November
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1187 Wednesday, 25 November 1998. [1] From: Fran Barasch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:45:44 EST Subj: Re: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King [2] From: John Drakakis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 15:49:11 -0000 Subj: RE: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King [3] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 13:28:49 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King [4] From: F. Nicholas Clary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 13:36:24 -0500 Subj: RE: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Fran Barasch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:45:44 EST Subject: 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King Comment: Re: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King On "give me my father": Polonius's body has been sent to dinner and, as I recall, Hamlet won't tell where. Laertes wants the body to pay last respects. Rather customary, I should think. fran barasch [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Drakakis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 15:49:11 -0000 Subject: 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King Comment: RE: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King N. R. Moschovakis seems to be jumping the gun a little bit. Claiming that Shakespeare's text interrogates the ideology of divine right does not necessarily mean that Shakespeare was challenging monarchy per se, or indeed, that he was anti-monarchist. On either of these two issues we have no way of knowing. While there may be different attitudes to the institution of Monarchy at the turn of the 16th century, and while there were clearly challenges to Elizabeth's rule, I hardly think that the issue of monarchical authority was being seriously challenged- or to put the matter more succinctly, in danger of being replaced. Take a look at Fulke Greville's unpublished Treatise on Monarchy. There was however considerable interest (as witness Shakespeare's Roman Plays) in alternative forms of government, but we should be careful before assuming that this could easily translate into a political position-not yet anyway. There was, however a growing awareness of those contradictions that it was the function (not the purpose) of ideology to occlude; the most significant of these contradictions was that a divinely ordained king COULD be killed, or, that a divinely ordained king could be politically useless (or even worse, dangerous). The debate about what might be done in those circumstances goes back, at least to Bishop John Ponet's Treatise on Power. I think that the comparison with Richard II isn't a valid one because Richard IS king by divine right. He's a bad king, that's certain, but his deposition has to be very gingerly handled. In the case of Claudius he HAS killed what we assume to be the lawful king, and he has usurped his position, and the language which authorises his position. We need to go to Marlowe's Edward II for a more realistic appraisal of the material foundation of royal power and to the forlorn Edward's: "What are kings when regiment is gone/But perfect shadows in a sunshine day". Quite clearly at the turn of the 16th century there was considerable interest in the emerging gap between the dominant ideology on the one hand, and the historical realism emanating from Machiavelli and a number of Roman historians on the other. Certain possibilities became thinkable as a result, although to suggest that Shakespeare was a card-carrying anti-monarchist is not the conclusion that I would draw, myself from this. Cheers John Drakakis [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 13:28:49 -0500 Subject: 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King Comment: Re: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King Katherine Batay and I made the point some time ago that Claudius is actually quite a good king, in the sense of an effective statesman who seems in most things to strive successfully to advance the interests of his subjects generally. We cited in particular his brilliant diplomacy in the Fortinbras affair, avoiding a bloody war (for which he was nonetheless wisely providing), and turning the attack against a traditional enemy. We also alluded to his ability to unify a kingdom which must have been seriously divided by the sudden death of the old king and a disputed election, in which the more "natural" successor was defeated. His putting down of the Laertes uprising, without shedding a drop of blood, is another example, especially considering the continued parlous condition of the country and his own psyche.. Claudius' wrong doings were of a private nature, essentially driven by his lust for Gertrude. (I acknowledge, however, that regicide for the purpose of supplanting the old king on the throne, as well as in bed, smacks of a more public transgression, but not every analogy can be perfect.) And, of course, it was perfectly normal for him to try to cover up such an embarrassing interlude. I wonder if anyone can think of a modern instance. