The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2407  Monday, 22 October 2001

[1]     From:   M. Yawney <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 19 Oct 2001 08:58:10 -0700 (PDT)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.2394 Re: LLW

[2]     From:   Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 19 Oct 2001 14:26:22 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.2387 Re: LLW

[3]     From:   Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 19 Oct 2001 23:11:57 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.2355 Re: LLW


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           M. Yawney <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 19 Oct 2001 08:58:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 12.2394 Re: LLW
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.2394 Re: LLW

Years ago I read an intriguing hypothesis (by I cannot remember who)
that suggested All's Well as the missing LLW. There is no real reason to
think so, though it certainly is true that there is no reason to date
the play as late in Shakespeare's career as is traditional.

I am baffled why so many, knowing what we do of editorial and printing
practices of the time, and the specific history of the Folio itself,
expect that it was complete. It is the best authority we have, but I
have no doubt that there was a LLW and perhaps a few other early works
for which a copy could not be located by Hemmings and Condell.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 19 Oct 2001 14:26:22 -0400
Subject: 12.2387 Re: LLW
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.2387 Re: LLW

> > For what it's worth, in ending his discourse on platonic and petrarchan
> > love conventions with a one year deferral,
>
> I'm a little baffled by this -- is a conflation between Platonism and
> Petrarchism being suggested?  Admittedly, there are overlaps between the
> two, but I totally fail to see any influence of Platonic conventions in
> _LLL_.  Indeed, given that Sidney's _Astrophil and Stella_ had been
> published in 1591, the most plausible context is an immediate one, the
> upsurge of interest in sonnet writing at this time.  A context,
> incidentally, which would better be termed Petrarchist (referring to the
> conventions developed by Petrarch's followers) than Petrarchan (which
> should be restricted to conventions within the _Canzoniere_
> themselves).  If this distinction is alloWednesday, Wyatt (at least in
> his translations of Petrarch) is in the ambit of the Petrarchan
> conventions, _LLL_, if it falls into this area at all, is in the
> Petrarchist ambit.

The sonnet tradition inherited by Sidney had already been thoroughly
conflated with Platonism by the French, especially Ronsard and Du Bellay
who are generally acknowledged to be among his significant influences.
While Petrarchism--and anti Petrarchism--are pretty explicit in all
Elizabethan sonnet cycles, Platonism is more or less implied. Drayton's
Idea's Mirror is pretty obvious; others are more subtle.

LLL implies the same contrast between ideal (i.e. poetic) and real love
that allowed the dolce stil nuovo in Florence and the French school
under the patronage of the Medici Catherine of Navarre to work Platonic
ideas into the sonnet cycle genre.  The desire of the males in LLL to
withdraw from the world to study love is a parody of (more accurately
Neo) Platonism. The failure of the project is a critique.

> > Shakespeare would only have
> > been following the precedent of Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls (a
> > possible source for Phoenix and the Turtle).
>
> Well, as Fluellen says, there are birds in both.  But I fail to see any
> link between a medieval poem rooted in the bird-debate tradition, and a
> Renaissance lyric which +can+ be be seen to have Platonic elements.
>
> Among other elements of the poem:
>
>    Reason, in itself confounded,
>    Saw division grow together,
>    To themselves yet either neither,
>    Simple were so well compounded ...
>
> ... calls up the _Timaeus_, and Aristophanes' speech in _The Symposium_
> (perhaps mediated by Ficino).
>
> A juxtapositon of _LLL_ with "The Phoenix and the Turtle"  simply
> emphasises the distinct differences between Platonic concepts and
> Petrarchist conventions.

My allusion to the PT was only to suggest evidence that Shakespeare read
the Chaucer poem, not to make juxtaposition.  They have, however, more
than birds in common, and both the earlier Phoenix' Nest (dedicated to
Sidney) and Love's Martyr are clearly following the medieval bird
parliament tradition.  My point was that Chaucer's deferral of marriage
at the end of his poem is meant to stand on its own for thematic
reasons.  It seems to me to imply that sexual mores that demand
repression, sublimation and deferral of desires are imposed by Nature
herself rather than culture in the interests of harmony.  If Shakespeare
read the poem and made the same inference, the deferral at the end of
LLL calls for no sequel.  The play would therefore critique both
Platonism and Petrarchism (in the same way, I would argue, that PT
critiques the former and Shakespeare's cycle--also largely
contemporary--the latter).

Clifford

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 19 Oct 2001 23:11:57 -0700
Subject: 12.2355 Re: LLW
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.2355 Re: LLW

Several days ago, someone suggested that *LLW* was unlikely do be a
sequel in part because sequel's were so unusual in the early modern era.
I delayed replying in order to make a complete list, but I still haven't
done it, and the days are passing, so off the top of my head:

Shakespeare's two tetralogies, and *MWW*
Marlowe's two *Tamburlaine* plays
The three *Parnassus* plays
Dekker's *The Honest Whore* parts 1 & 2
Heywood's *Fair Maid of the West* parts 1 & 2
Chapman's two Bessie D'Ambois plays
Fletcher's sequel to *a Shrew*
The two Hieronimo plays, though the authorship of *The First Part* is
contested

Those are the plays in my always leaky memory.  I may have forgotten a
few, or even several.  If anyone wants to add to the list, be my guest.
Sequels were not usual, but clearly there were enough of them that we
should not be surprised when one is suspected.

Sorry for such a half-baked response.  I hoped someone else would take
this one and do it justice.

All the best,
Mike Jensen

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