December
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1335 Sunday, 27 December 1998. [1] From: Jason N. Mical <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 11:06:54 -0600 Subj: Titus and the Value of Shakespeare [2] From: Robert Neblett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 12:44:17 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jason N. Mical <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 11:06:54 -0600 Subject: Titus and the Value of Shakespeare >Why does this make it necessarily a bad play? Fine if you want to focus >on ethical issues in Shakespeare. Don't blame Shakespeare if you find >some of his drama doesn't fit the system of ethics you have chosen to >use as an interpretive framework, which I assume (by your reference to >an Aristotelian middle path) is a broadly liberal humanist one. There >are other ways in which one might judge the play "worthwhile", >"interesting" or even, dare I say it, "good OK, I set myself up for this one. It seems very strange that nearly every play fits the Aristotelian ethic "lesson" of finding a middle path (or destruction wrought because someone cannot find the middle path) except for _Titus_. As I wrote that sentence, it hit me like a thunderbolt that _Titus_ is maybe one of the best examples of the destruction that can happen when one cannot find the middle path. I guess I was too busy dismissing the more distasteful aspects of the play to look at it that way. I therefore stand corrected! (Who says scholars cannot change their opinions!) Of course judging a play based on ethical lessons is not the only way to judge its value. After all, it is art, not math. I am reminded of the scene in "Dead Poets Society" where the teacher has the pupils graph a poem's worth based on two factors-utterly laughable. When I said value, I was referring to the things people (the average audience) can get out of the play, ethical lessons being one of the most obvious. I am deeply entrenched in a debate among other students, professors, and my mother (believe it or not!) about whether Literature in general and Shakespeare in particular has any relevance in the "real world." I am contending that it does, and one of the primary reasons it does is that the audience can learn from the characters on stage. The primary argument against me is that Shakespeare and Eliot and Dante and others have no value outside of literary circles, and that the average person cannot "understand" them to the depth that scholars can and "get" the same meaning from them as scholars can. I think this is utter hogwash (so to speak), and am therefore left to defend my position primarily based on the ethical value of a play. Just out of curiosity, how have others dealt with this issue? It troubles me greatly that so many others write off literature as worthless so readily. One of the reasons I decided on English as a major was that I thought I could reach people with literature and writing, but I've gotten a lot of resistance to this idea. Am I just being an idealistic undergraduate or what? Happy Holidays! Jason Mical Drury College [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert Neblett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 12:44:17 -0600 Subject: 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus Comment: Re: SHK 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus In response to Jason Mical's comments of 12-18-98: >I read Titus as part of an undergraduate research course I took this >last semester, the object of which was to focus on ethical issues in >Shakespeare. We read Titus more as a joke than anything else, and >unless I am missing something profound (in all my undergraduate wisdom >grin), the play seemed to me to be an early version of some later >tragedies, notably Richard III, Hamlet, and Coriolanus. Or, to be more >precise, I noticed elements / scenes from each of these plays in Titus. >There seems to be no ethical lesson to the play. Someone made a joke >about its appealing to modern audiences because of the appalling amount >of violence (apologies for not cutting and pasting your name, gentle >scholar). Indeed, it would seem that Shakespeare's audiences liked >violence as much as Americans do today, because I can see no other >reason to write this play. The Aristotelian appeal for a middle path is >not to be found anywhere in Titus unless I am horribly mistaken. It was >interesting to read it and compare it to Shakespeare's other works, but >I see no real value to the play except as a curiosity, in much the same >way that _Inventions of the March Hare_ is a curiosity to T. S. Eliot's >readers. I agree with listmembers who point out that the critical approach which bases literary merit on the ethical lessons presented in the text is a faulty one. If you look at the majority of Shakespeare's best plays, there are immense ethical breaches; accordingly, if one judges them on ethical/didactic standards, they are inferior pieces of literature. A couple of examples: THE TEMPEST teaches us it is ok to punish your enemies and drive them to madness, as long as you apologize in the end. It also advocates slavery. HAMLET advocates murder as a way of solving a legal dispute or family troubles, because the main character's "sin" is not that he kills Claudius, but that he waits to do so. We must begin to look past what literature "teaches" us, and start to examine what we learn from it. The latter is more subjective and allows for the narrative and stylistic gaps which are the basis for interpretation. If we begin to look at literature in such a way that we ask ourselves, "Was it right for Lear to excommunicate Cordelia the way he did?" or "Was it right for Henry V to invade France?" rather than leaving it all to Shakespeare to tie up the loose ends, we begin an examination of our own humanity and ideas. I know that this is a Brechtian approach to literature, but Brecht was influenced by the multiplicity of voices and perspectives in Shakespeare's works. Another point: as long as teachers and scholars approach TITUS as a joke, it will never be given any serious critical attention. I have seen TITUS several times and have enjoyed it every single time. It is one of Shakespeare's plays, I believe, which makes the case against Shakespeare belonging solely to English departments in this country. TITUS is a performance text, and as such establishes Shakespeare as a dramatist, not only a poet. This having been said, its performative success does not negate its potential literary merit. Finally: As an Eliot scholar, I find the poems in INVENTIONS OF A MARCH HARE highly intriguing because the majority of them were interludes excised from THE WASTE LAND by Eliot and Pound. When you think about what the poem COULD have been and compare it to what it has become. Considering the refusal of Eliot's estate to release other documents which would be helpful to Eliot scholarship, we take what we can get. Robert L. Neblett PhD Student in Comparative and Dramatic Literature Washington University in St. Louis
