August
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1525 Thursday, 17 August 2000. From: Jeff Newberry <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Aug 2000 13:34:29 EDT Subject: Romeo Must Die I saw a movie last night entitled Romeo Must Die. At first, I didn't think much of the title, thinking that it was probably leaning more toward the cultural definition of Romeo--that is, a lovesick young man (and I suppose we stole that from Shakespeare, too). As I watched the movie, however, I began to see some parallels between this movie and R&J. The plot of Romeo Must Die revolved around two rival gangs, one of Chinese and one of Blacks. They are fighting over waterfront property because of a big business deal with a professional football club that wants to build a stadium there. Nonetheless, when Han (Jet Li), currently in a Chinese prison when the movie starts, finds out that his brother has been killed, he travels to America to find his brother's killer. Han immediately falls in love with the rival's daughter, Julie (pop singer Aaliyah). They get into lots of fights, kiss, and save the day at the end. I think the director (not sure who it was) was nodding to Shakespeare in several scenes, most notably a showdown between one of the head thugs for the Black gang and Han himself, a duel that included dialogue reminiscent of the Romeo/Tybalt showdown. The movie was interesting, a martial arts extravaganza that rivaled any John Woo film. There were these great X-ray shots of bones breaking whenever an unfortunate soul got hit a little too hard. One can also find quite a few shoot-outs and car chases, enough to make Baz Luhrman squeamish. Well, just thought you all would enjoy hearing about this film. The question, however, is whether or not this movie is an adaptation of R&J. What do you think? Thanks, Jeff Newberry University of West Florida
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1524 Thursday, 17 August 2000. From: Tony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Aug 2000 09:49:06 -0700 Subject: 11.1511 Re: Marx and Shakespeare Comment: Re: SHK 11.1511 Re: Marx and Shakespeare In the dreary exchange of unresponsive views on art and ideology, and the like, Hugh Grady has cast some useful light in pointing out that the participants are employing very different meanings of the term "ideology". Maybe it's worth noting that there are at least as many different meanings of the word "art". The participants is this debate, or running exchange, seem to be most happy when they ignore the obviously different meanings employed by their opposites and make no noticeable effort to grapple with them; instead, they simply proclaim their separate approaches to the matter. I have no doubt that the participants are intelligent in the highest degree, and are surely aware that they are using the same words in very different senses. Isn't this whole discussion a useful example of the great and much discussed deficiency in the practice of scholarship in the humanities, in respect of its dependence on selective, contingent, and possibly arbitrary, definitions of key terms that reflect certain very limited and, indeed, parochial viewpoints which their proponents seek to elevate to universal principals? And that the exchange of opinions derived from these separate points of departure leaves people talking at cross-purposes, or else preaching to the choir of confirmed believers in their views? And isn't it an embarrassment that as this exchange goes on, it seems less and less necessary to mention Shakespeare? When someone asks an honest question about whether it is possible to separate ideology from art, as I think this thread began, it must surely be sound pedagogy to follow Hugh Grant's pointer and ask "What do you mean by 'ideology', what do you mean by 'art'?" And if certain answers lead to the conclusion that "art is ideological", "art is ideology" or some other highly reductionist or tautological conclusion, then the questioner may, according to his disposition, want to reexamine and revise the definitions of "art" and "ideology" which led there. But, please, this lovely enterprise is both wider and narrower than the discussion of Shakespeare and should be taken off-list, where participants can explore these basic issues of scholarly inquiry which are significant for every branch of the humanities. Tony B
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1523 Wednesday, 16 August 2000. From: Grant Smith <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 15 Aug 2000 15:41:18 -0700 Subject: CFP As an "Allied" organization of MLA, the American Name Society holds separate, additional sessions (12 to 15 panels) in an adjacent hotel parallel in time to the MLA sessions. A panel on Shakespeare is possible, perhaps likely. Most panels focus on literary theory. Short abstracts should be sent to me <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > by Sept.1. There is a board of six referees. Notification is by Sept. 20. Abstracts of all ANS presentations are published annually. Grant W. Smith, President Phone: 509-359-6023 American Name Society Fax: 509-359-4269 Prof. English/Coord. Humanities Email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Eastern Washington University, MS-25 526 Fifth St. Cheney, WA 99004-2431 www.class.ewu.edu/class/engl/gsmith/home.html
