The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0815  Friday, 15 March 2002

[1]     From:   Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 15 Mar 2002 01:30:15 -0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.07377 Re: Hamlet (Once More)

[2]     From:   Melissa D. Aaron <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Thursday, 14 Mar 2002 23:59:22 +0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.0806 Re: Hamlet (Once More)


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 15 Mar 2002 01:30:15 -0000
Subject: 13.07377 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.07377 Re: Hamlet (Once More)

ASIDE -- via another thread on another list, as a candidate (not the
earliest, but) for The First English Detective Story, how about
Browning's _The Ring and the Book_?

More Patricia Highsmith than Agatha Christie, but Browning always +was+
ahead of his time.

Robin Hamilton.

(And, as no one has bothered to mention it yet -- probably too obvious
-- James Thurbers' "The Macbeth Murder Mystery" [_My World and Hard
Times_ {original publication, 1938}]

R2.)

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Melissa D. Aaron <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 14 Mar 2002 23:59:22 +0000
Subject: 13.0806 Re: Hamlet (Once More)
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.0806 Re: Hamlet (Once More)

> Mike Jensen wrote:
>
>> Do you really think a plot cannot have an aspect
>> where a character
>> wonders who committed a killing without putting the
>> plot in the
>> detective/mystery genre?  Are writers so vulnerable
>> to later
>> interpretations that this claim is fair?  Aside from
>> that, what do these
>> plays really have in common with Agatha Christie or
>> Dashiell Hammett?
>> I'll answer my own question: virtually nothing.

to which Lucia A. Setari responded:

>It goes without saying that Oedipus Rex (and Hamlet as well) CANNOT be
>defined as detective stories.  They belong to most different cultural
>conditions and deal with quite different questions from Agatha
>Christie's novels, of course.

I seem to remember an essay of Dorothy Sayers' in which she claimed that
Aristotle's Poetics, while of questionable value for tragedy, just about
perfectly suited detective fiction.  I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss
Dorothy Sayers, either as a writer or as a critic.

M D Aaron

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