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1334 Tuesday, 22 December 1998. From: Michael Ullyot <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 12:20:46 +0000 Subject: Shakespeare's Debt to Marlowe I wonder if, without treading on the forbidden territory of the authorship question, I might pose the following question to the list: What is the current scholarship on Shakespeare's debt to Christopher Marlowe? More specifically, what research has been done on the relationship between similar plays, such as Edward 2 and the Henry 6 cycle, and _Dido, Queen of Carthage_ and the Player's speech ("Aeneas' tale to Dido"-beginning "The rugged Pyrrhus..." in 2.2)? Moving away from soliciting citations (a practice that has generated some controversy, of late), what do people think of the relations between Shakespeare's and Marlowe's plays-do they constitute discernible influence, and if so, can Bloomian anxiety be attributed to Shakespeare in this context? Does his debt constitute plagiarism or a more benign form of influence? Michael UllyotThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Clare College, Memorial Court, Queen's Road, Cambridge CB3 9AJ
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1333 Tuesday, 22 December 1998. From: Nancy Charlton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 01:17:12 -0800 Subject: 9.1255 Re: Rhetoric Comment: Re: SHK 9.1255 Re: Rhetoric May I say 'me too'? I was not aware that Peter Fonda had done a 'Tempest.' This, along with MND, Hamlet, The Duchess of Malfi, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Cosi fan tutte, I will go to the ends of the earth for. >On another matter---did anyone tape the Peter Fonda TEMPEST that was >mentioned on the list ? As to rhetoric: when dealing with 'foreign' text, i.e. anything written in a language not our own and including earlier epochs of our own, should we not also look at 'grammar' and 'logic' also? Nancy Charlton Portland OR USA
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1332 Tuesday, 22 December 1998. [1] From: Louis Marder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 21 Dec 1998 17:37:16 -0600 Subj: Re: Cats; Rites; Titus [2] From: Belinda Johnston <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 11:14:02 +1100 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1322 Re: Cats [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Louis Marder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 21 Dec 1998 17:37:16 -0600 Subject: Re: Cats; Rites; Titus 12-20-98: Dear Friends: There is no mystery about cats and cazzo. I was brought up in an Italian/Sicilian neighborhood. I am not sure of pronunciations or spellings, but the Italians, especially the Sicilians are great swearers with Sex. [The Jews deal in broken bones, etc. Break your arm, break your head, grow like an onion with your head in the ground, drop dead]. The Sicilians would say in their dialect, oo cazzo on culo [a penis in your arsehole; (it was pronounced gotz], fongule a mom [fuck your mother], [I am not sure of the Sicilian dialect or pronunciation of Italian]. When I was in the Army in 1943, I was in the Military Police for more than a year. Once I was in a group sent to guard Italian prisoners of war who were working in a fruit canning factory. We were stationed in an old red brick schoolhouse in the center of town. I offered to teach the men English if they would teach me Italian. I would hang out in the "day room" which overlooked the street. We would lean on the high window sill, talk, and watch the world go by. A pretty girl [they were all pretty!] would go by and one of the men would say, "Ah, bella gamba [legs], soon a girl with large breasts world go by and a man would say, "Bella mammilla", and then a pretty girl walked by and a man would say, "OO cazzo punta a duodecci hora" That took me by surprise. I asked had he studied Shakespeare. He said no and that everyone in Italy used that expression. Is it the origin of "The bawdy hand of the dial is at the prick of noon?" As for the English audience not knowing Italian, on the stage a knowledgeable actor would merely bend his elbow with his fist upward and cross it with the opposite hand forcing the fist upward.) I have seen that gesture used often in Shakespeare at the appropriate place. (Cf."a fig") I'll leave it to y'all to follow this up in Arthur Brooke and so on. Lou MarderThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Belinda Johnston <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 11:14:02 +1100 (EST) Subject: 9.1322 Re: Cats Comment: Re: SHK 9.1322 Re: Cats >. . . >Hardin Craig glosses the earlier reference (at 2.4.19) by observing that >the king of the cats in Reynard was Tybalt-"who," says Mercutio in the >same scene, "fights as you sing prick-song." This is a long shot, not in any way important or relevant to Shakespeare, but I've always wondered if that generic cat's name "Tibbles" comes from Tybalt?
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1331 Tuesday, 22 December 1998. [1] From: Stevie Simkin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 21 Dec 1998 22:22:53 +0000 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus [2] From: Belinda Johnston <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 11:05:05 +1100 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stevie Simkin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 21 Dec 1998 22:22:53 +0000 Subject: 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus Comment: Re: SHK 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus Jason Mical wrote: >I read Titus as part of an undergraduate research course I took this >last semester, the object of which was to focus on ethical issues in >Shakespeare. We read Titus more as a joke than anything else .... and >There seems to be no ethical lesson to the play. Why does this make it necessarily a bad play? Fine if you want to focus on ethical issues in Shakespeare. Don't blame Shakespeare if you find some of his drama doesn't fit the system of ethics you have chosen to use as an interpretive framework, which I assume (by your reference to an Aristotelian middle path) is a broadly liberal humanist one. There are other ways in which one might judge the play "worthwhile", "interesting" or even, dare I say it, "good". I think it's a shame to dismiss the play as a joke. As a number of other members have already testified, it can be a powerful piece in performance when it's done right. Stevie Simkin [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Belinda Johnston <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Dec 1998 11:05:05 +1100 (EST) Subject: 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus Comment: Re: SHK 9.1321 Re: Titus Andronicus In response to Jason Mical's posting, all I can say is here we go again! I don't think ethical/Aristotelian criteria are the only way of judging the 'value' of a play. Amongst others, Leonard Tennenhouse offered a fascinating reading of <italic>Titus</italic> through a consideration of the female body and the iconography of state (<italic>Power on Display</italic>). Jason, I don't know if you're missing something "profound" but I might venture to suggest that you are missing some really intersting ways of reading Shakespeare. Cheers, Belinda