June
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1329 Sunday, 3 June 2001 [1] From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 09:11:56 -0700 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1314 Re: Othello and Emilia [2] From: Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 12:30:40 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1314 Re: Othello and Emilia [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Jensen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 09:11:56 -0700 Subject: 12.1314 Re: Othello and Emilia Comment: Re: SHK 12.1314 Re: Othello and Emilia Sorry, but "Thus do I ever make my fool my purse -" (1.3.375)just doesn't sound very sexual to me. You have to invent a lust from Iago towards Roderigo, and Iago says this is for his "profit." (l. 378). Best not to stretch the "put money" lines into a sexual interpretation, I think. It is so unnecessary, and there is no indication, other than our imaginations, that Iago thinks this way in these lines. Citations from William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Oxford, 1988, edited by Wells, Taylor, Jowett, and Montgomery. All the best, Mike Jensen [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Geralyn Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 12:30:40 -0400 Subject: 12.1314 Re: Othello and Emilia Comment: Re: SHK 12.1314 Re: Othello and Emilia >The more interesting one occurs in 4.2 when Othello says this about >Emilia: "This is a subtle whore,/ A closet lock and key of villainous >secrets,/ And yet she'll kneel and pray--I ha' seen her do't" (22-24). >When, I ask my class, has Othello been in a position to see Emilia keep >"villainous secrets"? Uh-- Othello doesn't say he's seen her do that-- he's assuming that if Desdemona did stray Emilia was her confidant and helped her keep it hidden. What he has seen is the praying part. Geralyn Horton Newton, Mass. 02460 <http://www.stagepage.org> _______________________________________________________________ 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 12.1328 Sunday, 3 June 2001 From: Graham Bradshaw <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 2001 00:57:43 +0900 Subject: 12.1291 Re: Seminars Comment: Re: SHK 12.1291 Re: Seminars Until I noticed one of John Drakakis's recent missives I had been leaving the "Seminars" thread alone; it seemed so terribly long and rancidly personal, and I am a gentle soul. But I've been skimming through it tonight, and have just three comments. 1. Sean shouldn't get so upset about this opposition between "ethics" and "ideology", and the nasty tilting at his "personal motives". This is a Marxoid relic in which John has heavily invested. Those who habitually mock or "demystify" or "critique" any concern with "morality" or "ethics", or any principles that might regulate behaviour, end up having no language of morality and no means of imagining what George Eliot calls "an equivalent centre of self". And then (alas, it's not really a paradox) they also end up having more in common with those Bush Republicans who reject the Kyoto Protocol because it is opposed to America's "economic interests" but (because they don't have the moral vocabulary) never ask why the rest of the world they contaminate should go on paying the price, or subsidy. As Materialists of the "Left" and "Right" unite, it becomes ever more difficult to tell the pigs from the humans. I think Orwell said something like this, since his socialism was based in fellow-feeling. 2. Since John keeps thundering on about "professionalism", wouldn't it be more interesting to hear whether and how his ideas (or investments) differ from those of Stanley Fish? Fish writes that "the profession exists so that there may be a means of accreditation and advancement for people in the profession, and not out of any inner necessity and certainly not out of cultural need or the need of individual teachers." That's clear enough. But is John any more concerned with "inner necessity" or "cultural need"? That's less clear. 3. John's distinctions between "public" and "private" seem quaintly reminiscent of Arnold's "Dover Beach". William Blake _______________________________________________________________ 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 12.1327 Sunday, 3 June 2001 [1] From: Debra Murphy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Jun 2001 11:27:43 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet [2] From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 30 May 2001 19:12:21 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1270 Re: Time in Hamlet [3] From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 2001 05:33:16 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet [4] From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 2001 14:48:06 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Debra Murphy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Jun 2001 11:27:43 EDT Subject: 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet Pronouns aside, it may be worth noting that Fortinbras seems to embody the values and attitudes of Old Hamlet, while Hamlet, Jr.'s sensitivity and intelligence are both characteristics of