air, I send it to this illustrious list for your perusal: Dearest NPR, What? Are you guys mad? The issue is not whether Shakespeare should be required reading, but whether he should be banned tout court. I think Shakespeare should be banned myself because his works give the future of our country the wrong message. Let me make my argument by taking R&J as an example of Shakespeare's pernicious influence. Romeo and Juliet should be banned for the simple reason that it teaches kids that the adult world is corrupt and that teenagers should defy their families and the powers that be for the sake of Romance. We can't be teaching that to kids today, can we, especially in this market-driven world, eh? Kids should be equipped with what it takes to succeed in this global economy. The market-driven world is the adult world. If kids are going to succeed in it, they must not be taught to despise it, else they won't want to work in it, much less succeed in it. If kids are to succeed in the market-driven world, they must learn to respect worldy authority and NOT to defy it. Above all, if kids are to learn to succeed in this market-driven world, they must get their teleology straight. Puppy Love is not something to live for, as Romeo & Juliet would (quite perniciously, if you ask me) have impressionable young minds believe, it is certainly not something to die for-perish the thought! No, no. Money and worldly success are what we all should live for and, lest we forget, winning friends and influencing people. Now, of course, some teachers make the valiant attempt to teach the play as an example of what happens when two crazy young people give themselves over to their crazy, impetuous, very immature impulses. But this is true of the Brooke Poem. This reading will not work for R&J because it cannot explain, for instance, why, if Juliet is one of the irrational, immature youths, she shows herself to be far and away the smartest person in the play. Furthermore, this interpretation cannot point to a mature standard by which to judge the Lovers' immaturity, unless you wish to point to the Nurse's counsel to Juliet as a "mature" piece of advice. In that case, you will be advocating bigamy, and I don't think you would want to do that. And, remember, an adult marries Romeo and Juliet. Now, you can say, of course, that the priest was acting irresponsibly, but this would just give kids one more reason to disrespect authority, no? Therefore, I think it best for you simply to do away with this rebellious text altogether. In its place I humbly suggest that you have the kids read "The Analects" and, of course, "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Some friendly advice from a lunatic, Paul S. Rhodes
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1240 Friday, 4 December 1998. From: Nora Kreimer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 3 Dec 1998 20:52:28 -0300 Subject: Girard My students and I find it a most enlightening treatise. It's a very profound work, indeed. We use it for the analysis of Julius Caesar and _Hamlet. I hope you share my views. Regards Nora KreimerThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.