March
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0401 Monday, 8 March 1999. [1] From: Stephanie Hughes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 05 Mar 1999 22:10:49 +000 Subj: Re: Charity [2] From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 05 Mar 1999 15:38:38 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 10.0382 Re: Cosby; Quill; Charity [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephanie Hughes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 05 Mar 1999 22:10:49 +000 Subject: Re: Charity >As a Christian, I regard charity as an obligation. The object(s) of >charity are other persons. But literary characters are not persons, >they are constructs. In interpreting Hamlet, for instance, when he >refrains from killing Claudius lest he go to heaven, one might regard >that as indeciseiveness, on the assumption that Hamlet is under some >sort of obligation to carry out the ghost's command, or one might regard >it as the depths of uncharity, in that he wants not only the death but >the damnation of his uncle, or whatever. But one is under no obligation >to limit consideration of base motives, since Hamlet is a literary >figure, not a living person, and the rules of interpretation, not >morality apply. Which is not to deny that moral considerations are >relevant to good criticism. > > Roger Schmeeckle Frankly I have never understood this interpretation, that Hamlet refrains from killing his uncle out of indecision. Clearly he makes, and rather quickly, a good decision, at least it is good from the point of view of one who believes that a life taken in prayer is a life that goes straight to heaven. Hamlet wants Claudius to go where he belongs, to "the other place," and so wisely decides to wait for a more opportune moment. It is Hamlet himself who complains that he is indecisive (unless we take the opinion of the impatient ghost), but as I would with a beautiful woman who claims that her nose is too big, or that she's overweight, I don't share his self-judgement. Life has put poor Hamlet between a rock and a hard place, and no amount of decision-making is going to free him. Whatever choice he makes he's in trouble. I think it's awfully Christian of Hamlet not to be angry with his father for endangering the kingdom by napping outdoors without a guard to keep an eye out for poisoners. If I were Hamlet I'd tell my father to go to hell and leave me alone. "Construct" or whatever, Hamlet's got more life in him, more intelligence and more love, than twenty real people. "Rules of interpretation" to the contrary, it's simply impossible not to love the guy. Stephanie Hughes [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 05 Mar 1999 15:38:38 -0800 Subject: 10.0382 Re: Cosby; Quill; Charity Comment: Re: SHK 10.0382 Re: Cosby; Quill; Charity Thanks for your note. I found it very interesting. First, I'd like to take issue with your example, which isn't an exact parallel to the examples to which I was responding. Hamlet never says that he wants his uncle's soul to go anywhere other than Hell. He doesn't make two public statements of his intents for his uncle's soul, one of which we should recognize as a lie, and the most depraved of which we should think is his "real" reason. To do so would betray a rather pessimistic, not to mention totalizing (everyone is assumed to be lying, and to have shrewd alterior motives), assumption about human nature, albeit one projected onto fictional characters. It amounts to a sort of characterological Foucauldianism, is such a phrase can even be coined: power, or politics, is behind everyone's actions everywhere, including the characters on stage. There's a second, more questionable, point that I'd like to make. Of course, the characters in plays aren't real, but they can make us weep or laugh. Phenomenologically, encountering a character on stage bears some similarities to encountering a person in what we perhaps prejudicially call "real life". I would imagine that the similarity would be greater on an Elizabethan thrust stage, with an intimate interplay of audience and fictive world. The penultimate scene of Henry VIII is a good example. This is not, of course, to say that we simply suspend our disbelief, or cease to be apart from the stage-world. We don't actually get inside a historically untraceable Elsinore, and leave the jostling of the other groundlings behind. But the alterity of stage characters does not guard us against their impinging on our world. Other people, after all, are existentially separate from us. But Levinas makes this difference the foundation of his ethics. Just because stage characters are, as the player-king in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern says, "the opposite of people" doesn't guard us against their calling on us for an ethical response. Cheers, Se
