July
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1897 Monday, 30 July 2001 From: Susan St. John <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday 27 Jul 2001 09:26:27 -0700 Subject: 12.1879 Re: Two Gents, Catching Cold Comment: Re: SHK 12.1879 Re: Two Gents, Catching Cold > Rainbow Saari wrote: > I think Lucetta's line, "Yet there they shall not lie, for catching > cold", expresses the idea that if the pieces of the letter are left > where they are, then the matter they contain (Proteus' love suit to her > mistress) may likewise cool off, grow 'cold', and sicken. This would make sense if Lucetta leaned down to pick them up; "yet there [here] they shall not lie" *doesn't* sound like she's suggesting Julia should pick them up in order that her love not grow cold...do you envision Lucetta taking up the pieces? and then perhaps Julia snatches them back on her line?? Thanks, Susan. _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu>
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1896 Monday, 30 July 2001 From: Jim Harner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday 27 Jul 2001 13:18:55 -0500 Subject: World Shakespeare Bibliography Online The Library Association (London) has announced that the World Shakespeare Bibliography Online has been shortlisted for the 2001 Besterman/McColvin Medal (http://www.la-q.org.uk/directory/press_desk/200113.html). The World Shakespeare Bibliography on CD-ROM 1990-1993 won the medal in 1997. Jim Harner Editor, World Shakespeare Bibliography Online _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu>
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1895 Monday, 30 July 2001 [1] From: Andrew W. White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 15:42:26 -0400 Subj: To be or not to be [2] From: Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 Jul 2001 17:41:44 EDT Subj: SHK 12.1858 Re: To be or not to be [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew W. White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 15:42:26 -0400 Subject: To be or not to be First: somehow, R. A. Cantrell and I have miscommunicated. I believe Hamlet is _especially_ gifted at finding things out; in the original legend, in Belleforest's narrative, and here too he is able to play the fool but tell the audience that he's in charge of his own fate. (how does he get word about the trip to England, eh?) On a related thread, I have stated my belief that Hamlet learns Claudius' guilt at _The Mousetrap_, although few seem to agree. [Care to chime in on that thread, to back me up?] Some people on this thread have problems with Hamlet's prescience, but I do not. I believe that if Hamlet smelled a rat from the very first, his "To be or not to be" would be explicitly staged for the benefit of his observers. Hence, that's just how I would play it if given a second chance: book in hand, pontificating. [And if it is about suicide, but it's staged, it could be done as a means of keeping Claudius and Polonius off his back.] Just because few people stage it this way doesn't mean that it can't be done. But it does require an especially astute director and nuanced actor -- one or both being in short supply as far as Hamlets go. As for Mary Jane Miller's remarks -- I thought this was Ophelia's line of reaction too, for a long time. But once I concluded that Hamlet knew he was being watched from the start, and that Ophelia was taught how to play this scene, what props to use, etc., and on VERY short notice, it was hard for me to see "rich gifts" as anything other than a bit of Polonian dramaturgy. After all, it isn't Hamlet who has been cruel, it has been Ophelia -- she is telling him a bald-faced lie, and both of them know it. How on earth can Ophelia, who has shunned Hamlet and sent back all letters, gifts, etc., for months on end, accuse Hamlet of cruelty at this moment? Answer: because she was put up to it. Which leads me to another question: since when is Ophelia a good spy? Let alone, a good actress? Why should we not be given to see the strain of the demands placed on her, through her awkwardness at both line delivery and prop-handling? Andy White [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 Jul 2001 17:41:44 EDT Subject: Re: To be or not to be Comment: SHK 12.1858 Re: To be or not to be The Nunnery Scene is (or should be) about Hamlet's need to love warring with his inability to love, his desire for Ophelia struggling against sexual nausea and helpless misogyny, his longing for a wife and family polluted by thoughts of a faithless mother and murderous uncle stewing in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty. Much of this is lost or obscured if Hamlet suddenly notices a twitching behind the arras or, worse, is aware of the "lawful espials" from the outset. The scene then ceases to be about Hamlet's love-sickness (far more severe than anything Polonius has imagined) and promptly becomes a scene about his dislike of spies. That is not only trivial and reductive, it's superfluous, since the play has already given us one such scene ("Were you not sent for?") and is about to give us another ("How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!"). We don't need three. We certainly don't need the cheapening suggestion that Hamlet's words are not a true confession of his agony, but rather an act staged for Claudius and Polonius or the easy, understandable fury of a man who hates eavesdroppers. Moreover, if "Where's your father?" signals Hamlet's awareness of hidden auditors and his test of Ophelia's loyalty, then Ophelia surely knows it, and just as surely knows that his resulting fury is provoked by her untruthful reply. Yet