November
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2104 Tuesday, 30 November 1999. From: Stuart Hampton-Reeves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Nov 1999 21:29:45 -0000 Subject: 10.2088 More References in Mass Culture Comment: Re: SHK 10.2088 More References in Mass Culture Here's a good one. An episode of The Simpsons broadcast in the UK had a scene in which Homer and Lisa go to see Krusty the clown play King Lear. I don't have any episode details but here is a transcript: (Krusty as King Lear, sitting on a throne. Servant enters) Servant: Lord, your daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Krusty: What is this, merry old England or petty-coat junction? (boos from the audience) Krusty: Hey, lighten up, it's a comedy! Servant: (whispers in Krusty's ear) No, it's not. (Krusty groans and buries his head in his hands) later: Krusty: (looking through script of King Lear) Whoa, this material stinks! I'm going to have to punch it up on the fly. Oh, got one. How do you make the King leer? Put the queen in a bikini!! (boos and jeers from the audience) Krusty: Here's another one! Knock, knock, who's there? Juliet. Juliet who? Juliet who ate so much pasta, Romeo doesn't want her anymore! (more boos from the audience) Krusty: Whoa, tough crowd. They're booing Shakespeare! (Next day's headlines: KRUSTY: Worse King Lear in 400 years) Stuart Hampton-Reeves University of Central Lancashire
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2103 Tuesday, 30 November 1999. From: Tanya Gough <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Nov 1999 15:35:38 -0500 Subject: BBC Shakespeare Series Good news on the BBC Shakespeare front! We have finally gotten through to the right people at the BBC, and it looks like there is a Canadian distributor who has the rights for the BBC Shakespeare series for home distribution (i.e. cheaper than the $100 most of you are paying now, which includes public performance rights), but they don't think there is enough of a demand to merit producing them. Rest assured that we are setting them straight about that. It might take a while longer, but it looks like we will finally be making some headway early in the new year, and I will be sure to keep you posted. Please don't e-mail me with requests just yet. I will be sure to post an announcement when we get closer to finalizing this arrangement, and we will start pre-booking and taking requests at that time. Cheers, Tanya Poor Yorick - CD & Video Emporium Stratford (Ontario)
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2102 Tuesday, 30 November 1999. From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Nov 1999 08:57:01 -0800 Subject: Re: Burgundy and France Comment: SHK 10.2083 Re: Burgundy and France I have been Godshalked. > Apparently Mike wants us to discuss Wellsian editorial theory and > practice in general rather than in particular. If so, Mike, where would > you like to begin? With the Falstaff/Oldcastle controversy? Of course, > this would bring us right back to name changing. > Yours, Bill Godshalk Bill, I would not be so arrogant. Well, not about this. Professor Wells, like all editors, is doing his best given the texts and his understanding of them. He has made it clear he is attempting to produce the Q Shakespeare intended to write. Assuming he is thinking the same way after 15 years, his book gives us an opportunity to understand his thought process as he solves these editorial problems. I don't think the discussion has been in the least general. I sent my post because the discussion was so much about Wells editorial approach, as applied to a specific problem. This fact was unacknowledged and possibly not understood by everyone, but must be true. It also seemed clear that in some cases (probably not you), some list members wrote without understanding Wells' method. I felt that some of the posts (again, not your's, I found your's persuasive) showed ignorance of what Professor Wells is doing. So, no, I do not call for putting Wells under scrutiny on this list, though list members have the right to do so, hopefully with informed opinions. But why just scrutinize Stanley Wells? Why not drag in Bowers, etc., etc., and etc.? Go back to Malone and Johnson if you wish. Cheers, Mike Jensen
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2101 Tuesday, 30 November 1999. From: Anthony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Nov 1999 12:21:20 -0800 Subject: 10.2093 Re: Age of Awareness Comment: Re: SHK 10.2093 Re: Age of Awareness This thread has evolved in a deeply important direction, taking wing in its recent Hawkes-Grouse continuation on the matter of the distinction between "intellectual" and "emotional" responses to text, music, poetry, and the like. I fear this distinction presents a false, or at least seriously ambiguous, dichotomy. "Intellectual" can refer to experiences of comprehension that first reach our consciousness in our mental life, and also (among other possibilities) to empty abstractions generated by letting our mental faculties run so to speak on autopilot, reshuffling what we already know in another form. "Emotional" can refer to experiences of comprehension that never rise to the intellectual level-perhaps it might help to call them "intuitive"-and are what I believe Pascal had in mind with his "The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing", or else (also among other possibilities) to subjective passionate feelings that blind rather than enlighten, that stand in the way of comprehension and the growth of wisdom. In this formulation, the first definitions of "intellectual" and "emotional" in each instance are equally respectable modes of comprehension, and learning to place one's self in the world. Each can lead to an insight, an "aha!" that changes the way one confronts the world and leads one's own life. The second choices lead only to the entrenchment of existing biases, predilections, and habits of thought and behavior without any corresponding growth; they confine and mummify what genius seeks to open up and enliven, and when turned to the study of genius or great creativity, defeat the very phenomenon they examine. Shakespeare, in my opinion, is a rare master of simultaneously addressing both possibilities by engaging comprehension of the first kind through a variety of devices, including the musical quality of verse mentioned by Grouse. This is perhaps overwordy, but it seems important that serious and appreciative readers like Grouse and Hawkes should not feel they are in irretrievable disagreement simply because they employ different faculties of comprehension for entering into Shakespeare's vast and compassionate understanding of how we fit into the world. anthony burton
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2100 Tuesday, 30 November 1999. From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Nov 1999 11:17:22 -0800 Subject: Re: Unkindest Cut Comment: SHK 10.2090 Re: Unkindest Cut > I wonder if any list members have had similar experiences with this kind > of "most unkindest cut of all" - and would like to share them. > Jadwiga Krupski How about a comic book version of Hamlet, published under the Classics Illustrated imprint, by First Comics a decade or more ago. Cut was the discussion between Laertes and Claudius about putting the poison in the wine. Yet the poison was later there and did its work. "How did it get there?" any reasonable reader might wonder. Best, Mike Jensen