Claudius. It's true that Claudius is a murderer, but so, in the end, is Hamlet. Claudius also beds Gertrude, but Hamlet may want to do the same thing. And Claudius, of course, is king: a position Hamlet expected; at least he implies so in Act 5. I think we need to interview Gertrude about all this. --Ed Taft I have always thought Branagh's film was putting this forward as a possibility. He clearly has Gertrude and Claudius canoodling well before King Hamlet's death (by way of flashbacks), and seems to make a point of showing Claudius and Hamlet nose to nose with their identically-colored platinum blonde hair, whereas King Hamlet's was the usual "sable silvered". Certainly adds to the mix! Debra MurphyThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 30 May 2001 19:12:21 +0100 Subject: 12.1270 Re: Time in Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 12.1270 Re: Time in Hamlet > From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > >The same is true of Hamlet. I wonder just a little whether this is so. One way of looking at _Hamlet_ is that it's a play with ALL the stage-directions ripped out. This occasionally occurs elsewhere (which poor fool is hanged in _Lear_?) but it's pervasive in _Hamlet_. Professor Hawkes' reading of Fortinbras' concluding eulogy turns on just this point. Normally I'm not much in favour of jumping into time machines, but for once I'd buy a ticket to the Globe in 1601. Depending on which direction the actor playing Fortinbras was looking would neatly resolve this point. Robin Hamilton [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 2001 05:33:16 +0100 Subject: 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet >David Bishop is absolutely right. If only there were some TEXTUAL >evidence -- say if Claudius actually referred to Hamlet as his son. >Crazy, I agree. > >Back to sleep. > >T. Hawkes It's just as well we have Claudius' soliloquy in 3.2 proclaiming his guilt, as otherwise we'd have no evidence, textual (albeit manifested as verbal and physical activity on stage) or otherwise, demonstrating conclusively that he did kill Old Hamlet. Certainly this scene could be cut from production, but then we'd have a different play, even more ambiguous than the currently received text(s). But there +is+ fairly clear textual evidence to support Professor Hawkes' point: IV, 5, 113ff... QUEEN GERTRUDE Camly, good Laertes. LAERTES That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard, Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow Of my true mother. As Hamlet is, if not calm, at least disitinctly calmer than Laertes, it would seem to follow that Hamlet is indeed a bastard. And while Laertes' speech does not prove quite conclusively who the father of this illegitimate Hamlet is, Claudius is the most likely candidate to have cuckolded the queen ... What must Gertrude have felt, how did the actress playing her react, to having her guilt so clearly portrayed? Robin Hamilton [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 2001 14:48:06 -0400 Subject: 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 12.1309 Re: Time in Hamlet Claudius wants to smooth things over, and induce the aggressively mourning Hamlet to think of him as of a father, since his own father has died, as fathers do; Claudius already can call himself Hamlet's stepfather, as he can call Hamlet a cousin, a little more than kin and less than kind. An audience member roused from slumber at the moment Claudius says "our son" could be forgiven for thinking he was announcing his paternity to the court, but it's difficult to see how a quintessentially reasonable person, with head and heart awake, could come to this conclusion. Nor do I seriously think T. Hawkes has done so. I'd rather believe, until he disabuses me, that he means the idea of Claudius as a father to Hamlet was designed, and can be felt, as a "structural possibility" tugging the audience's minds in the direction of uncertainty, as so much else in this play so designedly does. In that case Hamlet's suspicion that Claudius might be his father, at whatever level of his consciousness that suspicion might play, could delay him in something like the way Ernest Jones's Hamlet was delayed. I doubt it, though I do see Hamlet's sense of unlikeness to his father, which implicitly associates him with the also unlike Claudius. The unHerculean Hamlet, bemoaning his mysteriously becalmed blood, feels somehow, I would say, that his mother's "broken faith", a failing kin to his own slowness to revenge, among other "sins", helps put him, morally speaking, in bed with his father's successor. But let's not go crazy. Claudius never "actually refers" to Hamlet as his literal son. Best wishes, David Bishop _______________________________________________________________ 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 12.1326 Sunday, 3 June 2001 [1] From: Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 10:33:12 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina [2] From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Jun 2001 18:08:54 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina [3] From: Kezia Sproat <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Jun 