November
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1197 Friday, 27 November 1998. [1] From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 25 Nov 1998 14:08:14 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1186 Re: Presentism and Maps [2] From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Nov 1998 10:53:23 -0500 Subj: Presentism [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 25 Nov 1998 14:08:14 -0800 Subject: 9.1186 Re: Presentism and Maps Comment: Re: SHK 9.1186 Re: Presentism and Maps David Evett asks: > Was there a kind of presentist debate toward the end of C16 between > a traditional view of history as morally exemplary (Sidney recommending > the Cyropedia because the essentials of governing well had not changed > in two millenia) and a more material view, more aware of a past > materially different from their present, emerging from the antiquarian > study of Camden et al.? Certainly in military arts there seems to have been. Machiavelli spends a lot of _The Art of War_ arguing that the knowledge of the ancients is still applicable, even on the gunpowder battlefield. In Henry V, Fluellen concerns himself with the ancient "disciples of war" (most of which he gets wrong, but that's besides the point), a fascination that Macmorris finds pointless. Cheers, Sean. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Nov 1998 10:53:23 -0500 Subject: Presentism Dear Robin Headlam Wells, Unfortunately, the lengthy and closely reasoned account of Presentism that I sent to the list in response to your request was wiped out by the recent mishap Hardy has described. At 5,000 words it may even have caused it. However, on reflection, I don't know that I can improve upon Hugh Grady's admirably succinct and lucid statement. Perhaps I can just quote one or two of my conclusions that linger in the memory: History is far too important to be left to historians who believe themselves able to make contact with a 'past' unshaped by their own concerns. In practice, it is woven from a never-ending dialogue between present and past. In that process, the present is not an obstacle to be avoided, or a prison to be 'escaped from' as David Lindley puts it. Quite the reverse: it's a factor to be actively sought out, grasped and perhaps, as a result, understood. A Shakespeare criticism which takes that on board will not yearn to speak with the dead. It will aim, in the end, to talk to the living. Terence Hawkes PS It would expedite matters if those currently joining in the traditional chorus of 'We Know This Already' could move on to the second stage of the Order of Service for the Rejection of Terms and Concepts That Might Be Uncomfortable, where the relevant Collect begins 'Surely This Is All In Coleridge's Biographia Literaria'. You might mention this in your sermon, Robin.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1196 Friday, 27 November 1998. From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 22 Nov 1998 01:13:57 -0500 Subject: 9.1164 Pericles Comment: Re: SHK 9.1164 Pericles Stanley Wells wrote: > I saw a preview of Pericles at the Public Theatre in New York three > weeks ago and have been surprised not to see it mentioned on the list - > though I may have missed references to it. It's an inventive, sensitive, > and deeply moving production which I highly recommend, especially to > those contributors who referred to it as a bad play. I saw the play last evening, and can't agree entirely. While portions were sensitive and moving, and the staging can well be characterized as "inventive," I much preferred the more naturalistic, albeit self-consciously modernized, production of the play which the New York Shakespeare Festival did at the Public a few years ago. The current production is a bit over stylized for my taste, and the actors have a tendency to recite rather than play the text. This is particularly true in the unShakespearan portions. In fact, the difference in acting techniques between those portions and the Shakespearean sections (especially the Marina scenes) is so pronounced as to suggest a deliberate directorial decision, as if to highlight the authorial difference. If that is the case, it was an interesting choice and one with which I do not entirely disagree, although it presupposes a degree of audience sophistication which is unrealistic to expect. If it was not an intentional device, I suppose the fact that it came out that way points up WS's superior theatricality. What Professor Wells was too modest to note was that this production is based on the Oxford's "reconstructed text," including a revised version of that edition's interpolated "Scene 8a" by Taylor and Jackson. I wonder if this has been performed before. I also wonder if the producer troubled to obtain a license from the Oxford copyright owners. "Reconstruction" by adding newly composed material, even if loosely based on 390 year old texts, raises fascinating legal issues not ordinarily present in Shakespearean production. At least, they fascinate me. (I could be wrong, but I believe that the song used in the production at the Public is not the same as that written by Taylor/Jackson, and, if so, that might conceivably have been an attempt by the producers to avoid the issue, as the song is the most indisputably original portion of the scene. There were other changes as well, notably the substitution of Thaisa for the gentlemen, but that could have been due to casting limitations or a determination that Thaisa is more dramatic.)