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0400 Monday, 8 March 1999. [1] From: Karen Coley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1999 16:23:28 -0600 (CST) Subj: Appeal for Merry Wives [2] From: Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 05 Mar 1999 23:00:00 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 10.0364 Re: Merry Wives Appeal [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Karen Coley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1999 16:23:28 -0600 (CST) Subject: Appeal for Merry Wives I am shocked and amazed at the negative response to using Merry Wives for a summer festival. It seems to me to be a fabulous choice. The raving jealous husband who sinks to disguises to catch his own wife and, of course, the melodramatic lovesick Falstaff who is literally beaten off three times (in three creative ways) are rich in one-liner and slapstick humour. That's what keeps the hot and thirsty festival viewer interested. Add to this that it is a lesser known play, so people will want to find out what happens. And the surrounding costumes and actors of the festival should complete the illusion of the play's setting-one of the few Shakespeare plays set in a small English. I can only explain the poor response on list by assuming people are either unfamiliar with the play or have never seen a performance which milked the play's humorous aspects. I've seen two very good productions, one at Arroyo Grande High School and one at the Chicago Repetory Theater. The former audience was packed with high school students and parents and the latter with college freshmen. In both cases they were rolling in the aisles. I may be a mere erudite grad student, but I can highly recommend the popular appeal of MWW, far and away over the courtly sonnet competitions of Love's Labours Lost! Cheers, Karen Coley [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 05 Mar 1999 23:00:00 -0500 Subject: 10.0364 Re: Merry Wives Appeal Comment: Re: SHK 10.0364 Re: Merry Wives Appeal I saw 3 productions in a row a couple of seasons ago, 2 outdoors, one at the Olivier, all well-attended and received. In spite of the low opinion critics have of it today, I have read that at one time (1700?) MWW was the most popular of the comedies. It is certainly popular with me! In addition to the admirable Wives, I have a great fondness for the Welsh parson. But do you have talented children to be in it? It doesn't work well without a liberal sprinkling of charming kids, and it is a rare kid who can make himself heard outdoors, unamplified. G.L.Horton <http://www.tiac.net/users/ghorton>
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0399 Monday, 8 March 1999. [1] From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 1999 23:29:21 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 10.0363 Re: Hamlet's Age [2] From: Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 1999 00:41:27 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 10.0376 Re: Hamlet's Age [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 1999 23:29:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: 10.0363 Re: Hamlet's Age Comment: Re: SHK 10.0363 Re: Hamlet's Age There's also Nash's Apology for the Drama (or something like that) in which he claims that plays offer a place for the idle youth of court and Inns of Court to while away the afternoon instead of causing mischief. Clifford Stetner CUNY York College C. W. Post College <snip>don't know his exact source. In any case, as Jack Heller points out,young and rebellious men were a staple of the contemporary stage. We [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 1999 00:41:27 -0500 Subject: 10.0376 Re: Hamlet's Age Comment: Re: SHK 10.0376 Re: Hamlet's Age Just read "Shakespeare's Shakespeare" (1998) from our local library. Much space devoted to the simultaneous stretching and foreshortening of time as a structural element of WS's dramaturgy, rather than the result of carelessness or error. Author addresses not just such famous instances as this one or the double time of Othello (when was the marriage consummated? How long did it last? How could D have even had an opportunity to be unfaithful?) but dozens of others, large and small, and all quite deliberate, calling attention to dramatic or psychological time that contradicts the declared clock-times, often within a single extended scene. >Why is it so difficult to acknowledge that Hamlet is student age (20 or >so) when the play begins but 30 by the time it concludes? ------------ >Hamlet is a character in a play. In the last act of that play, the >character is identified as being thirty years old. The character in the >beginning appears considerably younger. My assumption has always been >that the character metaphorically ages between leaving for England and >returning to Denmark and that the aging involves an acceptance of death G.L.Horton <http://www.tiac.net/users/ghorton>
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0398 Monday, 8 March 1999. [1] From: Stephanie Hughes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 1999 08:37:01 +0000 Subj: Re: SHK 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays [2] From: Peter T. Hadorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 07 Mar 1999 14:49:39 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays [3] From: Louis Marder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 17:51:23 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephanie Hughes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 1999 08:37:01 +0000 Subject: 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays Comment: Re: SHK 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays >Nonetheless, I think it's