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: F. Nicholas Clary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 13:36:24 -0500 Subject: 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King Comment: RE: SHK 9.1180 Re: Laertes as King In The Dramatic Censor (1770), Francis Gentleman made the following comment on the "Laertes as King" passage: "Laertes is ushered in with a strange insinuation importing no less than a proposition to chuse him King; how this became necessary, or is reconcileable I cannot see as in a preceding scene the King says, that he cannot enforce any law against Hamlet on account of the murder committed because 'He's loved . . . offence' [2665-8]. Nay speaking of the matter afterwards to Laertes, the king delivers himself thus 'Why . . . graces' [3025-9]. Now if Hamlet was so extremely popular, how is it possible to suppose the Laertes by complaining of a private injury, shold supersede him in the people's favours, and gain their voices to the prejudice </p.26><p.27> of his birth right besides Laertes's attack upon, and language, to a monarch, without knowing a syllable of the matter he contends about, makes him an absolute drawcansir equally the foe of justice, reason, and decorum; indeed the author seems to have been sensible of this, making the king say 'Will you, in revenge of your dear father's death Destroy both friends and foes?'" (1:26-27). A few years later, in the edition of Hamlet that he prepared for Bell (1773-4), Gentleman offered the following comment on the behaviour of Laertes: "Though Laertes has great provocation to rouse him, yet such peremptory violent and abusive behaviour to his sovereign, breaks through the bounds of decorum and allegiance, unpardonably; and we by no means see why the rabble offer to chuse him King." About a century later Frank Marshall, who would work with Irving on his edition of Shakespeare, offered the following the comment on the kingship question in A Study of Hamlet (1875), reminding his readers of an earlier interpretive position taken by Gervinus and recommends an editorial note provided by Malone: "It would seem that, with 'the rabble' at least, the popularity of Claudius had been short-lived. His accession was probably more owing to the nobles than to the people: they had wished to place young Hamlet on his father's throne; and now that he had been sent off by Claudius to England, in order, as they thought, to get rid of him as a successor, the people clamoured to be allowed to choose for themselves and to make Laertes King: Gervinus credits the energy of Laertes with the creation of this 'rebellion, which looks giant-like;' but it is probable that he found the work of creation at least half-done: the fact that Hamlet had been sent out of the kingdom had more to do with their riotous attitude than any love either of Laertes himself or of his father, who had been so mysteriously killed. On the question as to whether the Crown of Denmark was elective or not, see an interesting note given in Malone's 'Shakespeare' (ed. 1821, vol. vii, p. 209)." I offer these excerpts for those interested in the earlier stages of the present exchange on this listserv. Nick Clary
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1186 Wednesday, 25 November 1998. [1] From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 08:47:08 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism [2] From: Ed Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 09:44:05 -0500 (EST) Subj: Presentism [3] From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 13:33:09 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1166 Re: Presentism and Maps [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 08:47:08 -0500 Subject: 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism Query to those of you more on top of early modern historiography than I am. 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.? David Evett [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 09:44:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: Presentism Hugh Grady writes that we need to be aware of "the role of the present in our constructions of the past." Shakespeare agrees. Look, for example, at Falstaff's retelling of the Gadshill robbery in 1H4 (2.4), or Hotspur's revision of the meaning of his first meeting with Bolingbroke (1H4 1.3). One of the major points of the history plays is that we all revise the past to meet our needs in the present. If Shakespeare knew this 400 years ago, then it's about time we took it seriously today. The problem is that if this understanding of the interpenetration of the present and the past is taken to extremes, some may conclude that there is no real knowledge of the past. But this conclusion does not necessarily follow. What does follow is that we may have a damn good "take" on a certain part of the past, but our conclusions must always be open to the possibility that they are partial, misleading, or false. --Ed Taft [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 13:33:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.1166 Re: Presentism and Maps Comment: Re: SHK 9.1166 Re: Presentism and Maps Regarding the frequently cited case of Bohemia in WT, I agree that geography serves as a kind of poetic metaphor. It is important to remember that Shakespeare's romance reverses the geographical relationship found in his source (Greene's Pandosto (?) (I believe this is the title. I have not read it): i.e. in Greene the vieux jalous is the king of Bohemia, and the lost one is recovered in Sicilia. Reversing this geography suggests to me a poetic value to the respective locales: something to do with the relationship of a hot southern Italian region to a cold northern Germanic region, or perhaps simply figuring the relation of London