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1195 Friday, 27 November 1998. [1] From: Peter Greenfield <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:40:22 -0800 Subj: Sheep [2] From: Jonathan Hope <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 23 Nov 1998 11:08:21 +0000 (GMT) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1182 Re: little sheep, big people [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter Greenfield <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:40:22 -0800 Subject: Sheep One source for the value of sheep is churchwardens' accounts, particularly sheep purchased for the Whitsuntide tide feast or king ale. I have been looking at such accounts for Hampshire parishes, and in 1532-3 the churchwardens of Bramley paid 5s 4d for 2 ewes, 4s 8d for 4 lambs and 2s 8d for a wether. In 1563-4 "one fatt sheepe" cost the churchwardens of Stoke Charity 7s 8d. The closest I can come to the date of WT is 1605, when the churchwardens of Wootton St. Lawrence spent 27s 6d for 2 wethers and 4 lambs. Peter Greenfield University of Puget Sound [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jonathan Hope <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 23 Nov 1998 11:08:21 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 9.1182 Re: little sheep, big people Comment: Re: SHK 9.1182 Re: little sheep, big people > With regard to the proceeds to be derived from sheep, a small > qualification may be in order. I have been told that in the past sheep > (like people) were a lot smaller than they are now. At least, this was > the case in the eighteenth century, and it is hardly likely that they > shrunk after say 1600, to start growing again between 1800 and now. The > size of sheep would, I imagine, also affect the amount of wool they > produce, and definitely the amount of meat. Unfortunately, I only have > this information from hearsay, so I cannot refer the list to any > quotable sources. > > Paul Franssen > Utrecht University > Department of English > The Netherlands Given breeding programmes, it probably is true that sheep are bigger (or at least more productive) now than they were - but I have heard and read reports of a recent study of the bodies of Londoners (currently followed up in a display of skeletons on at the Museum of London) which shows that people in the distant past were pretty much the same size they are now - they got smaller in the nineteenth century due to pollution, and the poor diet available in urban centres. Jonathan Hope Middlesex University
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1194 Friday, 27 November 1998. From: Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 24 Nov 1998 11:55:25 EST Subject: Pre-Shakespearean Drama: Oedipus the King I invite you all to a production of Sophocles OEDIPUS. Performances will be on Thursday, December 3 at 12 noon and 7 pm, Friday December 4 at 10:30 am and 7 pm, and Saturday December 5 at 7 pm. The venue is the Great Hall of City College, a magnificent space in landmarked Shepard Hall at 139th Street and Convent Avenue. Admission is free, and parking is available for evening performances in the North Academic Center parking lot (entry on 135th Street between Amsterdam and Convent Avenues). For reservations and information, please call the City College Theatre Program office, (212) 650-6666. Working on the script I am seeing how many of Shakespeare's dramatic techniques were also part of theatrical vocabularies of Greek tragedy. Sophocles' civic vision of a citizen chorus learning the limitations of heroic kings seems extraordinarily fitting to this urban campus. I'd be happy to talk more about the play, this production, and its connections to Shakespearean social commentary, but right now I have to help load in the sound system. We're in that difficult late-adolescent stage of a production, lots of promise and surprise, a few alarming rough spots, and overwhelming demands on patience and energy from all. Cordially, Steve Urkowitz
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1193 Friday, 27 November 1998. From: Richard A Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 22 Nov 1998 20:28:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: Your Friends and Neighbors The Ben Stiller character in Your Friends and Neighbors is a drama professor who has performed in a Shakespeare play.