2001 13:09:12 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina [4] From: John Marwick <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 2001 13:35:09 +1200 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina [5] From: Lyn Wood <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 08:11:29 -0700 Subj: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 10:33:12 -0600 Subject: 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina Comment: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina This doesn't answer the question directly (about how to prepare for Leontes's pairing up of Camillo and Paulina), but in a production I helped with a few years ago, we had Camillo distracted, talking to someone else, while Leontes made the announcement. Then, Camillo, quickly trying to compose himself and make sense of the situation, was brought over to Paulina. She, all the while, appeared stand-offish and sceptical and didn't extend her hand when Camillo held his out to her. But then, as Camillo's crest was on the verge of falling and he began to drop his hand, Paulina quickly reached out and took it. The moment got a lot of laughs (I hope not cheap ones) and, even as I think about it now, the sequence seems to fit Paulina quite well: she's feisty and independent, but emotionally tender as well. (Note 5.2.72-78--and she's the one who says, "You precious winners all" [5.3.131].) On the question of whether the match between Camillo and Paulina is appropriate and in some sense prepared for, I'd argue that it is: they are both counselors to kings who, though intensely faithful, don't hesitate to disagree with or disobey their master when they think he's wrong; and both are associated with medicine (2.3.37, 54; 4.4.587). Also, what immediately prompts Leontes's announcement is Paulina's public declaration that--unlike everybody else--she'll just have to live out her life in sorrow and solitude. It sounds like she's deliberately protesting too much and really would love to have another man in her life, now that Antigonus and Leontes are no longer available. Bruce Young [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Jun 2001 18:08:54 +0100 Subject: 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina Comment: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina >"O, peace, Paulina! >Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent, ... >The question that keeps running around in my head is: "How does Leontes >know ("...For him, I partly know his mind...") that Camillo has a desire >to wed Paulina?" How does one reconcile that within the play, and >attempt to make this scene seem less "out of the blue"? > >Interested to see what people think. One way of playing this (if you take a reading of the play as "Leontes hasn't learned anything") is to see it as yet another example of Leontes arbitrarily establishing his authority yet once more. Here, "How does Leontes know?" indexes Leontes' (still) arbitrary and absolute power. Another (more metaphysical) approach would be to see Camillo replacing the dead Antigonus. Thus the marriage of Camillo and Paulina is part of the "restoration" element (Leontes reunited with Hermione, etc.). Here, psychological probability (and related questions of realism) don't come into play quite so much. It turns, I think, on whether you see the ending of the play as optimistic (Florizel and Perdita will avoid the mistakes of the older generation) or pessimistic (F&P will in due course repeat the mistakes of the earlier generation). Robin Hamilton [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kezia Sproat <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 1 Jun 2001 13:09:12 EDT Subject: 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina Comment: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina It may help to remember that Paulina is (considering the whole corpus, an antidote to Iago, a sibling to Prospero, and. . . .) Shakespeare's whole-cloth addition to the source plot in Greene's Pandosto. Taking the longer view, that of a person making a play out of a stark, dark tale, she's the author's own invented Problem-Solver. Despite many generations of critical discounting and dismissal as a "scold," Paulina really has it together. Camillo, a courtier, can be visibly interested during this scene, and earlier. As in any good play, characters CHANGE, and Camillo's part calls for it right alongside his boss. An old woman? Therefore unattractive? Leontes notices wrinkles on the statue, but not to worry. . . perhaps he does so partly to help set up the Paulina-Camillo marriage. . . Without reference to any source plot: the other actors playing the court should have recognized in earlier scenes, as has Leontes, that she's the Lee Iacocca (i.e., turn-around expert) of her time and place. Such a comparison understates her agency, but may be useful because for many women, male power (despite form, age, etc.) and proved personal agency is attractive. Assume that in a freer, less stereotype-dominated society, the converse is true as well: for men, women's power is attractive. ESPECIALLY in the near-post-Elizabethan age! We can't even imagine today, probably, what Elizabethans