in the south to the centers of rural festivities in the north of England. The significance of the play's geography has less to do with the author's intention than with the response of a Jacobean audience largely familiar with the Greene version confronted by what may at first appear to be an arbitrary reversal, but which inevitably draws attention to the poetic elements of geography and its relation to the plot. Giving a seacost to Bohemia has a similar effect. It must have caused many a snigger in a London full of tars and privateers as it continues to do among Shakespearean critics. In conclusion, without the luxury of access to authorial intention, I cannot read any word in Sh's work as insignificant, let alone a crux that has kept people guessing for so many centuries of close reading. Geographical inaccuracies have the effect of abstractinc geography from the increasingly detailed and accurate mapping skills of the early moderns and thereby excluding all value from geography other than as poetic metaphor. > > ...the imaginative strategy adopted in _WT_ > differs considerably from the relative verisimilitude of, particularly, > the History Plays and the Roman plays...a variety of features in > _WT_, including both geographical and temporal paradoxes, suggest a > coherent imaginative strategy on Shakespeare's part... > > Robin Hamilton > > ...I think we +can+ discern artistic strategies at work in the plays > >...it's possible to make an approximation to what he would be more > or less likely to know. And if we allow such an approximation, to > separate specific instances into mistake/irrelevance/'deliberate > error'. For me, in these terms, the (lack of a) seacoast of Bohemia > would be so close to common knowledge as to suggest 'deliberate error'; > > Robin Hamilton
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1183 Friday, 20 November 1998. [1] From: John Amos <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 23:57:12 +0000 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1177 Re: Branagh [2] From: Hugh Grady <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 21:59:09 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1177 Re: Branagh [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Amos <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 23:57:12 +0000 Subject: 9.1177 Re: Branagh Comment: Re: SHK 9.1177 Re: Branagh I completely agree with Ed Pixley's reading of Branagh's presentation of "How all occasions do inform against me..." I too thought the scene was a bit much at first, but the more times I've seen it, the more I've come to think that Branagh's making a particular thematic point-that he's not just showboating. My wife has always claimed that Hamlet's problem throughout the play is that he just doesn't understand how insignificant he is (all of us are?). He needs to accept Claudius' advice at the beginning of the play, cruel as it sounds. Fathers really do die. Death really is "the common theme" of all nature. Why should things be different for Hamlet. Branagh's staging of the soliloquy just before the intermission-with the camera beginning up close and gradually backing up, causing Hamlet eventually to disappear into Fortinbras' army-suggests that this is the speech in which he finally does decide to do his duty, where he really does decide that he's just another man living in a tragic world. The idea that the scene is just there to hang the intermission on doesn't make sense to me. I remember sitting in the theater, knowing there would be an intermission, and being surprised that it came so late in the production...well past the half way point. It was obvious to me at the time that the director had chosen that speech to be the climactic point in the play. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hugh Grady <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 21:59:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.1177 Re: Branagh Comment: Re: SHK 9.1177 Re: Branagh Am I the only one who thought Branagh stole the panning shot of Hamlet just before the intermission from Scarlett O'Hara's "I'll never be hungry again" soliloquy. Obviously I'm doing anything to keep from grading papers. Best, Hugh Grady Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 13:24:26 -0200 Reply-To:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Sender: The Shakespeare Electronic Conference <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > From: "Hardy M. Cook" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Organization: Bowie State University Subject: Interruption in Service Comment: SHK 9.1185 Interruption in Service MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1185 Wednesday, 25 November 1998. From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, November 25, 1998 Subject: Interruption in Service Dear SHAKSPEReans, Unix is unforgiving. On Friday afternoon, I accidentally an operating system file and essentially rendered my Sun workstation inoperable. Because of bureaucratic hurdles that I need not go into, I was not able to get the technical support to revive my Sun until a few minutes ago. I will begin after my 2:00 Shakespeare class to catch up. Let me point out, however, that some of the messages you have sent have probably been queued for up to five days because my server could not be found. Other messages have probably been lost. Watch carefully the next few days and if a message you sent does not appear please resent it. Back in business, Hardy
