The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.1847  Thursday, 28 October 1999.

[1]     From:   Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 27 Oct 1999 10:01:32 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.1835 Re: Productions of Much Ado

[2]     From:   John Drakakis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 27 Oct 1999 22:59:55 +0100
        Subj:   RE: SHK 10.1835 Re: Productions of Much Ado



[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 27 Oct 1999 10:01:32 -0700
Subject: 10.1835 Re: Productions of Much Ado
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.1835 Re: Productions of Much Ado

Paul Swanson writes:

>As one SHAKESPEARian said, the forgiveness of Don John by Pedro might
>very well be poignant. But that is The Tempest and The Winter's Tale,
>and I'm not at all sure it fits into what Shakespeare is doing in Much
>Ado About Nothing.

It might also just be politic.  After all, there don't seem to have been
many casualties in this (hypothetical) war between Don John and Don
Pedro, and a peace seems to have been fairly easily made.  Perhaps Don
John's rebellion (if there was one) was more a gambit for some definite
advantage than a really determined effort to overthrow the government.

This might be in keeping with several rebellions, in Shakespeare and in
history.  The rebellion in Henry IV, part 2, is effectively ended by
Prince John accepting all the rebels demands, and the rebellion in part
1 is driven only by a broad assortment of individual complaints about
the ruling monarch.  A. G. Dickens comments somewhere that the
Pilgrimage of Grace wasn't out to destroy the government, and in fact,
that it could only succeed by failing, since its grievances could only
be satisfied by a legitimate government, which could only maintain its
legitimacy if the rebellion was crushed.  In any case, most rebellions
seem to have been efforts to satisfy "grievances" rather than efforts to
overthrow governments.

The reconciliation of Don John and Don Pedro is only hard to believe in
an age of ideologically-driven total war.  If war is only a pursuit of
policy by other means then it need not be much more bitter than party
politics generally are.

By the way, the possibility that Don Pedro hadn't been fighting Don John
had never occurred to me before, so I'm grateful for everyone who's
contributed to this thread so far.

Cheers,
Se     

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