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1522 Wednesday, 16 August 2000. From: Tom Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 15 Aug 2000 15:59:32 -0500 Subject: 11.1509 Re: Tudor Iconoclasm Comment: Re: SHK 11.1509 Re: Tudor Iconoclasm I agree with Jack Heller that religious issues, including disputes over the semiotics of the Eucharist and of images and icons, probably bear somehow on early modern drama. How could they not, even, or especially, when their direct discussion was restricted? My concern is that we need to be very careful how and where we invoke them. Their bearing on the plays is likely to be as complex as the religious issues are themselves in the period. The presence of a variety of possible beliefs about the presence of Christ in the communion is a good instance. Recusants had one view, Grindal, Whitgift, Bancroft et al. another, radical Genevans like Field and Cartwright another. Let alone what less learned people may have thought about the matter, if they did (and leaving aside the question of whether they would have brought such thoughts to bear on the theater). Nor would I want to speculate too much on which of these views were "minority" views. I want rather to suggest the complexity of the landscape, and that it isn't enough just to point out that the semiotics of the theater are something like those of iconoclastic or eucharistic controversies. The example of early modern charges of sodomy in the theater is a good (if tangential) case of how the stakes need to be measured carefully: if your definition of sodomy is "two men kissing" and that's what you see happening on stage, then that's what you have by definition. But I worry about arguments that go, crudely, like the following: * in "The Spanish Tragedy", Hieronimo puts on a play in which what seem to be (and are) stage-deaths turn out to be "real" deaths as well (but not "really real" since the actors are still alive). * at the same time, there are controversies over whether and how God is "really" present in the Eucharist, and how "real" icons are. * Therefore, the one is a cultural context that immediately illuminates the other. It seems to me that this may be so, or may not be, but a great deal of subtlety about both the history of the moment and about the weaving of plays is needed to make much of it. As Jack Heller says "The significance of iconoclasm to the development of early modern drama certainly merits further inquiry." But the net has to be woven very fine to catch the right fish. (I think of the way Ken Gross's book treats similar issues in Spenser as exemplary here.)
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1521 Wednesday, 16 August 2000. From: David Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 15 Aug 2000 19:00:44 GMT Subject: 11.1508 Re: Performing 'The Tempest' Comment: Re: SHK 11.1508 Re: Performing 'The Tempest' In saying that the Globe performance still made Antonio menacing, I only meant that to play 2.1 comically, by presenting Sebastian as rather dimwitted, could easily leach out the menace; I think this performance managed not to do so. In response to David Bishop - yes, of course, he is right to stress the way in which conflicted responses are of the nature of this play (and many others). I was simply responding to the fact that in the Globe production there was very little sense of Caliban as wrongfully dispossessed - the comic presentation (and, it must be said, the lack of any real sense of threat from Redgrave's Prospero) meant that the audience reaction to his complaints was rather one of condescension than pity - the amused tolerance one might give to a misbehaving child or pet. And, in this respect, it did seem in its effect to chime with reports of older stagings of the play. Marcus Dahl suggests that the 'straight' or 'romantic' makes little appeal to the modern teenage audience. I think that was true of this performance, where Will Keen's efforts to play Ferdinand 'straight' were diminished by a Miranda of extravagant, but repetitive gesture. Keen's valiant effort may have been influenced by the fact that he played Trinculo in the Leeds production last year, where Rashan Stone and Claudie Blakely managed wonderfully to make the betrothal scene, 3.1., moving and powerful. It is, in my view, one of the most perfectly written scenes in the play, provided the actors trust the rhetoric and are not afraid of it. It can work, even with a modern audience, but, like so many other highly rhetorically sophisticated scenes (one thinks of Rosalind's patterned exchanges at the end of AYLI, or the recognition scene between Viola and Sebastian in TN) it's always on a bit of a knife-edge; push too hard, aim at too much naturalism, and it's blown away. But then, the Globe production had Miranda at the end going round and cuddling all of the men she suddenly saw on stage and getting rather close to an evidently interested Antonio - which seemed to me typical of the brainlessness of much of the production. There are, of course, precedents in theatrical history for representing Miranda in this fashion - but to me the crass underlining of Prospero's ironic comment "tis new to thee' in the suggestion that Miranda and Ferdinand's marriage is not likely to last is an irony too far. David Lindley