her words indicate no such knowledge, either to Hamlet or to herself when alone. On the contrary, her prayers during Hamlet's tirade reveal nothing but an anguished belief that he is genuinely insane, beyond human comprehension or treatment. "O help him, you sweet heavens!" "O heavenly powers, restore him!" When left alone to express her deepest and truest feelings in soliloquy, does she castigate herself for betraying Hamlet? Does she say "I've deceived the man I loved, forfeiting his trust and affection forever"? Not a bit of it: she utters the heartfelt eulogy "O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown," lamenting the ruin that madness has wrought in Hamlet's soul and body. If Hamlet has truly guessed the presence of others and revealed this knowledge to Ophelia, then her prayers and her soliloquy are nothing but the craven charade of a weakling who cannot admit her guilt even to herself. Ophelia perforce becomes a hypocrite who shuns self-awareness through false piety and ludicrous head-shakings over the "madness" that makes Hamlet behave so inexplicably. Of course, it is possible to see Ophelia as a coward and a ninny, and some critics (e.g., Anne Barton) have done precisely that. But I cannot read Ophelia's words and hear the accents of craven hypocrisy. Nor do I believe that so paltry a figure would show the quiet, contained courage with which Ophelia receives Hamlet's obscene insults in the Play Scene. ("Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" is the Elizabethan equivalent of "Wanna fuck?" and the subsequent references to "country matters" and lying "between maids' legs" are hardly cryptic. Yet Ophelia does not run weeping from the room or into her father's arms: she cradles Hamlet's head and deflects each lewd remark with pained but gentle dignity: "Still better, and worse.") Finally, I do not believe that a shallow doll, even in distraction, could utter the most beautiful and haunting lines of the play, as Ophelia does in IV.5: "Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be." "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember." Shakespeare lavished considerable tenderness and care upon Ophelia: he would not have done so if he intended her words in the Nunnery Scene to be read in the only way that the "awareness" theory will allow. The theory can also be faulted for judging the eavesdropping in too partisan a fashion. For as we all know (but seldom admit) the "lawful espials" are by no means clearly reprehensible. Hamlet, after all, is thought to be insane, and the insane are often discreetly watched to insure that they do not harm themselves or others. Hamlet has recently broken into Ophelia's closet and assaulted her physically; Polonius could hardly allow his daughter to meet him again without supervision. Yet the supervision must be hidden from the patient if he is to freely reveal his heart to Ophelia and effect the cure that everyone desires. In short, it is possible to see Polonius' plan as benign in intention, prudent in conception and responsible in execution--"lawful" indeed. Yet it becomes difficult to keep this in mind if one supposes that Hamlet's fury is prompted by his knowledge of prying eyes and lurking ears. Sympathies become skewed in favor of the outraged victim of invaded privacy, at the cost of ambiguity and complexity. Well then, how should "Where's your father?" and the surrounding lines be played? Like this, I believe: "Why isn't your father here to protect you from me? He told you never to see me again--and he was right. I'm an arrant knave who would deceive you into slaking his filthy lust. And you, of course, would deceive me with your coquetry and lies, your false faces and false words. Your father was right to lock you away from me, and if he now relents and allows you to wander unchaperoned, let the doors be shut on him, since he's clearly too old and too senile to know what he's doing. If he won't sequester you in a convent, do it on your own initiative. Save yourself, and save me." --Charles Weinstein (using his wife's server) _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu>
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1894 Monday, 30 July 2001 [1] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 13:19:13 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1886 Re: Hamlet's Clashing Ideals [2] From: Graham Hall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 18:00:06 +0000 Subj: Hamlet's Clashing Ideals [3] From: Andrew W. White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 15:17:43 -0400 Subj: Hamlet's Clashing Ideals [4] From: Rainbow Saari <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 Jul 2001 19:47:13 +1200 Subj: RE;12.1886 Hamlet's clashing Ideals [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 13:19:13 -0400 Subject: 12.1886 Re: Hamlet's Clashing Ideals Comment: Re: SHK 12.1886 Re: Hamlet's Clashing Ideals >This lack-of-certain-knowledge bit is certainly a central theme of the >play ("Who's there?") I don't think "Who's there?" prefigures a theme of uncertainty so much as disjointedness. Consider: A sentry is on stage "at his post" and another person enters and demands of the sentry "Who's there?" This reverses the proper order of things, which Francisco correctly restores in the next line -- "Nay, answer me ...." But the suggestion has already been planted in the audience's mind that something completely out of the ordinary is happening. And who was Bernardo expecting to be there, or was afraid might be there? Perhaps this is the most brilliant opening line ever written. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Graham Hall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 18:00:06 +0000 Subject: Hamlet's Clashing Ideals >Don Bloom writes, > >Excuse me for introducing a side issue in this discussion of "The >Mousetrap," but the thing that has bothered me for many years is why the >players agree to do it at all. Even leaving out the possible parallel of >the nephew to the brother, the play on the surface is a gross insult to >the queen. > [...] Life's prequel could be said to have occurred on 7 Feb 1601, I suppose. Further, it could be argued that Eastward Ho! kept the tradition alive. [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew W. White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Jul 2001 15:17:43 -0400 Subject: Hamlet's Clashing Ideals Some very good stuff, I like this thread, it's getting more demanding. First, Steve Roth: I see a contradiction here -- first you say: >I didn't mean to suggest that [Claudius'] reaction is solely because he's seen >his own death figured at his nephew's hand. It's quite possible his >reaction is because he saw his own vile crime. (Both, I'd say.) Then: >Hamlet would understand both explanations for his >action, but would be unsure whether A, B, or both of the above was the >trigger. So he gains no knowledge. Hmm, so Hamlet has seen Claudius react _both_ as a guilty party, and as someone who now knows his days are numbered. That doesn't constitute proof? Again, Hamlet has informed the audience that the 'most miraculous organ' will give a criminal's deeds away. So we have been asked to look, upon Claudius' eyes during the dumb show. Eyes don't have lines or stage directions. Granted, Shakespeare doesn't give us explicit stage directions ('his eyes buggeth out, his jaw droppeth') but Hamlet's certainty should be taken at face value, IMHO. > I don't understand; what plot is Hamlet covering (up?) [with Ophelia]? Um, the plot to uncover Claudius' guilt, and Gertrude's incestuous adultery, through the play? Just a theory. Given Denmark's reputation for drunkenness and bawdry, Hamlet's nastiness with Ophelia would pass as a sign of mental health among the court. > Claudius is a brilliant actor. <g> Which is what makes him such a > consumate diplomat and politician.> Precisely the point: Claudius is a good actor, but I believe the scene is set up so that he _does_ lose his cool, albeit silently, and reveal his guilt in a very discreet, eye-centered manner. > It's certainly a play about revenge, but I don't understand what > demanding and intricate revenge is. A revenge that ensures Claudius' damnation, because mere death doesn't cut it. He has to suffer in the afterlife, just as he made his brother suffer Purgatory needlessly. It's a concept that is alien to us, but would be taken for granted back then. And this involves Hamlet's unique awareness of the two worlds, that of nature and that of the 'life to come.' It is because he has to juggle the demands of _spiritual_ revenge, not merely physical, that he needs to play it so carefully and make sure he does the job at the right time, under the right circumstances. As for Edmund Taft: > I have to disagree with Andy: this is very much a play about not > knowing. . . In the sense you put it, of course it's about not knowing, which I would qualify: it's about _initial_ uncertainty. Hamlet makes sure he's got his facts straight before he proceeds; it is hence also a play about revelations, and about the difficulties of acting even after one has 'by indirections found directions out.' As for Don Bloom, who is right to point out: > Surely the players could expect immediate imprisonment, followed by > whipping, branding, mutilation -- if they were lucky, that is, and > escaped REAL torture. Well, yes, but remember that the Lord Chamberlain's men had just collectively escaped the gallows themselves, in the wake of the Essex rebellion. Their excuse? 'Look, _R-II_ was an old chestnut of a play, nobody does it anymore; but this was a command performance, and the money was too good to pass up." [Among the defendants was one of the editors of the Folio edition.] That was enough to keep their heads off the block. Cheers, and apologies for the length but there was so much good stuff to respond to! Andy White [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rainbow Saari <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 Jul 2001 19:47:13 +1200 Subject: RE;12.1886 Hamlet's clashing Ideals Don Bloom's 'side issue' about ' the Mousetrap' ( Why would "the players agree to do it at all", given the play "on the surface is a gross insult to the Queen?" ) brings into focus similarities between 'the Mousetrap' performance by these fictional Players and the actual performance by the Lord Chamberlain's Men of Richard II just prior to the Essex Rebellion. That Queen, Elizabeth, was indeed offended by its content. Those Players apparently did it , in all innocence, for the money according to Augustine Phillips, when asked to explain. (Forty shillings, if my memory serves me correctly .) If the theory that Steve Roth endorses is so (that the Players in 'Hamlet' are intended to represent/parody the Lord Admiral's Co ), then perhaps in 'Hamlet' we have WS portraying, with customary subtlety, how easy it is to for players of any company( even - heaven forbid!- the L. Admiral's ) to get (innocently or otherwise ) caught in a 'mousetrap', in this case a potentially politically inadvisable situation, as Don points out. Cheers, Rainbow _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu>