helpful, especially for the >newcomer to Shakespeare, to see Bohemia on a map, and therefore see that >it has no coastline. Because I couldn't find such a map, I made one (or >rather two: one for Great Britain and another for everywhere else). The point has been argued, to what conclusion, if any, I don't recall, that in Shakespeare's time, the English concept of Bohemia was much larger than ours today and it did border the water. (Notice our use of the term "Bohemian" for gypsies, or anyone with gypsylike behavior.) In any case, a map of Shakespeare's world would have to be based on 16th century English maps, or maps that would have been the ones that 16th century English had access to, to be of real value. Stephanie Hughes [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter T. Hadorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 07 Mar 1999 14:49:39 -0600 Subject: 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays Comment: RE: SHK 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays Regarding maps that depict the settings for Shakespeare's plays: about 15 years ago I bought Isaac Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (I'm not sure of the name of the book but it's by Asimov) and he had maps in the book. I no longer have the book so I can't be more detailed. [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Louis Marder <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 17:51:23 -0600 Subject: 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays Comment: Re: SHK 10.0391 Maps of Shakespeare's Plays March 7, 1999--- Dear Ray: Somewhere in my archives I have two or three maps of Shakespeare's plays - maybe four. I got them in the early 50's. They are posters about 20 x 24 and show England, Scotland...Italy. They are not very detailed, but they are OK for classrooms. If you get no further replies, let me know. They may take me an hour to find. Louis Marder, Shakespeare Data BankThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.0397 Monday, 8 March 1999. [1] From: Tanya Gough <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1999 22:27:30 -0500 Subj: DVD vs. Laser [2] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 1999 20:24:56 -0000 Subj: Re: Video Discs [3] From: Douglas M Lanier <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 7 Mar 1999 11:46:28 -0500 (EST) Subj: Shakespeare on Laserdisc [4] From: William Kemp <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 07 Mar 1999 13:18:09 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 10.0380 Re: Video Discs as Obsolete [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tanya Gough <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1999 22:27:30 -0500 Subject: DVD vs. Laser It certainly does look like DVD is going to stick. Last Christmas was the big test - and consumers purchased DVD machines and disks in much higher numbers than anticipated, and the one millionth player sold mark was passed recently. Many electronics stores are beginning to liquidate Laser disk players at ridiculously low prices, and the fact that you can still play audio CDs on a DVD player is a definite lure. That being said, there are currently tens of thousands of laser titles available compared to only thousands of DVD titles. And although the major studios seem to be releasing mass quantities of DVD - to the tune of hundreds of new titles each month - it will still be many years before DVD matches Laser in terms of choice. Keep in mind too that many of the more obscure titles may not find DVD release for decades, so video will continue to retain a stronghold in this arena for some time. Tanya Gough Poor Yorick - CD & Video Emporium [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 1999 20:24:56 -0000 Subject: Re: Video Discs Hardy Cook writes, >I was under the impression the laser video >disks are an obsolete technology and the >DVD would probably be the technology to replace laser >disks. Am I incorrect in my assumption? DVD will probably take over, but is being held back by the popularity in the Far East of VideoCD, which is ordinary audio-CD technology carrying a compressed video signal. A VideoCD takes two disk to hold one movie, but it's established and cheap technology. The other thing holding DVD back is that the content producers, the studios, are reluctant to release movies on DVD until regionalization is fully implemented. Currently most DVD players will play a disk no matter where it was pressed, but the content producers have forced the chip manufacturers to make players which work only in one region. Thus, DVDs made in the US would not work in Europe. It's not clear whether this regionalization will succeed, since what controls the 'refusal' to play is firmware which can be changed by individual manufacturers. So, Sony players will undoubtedly be region-sensitive (since Sony owns content producers too) but Far Eastern manufactured players may well retain the ability to play any disk. In case anyone is interested, all new VCRs in Europe now play NTSC as well as PAL-encoded cassettes, so anything available for purchasing over the Internet is now playable here. However, US VCRs do not play PAL-encoded cassettes. Gabriel Egan [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Douglas M Lanier <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 7 Mar 1999 11:46:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: Shakespeare on Laserdisc Since Hardy raised the question about the status of laserdisc and DVD, and since so many of us use movie clips in our classrooms, here's a short primer for those new to laserdisc and DVD technology. Both technologies are designed as alternatives to videotape. The advantages of Laserdisc (LD) and DVD over tape are: * they allow you to move quickly from scene to scene; * the video is much sharper and, unlike tape, is not supposed to degrade over time; * the sound is designed for a home theater speaker system, at least on contemporary titles; * some LDs and DVDs have additional materials: commentary tracks by the director or cast, trailers, outtakes, documentaries ("on the making of"). Many LDs and DVDs (though not all) feature "letterboxing," allowing you to view the movie in its original visual composition (or something close to it). At the present moment, Laserdisc technology is being superceded by DVDs (as Hardy correctly suggested). However, one shouldn't give up on Laserdiscs quite yet. The market niche of DVD, at least at present, is primarily mass-market movies, with a few popular back-catalogue titles thrown in for good measure. The market niche of Laserdisc, on the other hand, was for the serious movie afficionado, so that laserdisc features many movies with small or specialized audiences that will probably never appear on DVD (or at least not in the near future). (In the past major studios would license small market films to niche market laserdisc producers, but that practice has largely stopped because of corporate mergers, uncertainty about the future of DVD, and, frankly, greed.) At present, four Shakespeare movies are slated for DVD: Branagh's MUCH ADO (has already appeared), Luhrmann's ROMEO AND JULIET (will appear in the spring), Olivier's HENRY V (will appear in the spring), and Kaufman's TROMEO AND JULIET (has already appeared). It's a virtual certainty that there will also be a DVD of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, but there has been no official announcement of this. But beyond that, the future of Shakespeare on DVD is very uncertain, given the dominant business model currently driving DVD. You should also know that DVD includes copy protection software that will prevent you from making a VHS copy to show in your classes; laserdisc does not include this feature (and so you can make a tape copy). There are technical differences in how the image is produced in laserdisc and DVD, but in most cases the average viewer won't be able to see the difference. One more complication: new laserdiscs are being produced primarily for and in Asian markets, where LD remains strong. For that reason, many Shakespeare LDs are falling out of print very quickly. If you are interested in buying a Shakespeare title on LD, you should do so NOW. My advice for those interested in moving to these technologies is to consider buying a combination laserdisc-DVD player. That way, you can have the best of both worlds. I should add that I have no business interest in either LD or DVD. Cheers, Douglas Lanier University of New HampshireThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. P.S. To the list of Shakespeare movies on LD already given, let me add the following: Midsummer Night's Dream (dir. Dieterle and Reinhardt) Romeo and Juliet (dir. Cukor; dir. Castellani) As You Like It (dir. Czinner, with Olivier) Taming of the Shrew (dir. Taylor, with Pickford and Fairbanks) Othello (dir. Welles) Macbeth (dir. Welles; dir. Polanski) Prospero's Books (dir. Greenaway) King Lear (dir. Elliot, with Olivier) In addition, Performing Arts Video did a series of LDs of Shakespeare plays: King Lear, Taming of the Shrew, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Othello. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Kemp <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 07 Mar 1999 13:18:09 -0500 Subject: 10.0380 Re: Video Discs as Obsolete Comment: Re: SHK 10.0380 Re: Video Discs as Obsolete Hardy reports the impression that video discs are obsolete, replaced by DVDs, and wonders whether or not his impression is inaccurate. A nice question. As manufactured objects, video discs are more or less permanent; they don't wear out as you play them, as videotapes do. So the Shakespeare discs in print are still viable and a worthwhile investment if you have or can get the machinery to play them (one video disc player, from Pioneer, is still on the market; it also plays DVDs). Right now, far more Shakespeare is available on video disc than on DVD, and the visual/acoustic quality of the discs I listed in my previous posting is very high. They have the additional advantage (in most cases) of presenting the films in their original aspect ratios. In the fullness of time, the catalogue of DVD titles will probably catch up to what's available on laser disc. But right now the laser disc titles are more numerous. They're also easy to buy from reliable web vendors. Laser discs are a bit more expensive than comparable DVDs, but I can't think of any Shakespeare titles currently available on DVD (though I'm sure there are a few). Bill Kemp Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Va.