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1182 Friday, 20 November 1998. [1] From: Melissa D. Aaron <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 08:33:47 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1176 Re: Shrews [2] From: Pete McCluskey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 09:31:37 -0600 (CST) Subj: SHK 9.1159 Re: SHAKSPOP [3] From: Paul Franssen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:19:42 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 9.1161 Re: WT and Sheep [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Melissa D. Aaron <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 08:33:47 -0500 Subject: 9.1176 Re: Shrews Comment: Re: SHK 9.1176 Re: Shrews The discussion on Shrew and romance novels seems to warrant a reference to a new novel, My Man Pendleton, which is apparently Shrew set in the modern South. Has anyone read this book? Melissa D. Aaron University of Michigan [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Pete McCluskey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 09:31:37 -0600 (CST) Subject: Re: SHAKSPOP Comment: SHK 9.1159 Re: SHAKSPOP On the 1992 XTC album "Nonsuch," Colin Moulding's song "My Bird Performs" contains the lines, "Shakespeare's sonnets leave me cold / The drama stage and the high brow prose," while Andy Partridge's song "Omnibus" (on the same album) states, "Ain't nothing in the world like a black skinned girl / Make your Shakespeare hard and make your oyster pearl." (The latter song also sings the praises of white-skinned, gold-skinned, and green-skinned girls.) Ecstatically, Pete McCluskey [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Franssen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:19:42 +0100 Subject: 9.1161 Re: WT and Sheep Comment: Re: SHK 9.1161 Re: WT and Sheep 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
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.1181 Friday, 20 November 1998. [1] From: R. D. H. Wells <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 14:47:08 +0000 (GMT) Subj: Presentism [2] From: Karen E Peterson-Kranz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:39:57 +1000 (GMT+1000) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism [3] From: Hugh Grady <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 21:54:47 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: R. D. H. Wells <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 14:47:08 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Presentism Hugh Grady writes: 'I understand Prof. Hawkes has further wisdom for us about this term'. I'm intrigued. Could Terry give those of us who won't be able to get to the next SAA the benefit of that wisdom? Just a couple of sentences? It's unlike him to be so reticent. Robin Headlam Wells [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Karen E Peterson-Kranz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1998 10:39:57 +1000 (GMT+1000) Subject: 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism With regard to Bill Godshalk's latest comment on Terry Hawkes and Presentism: does "for it" and "agin it" work when one is referring to a description of a conceptual system? (I'm honestly asking, rather than trying to be clever) I thought that the term "presentist" was being used descriptively rather than as a statement of position. If the term is used discriptively, and if the term has been defined (and here, I think, is where the problem in the current argument occurs) then one can debate the definition, or whether the definition properly describes something or someone. But you can't be "for" or "against" any more than you can be "for" or "against" the redness (redism?) of a particular rose. I also thought that Terry Hawkes was speaking ironically (sarcastically?) in his earlier posting about the historians huddled together for warmth in the wilds of Missouri. Perhaps I was mistaken...Mr. Godshalk seems to be getting rather tense about the whole conversation. Thank you, David Lindley, for a graceful and well-reasoned comment about our approaches to the past. Can I borrow it for use with my students? Yours from the tropics... Karen Peterson-Kranz Department of English & Applied Linguistics University of Guam [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hugh Grady <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 19 Nov 1998 21:54:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism Comment: Re: SHK 9.1173 Re: Clocks; Maps; Presentism Presentism, re: David Lindley But why assume that we're talking about a "simple-minded presentism" of the sort that is an undergraduate's first take? Far from engaging in a truism, raising consciousness about the role of the present in our constructions of the past strikes me as very badly needed in an era in Shakespeare studies now given over almost completely to historicist assumptions. And while Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose et al. are hardly doing simple-minded historicism, their very success has resulted in a widespread forgetting of the present's role in historical criticism and an often simple-minded historicism! I agree completely that one of the reasons to study Shakespeare and other "old texts" is that they can challenge our own assumptions and provide a reference to a world different from our own. But we can only perform such a comparison by bringing a consciousness of the present into our work of interpretation. Best, Hugh Grady