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1893 Monday, 30 July 2001 [1] From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 Jul 2001 09:46:33 +0800 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1884 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet [2] From: Graham Bradshaw <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 Jul 2001 12:32:49 +0900 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1884 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet [3] From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 Jul 2001 12:29:42 -0700 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1864 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet [4] From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 Jul 2001 14:08:03 +0800 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1864 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 Jul 2001 09:46:33 +0800 Subject: 12.1884 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 12.1884 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet Our Library at the Nat'l U of Singapore was able to get a video of this film for me a few years ago, I believe from an outfit called Hendring Ltd. I've asked the Media Librarian if she can provide further info. Arthur Lindley [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Graham Bradshaw <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 Jul 2001 12:32:49 +0900 Subject: 12.1884 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 12.1884 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet For a Russian audience, Smoktunovsky's own past gave his Hamlet added bite. After being released from a Nazi prison camp he soon found himself in one of Stalin's. This Hamlet was being played by a brave oppositional hero. Which must have given an extraordinary contemporary urgency to (say) the first soliloquy, which is heard as a voice-over while Hamlet walks through the assembled court, watching the lickspittles and their leader with undisguised contempt. And of course Grigori Kozintsev (the director), Boris Pasternak (whose translation was used), and (who provided the music) had all suffered under Stalin. Imagine the excitement of a Russian in 1964, setting off to see a new Hamlet film produced by that extraordinary quartet! For a thoroughly dispiriting contemporary contrast, one might take the acclaimed Ninagawa, who is content to have Hamlet played by any pop star or soap opera idol with the right consumer image, and then shows how far "great theatre" can go in trivializing great drama. However, Kozintsev's film was obviously not interested in the Tragedy of Claudius: in effect, Claudius "is" Stalin, with no redeeming features. Smoktunovsky's Hamlet is powerful and dangerous, as any Hamlet should be (Sarah Bernhardt said she decided to play Hamlet because the male actors weren't manly enough); but Pasternak's translation omits or sanitizes some of Hamlet's nastier moments or moods, and (as in Dr Zhivago) sees Hamlet as a kind of redeemer. Or that was the tendency. An earlier generation of Russians, including Chekhov (in Ivanov), had been far more critical of Prince Hamlet; Turgenev's great essay on "Hamlet and Don Quixote" (1860?) had paved the way for these later, sharply critical views of the Prince.(Which had no counterpart in nineteenth-century England, because Coleridge had such a retarding influence.) From this point of view, the 1964 Kozintsev/Pasternak/ Smoktunovsky Hamlet was bringing the Russian critical wheel full circle, by reinstating a more heroic and imposing Hamlet. At the time some Russian critics, notably Alexander Anikst, protested that this Hamlet was too noble, and nobler than Shakespeare's Prince (who shows no concern for the fate of Denmark and its people). So, from another point of view, this magnificently moving film (like Peter Brook's recent production---represented a paradoxically old-fashioned return to the habit of seeing the play through Hamlet's eyes. In short, the Russian-ness of this great film is both enabling and limiting. It's well brought out in Kozintsev's wonderful book, when he remarks that Hamlet is "Lermontovian" in the first four acts but "Pushkinian" in the final act. There are some good studies of these Russian contexts,including Eleanor Rowe's HAMLET: A WINDOW ON RUSSIA (1976), Anna Kaye France's BORIS PASTERNAK'S TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE (1978), and Arthur P. Mendel's "Hamlet and Soviet Humanism" in the December 1971 issue of the Slavic Review, vol.30 no.4. John Joughin's SHAKESPEARE AND NATIONAL CULTURE (1997) includes an enthralling essay by Robert Weimann on how the "humanist" Hamlet of Soviet criticism failed to impress Brecht's East Germans: that cultural-critical collision now seems like one of history's best jokes! And of course Bernice Kliman's remarkably comprehensive study of Hamlet in film, TV and audio, provides an indispensable starting point for all discussions of Hamlet in performance... Best wishes, Graham Bradshaw P.S. Could somebody persuade Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese to help get such movies back into circulation, as great foreign movies that contemporary Americans cannot see? (Chiefly because contemporary America has such a dumbing-down, Hollywood-pulp-first stranglehold on what movies can be shown in Britain, France, Japan etc. This is yet another context where chatter about the "post-colonial" seems like a sick joke.) [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 Jul 2001 12:29:42 -0700 Subject: 12.1864 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 12.1864 Re: Smoktunovsky Hamlet Hi, all. Kozintsev's other book is called King Lear : the space of tragedy : the diary of a film director. It's very good: he proposes, among other things, that the knights need not be represented. Cheers, Se