thought about powerful old women as compared to current USA residents (who can hardly even see an older woman reading news on TV). Most of original WT audience remembered Elizabeth. . . .compare Dwight Eisenhower, for example. Speaking of age and immodesty: a subsection of my dissertation written 26 years ago might help, "Source Changes in WT." Unavailable except via Contentville pirates, but I'll send it if interested. Kezia Sproat PS I first saw WT at Vassar in about 1955, hated Paulina, and was left cold by the play. That was because in 1955 we (arguably cream of America's crop of young ladies) had been taught to be reverential to males of most if not all stripes. Sea changes came later, thank heaven, so we are now, I feel, much closer to Shakespeare's age, much more ready as a culture now than then to appreciate his contributions. (And does not the current market support that view?) PPS Just reread last scene of WT and thought about new portrait. Fun reference there to lifelike art. . . . [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Marwick <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 2001 13:35:09 +1200 Subject: 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina Comment: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina Tim Perfect writes: >"How does Leontes > know ("...For him, I partly know his mind...") that Camillo has a desire > to wed Paulina?" How does one reconcile that within the play, and > attempt to make this scene seem less "out of the blue"? When I directed WT last year here in New Zealand we decided to leave this in (though it has been cut in various other productions as being too pat and an unlikely end for Paulina). Actually there's something quite symmetrical about the match between the two people who are instrumental in helping correct the damage that Leontes has caused (Camillo by saving Polixenes and then bringing Perdita back to Sicilia and Paulina by restoring Hermione). And there's a lot of symmetry between the two halves of the play that I think works to counter the great gap of time. We helped the idea by the way we played the first two scenes in the play. The setting was Edwardian with the court coming on after dinner. Camillo and Archidamus walked out of the dining room first, then the Kings came out with Hermione and following them were the whole court - including Paulina and Antigonus (he was much older than she). As the action took place downstage we had groups of courtiers chatting upstage - with Paulina deep in conversation with Camillo. When the Queen and Polixenes leave the rest of the cortiers left too - except for Paulina and Camillo who stayed talking. When Leonetes calls "What Camillo, there?" at line 209 that was when Paulina exited. In this way we set up the idea that there was at least a close friendship betwen paulina and Camillo. Mind you, it may only have been in the minds of the cast - not sure whether anyone who was unfamiliar with the play would have noticed. When it came to the end of the play Pailina's 'old turtle' speech (128-134) was not taken too seriously (though certainly a bit of a sad undertone) and Leontes' response of 'Oh piece, Paulina' was gently ribbing her. On some nights the marriage with Camillo got a bit of a laugh - but I think the char acters were laughing along too. John Marwick Eastbourne New Zealand WT webpage: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~marlenn/index.html [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lyn Wood <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 08:11:29 -0700 Subject: 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina Comment: Re: SHK 12.1321 Camillo and Paulina Tim Perfect wrote: >The question that keeps running around in my head is: "How does Leontes >know ("...For him, I partly know his mind...") that Camillo has a desire >to wed Paulina?" How does one reconcile that within the play, and >attempt to make this scene seem less "out of the blue"? > >Interested to see what people think. When I first read the play, the way Leontes plays matchmaker bothered me, but, as you point out, he does say, "I'll not seek far (for him, I partly know his mind)". I take this to mean that he has discussed the matter at least briefly with Camillo beforehand. In a production I saw at the USF, as Leontes presented the idea to Paulina, Camillo looked very much as if he hoped Paulina would accept him. Paulina was a bit surprised at first, but then looked as if she'd be willing to consider the possibility. The way they played it, his matchmaking didn't bother me at all. Lyn _______________________________________________________________ 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 12.1325 Friday, 1 June 2001 From: Graham Hall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 01 Jun 2001 11:27:50 -0000 Subject: Re: Hawks and Handsaws Somewhere in the bowels of a dusty journal is a tale about designs on playhouse flags (hawks/handsaws), the juxtaposition of the Rose and the Globe, the direction of the prevailing wind and the standpoint (pun intentional) of the viewer. _______________________________________________________________ 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>