March
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0732 Monday, 11 March 2002 From: Dana Shilling <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 19:54:36 -0500 Subject: Almost Damn'd I speculate that the line should be read as (almost) (damned in a fair wife) rather than (almost damned) (in a fair wife). In other words, the implication is that if Cassio were married to a beautiful woman he would suffer the hellish torment of fear of cuckoldry. The "almost" means either that he is betrothed but not yet married (I suspect the men in garrison would treat his liaison with Bianca as "boys will be boys") or that he broke off a match. Perhaps a future production will interpolate "(S)he's actin' single, I'm drinkin' doubles" at this point. If the latter, then if Angelo actually believes that Mariana's "reputation was disvalued in levity" then perhaps this almost-damnation is what he was afraid of. Dana Shilling _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0731 Monday, 11 March 2002 [1] From: Brandon Toropov <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 10:53:38 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels [2] From: R. Schmeeckle <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 12:40:05 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels [3] From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 9 Mar 2002 07:24:00 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Brandon Toropov <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 10:53:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels Comment: Re: SHK 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels W.L. Godshalk writes: > Ed Taft calls our attention to Richard Levin > (the elder, scourge of > postmodernists, Marxists, and others) who wrote > Multiple Plot in English > Renaissance Drama (Chicago UP, 1971), a very > good survey (I think) of > the different forms of multiple plot, and, yes, > Levin's detail analyses > are more convincing than his theorizing. > > Almost 90 years ago, Allan Gilbert, "The > Tempest: Parallelism in > Character and Situations," JEGP 14 (1915) > 63-74, noticed that Ferdinand > and Caliban are parallel characters: both are > enslaved by Prospero; both > have the hots for Miranda; both are "woodmen" > (see Gordon Williams's > Glossary) -- or wish they were. In any case, > they both carry wood for > Prospero, and both are led around by Ariel at > some point. Caliban is an > orphan, and Ferdinand thinks he is -- and so > on. > > But why this rather than something else? What > are the possible > interpretations of this parallel? Is Ferdinand > merely an upper class > Caliban, one acceptable to Prospero because he > will inherit a kingdom > and make Miranda a queen? > > Yours, Bill Godshalk Bill -- I could be wrong, but my sense is that from about Richard II onward, there are, in most of the plays, so many (clearly intentional) parallel instances in plot and character that they form a sort of free-floating cloud, with numerous valid pairs. One of my favorite "unexpected" parallels is between Lear and Cordelia. Bradley (yes, him again -- sorry) cites her as a kind of tragic heroine drawn to a smaller scale than Lear. She is, of course, deeply wronged by her father -- but that shouldn't blind us to the fact that she is called upon, at a critical moment, to do the one thing that she cannot do. ("Heave (her) heart into (her) mouth," as she puts it.) If she HAD been able to do what Fate called upon her to do, the nation and her family would have been spared a holocaust. But she *couldn't* do what the situation demanded. This is tragic-hero territory. Desdemona, Bradley argues, would have been equal to Cordelia's task -- could have spoken "what she felt" without surrender and, at the same time, have at least attempted to move toward making her father feel loved at a moment that was vitally important to him. But Cordelia didn't do that -- because she's Cordelia. And so the course of events was set in motion that led to her own and her father's destruction, and to the country's desolation... Lear, on the other side, is called upon by the Fates patiently to overlook Cordelia's failure to comply with his -- unreasonable -- demand for mouth-praise in a public setting. That's something *he* can't do at this point in the play ... because he is who he is. The horrific consequences of this pair of failures are, of course, out of all proportion to the failures themselves. Welcome to Tragedyland. Now: Note that there is, simultaneous with this parallel between Lear and Cordelia, an obvious parallel between Cordelia and Kent that's set out in the very same scene. (Kent, like Cordelia, speaks his mind before authority and suffers grievously for it.) That these parallels were part of WS's (extraordinarily intricate) design in KING LEAR, and are meant to be noticed, seem to me to be demonstrated by these lines, almost the last ones spoken in the play: The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. Brandon [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: R. Schmeeckle <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 12:40:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels Comment: Re: SHK 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels After reflecting on the responses, I have made a distinction between parallels that contrast two characters on the basis of some quality(ies) and parallels that involve contrasts of two or more characters on the basis of similar relations. In Lear there are contrasts of the second sort, contrasts of parent-child relationship and servant-master(triss) relationship. In Hamlet there are three sets of dead father-son relationships. Are there other examples of parallels based on relations? Is it more appropriate to refer to these as relational parallels or plot parallels? Or are they both? [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Clifford Stetner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 9 Mar 2002 07:24:00 -0500 Subject: 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels Comment: Re: SHK 13.0710 Re: Plot and Character Parallels > But why this rather than something else? What are the possible > interpretations of this parallel? Is Ferdinand merely an upper class > Caliban, one acceptable to Prospero because he will inherit a kingdom > and make Miranda a queen? No of course not. By placing them in identical predicaments, Shakespeare isolates the difference between them as a difference in inherent character. We should suppose that Sebastian or Antonio forced to chop wood by Prospero would behave like Caliban rather than Ferdinand (and likewise for Miranda's third suitor, Stephano). Moreover, Shakespeare shows us that Ferdinand's true noblesse consists of the purity of his love for Miranda in contrast to the lustful rapine of Caliban. It is in contemplating her virtue and beauty (in stunningly beautiful blank verse) rather than nurturing dreams of destroying Prospero and raping her that Ferdinand derives the strength to endure his servitude. But even though Ferdinand's acceptibility as a son-in-law is a matter of inherent character, his character must be nurtured by Prospero's art, forcing him into servitude and hopelessness in order to endow him with true nobility (remember he was the first one overboard when Ariel spread a little St Elmo's fire that didn't even frighten the seamen and his hopelessness, like that of his father, must move towards the optimistic faith of Gonzalo and away from the cynicism of Sebastian and Antonio) Clifford _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0730 Monday, 11 March 2002 From: Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 17:46:27 -0000 Subject: Fishy Don Bloom and I have collaborated in an interesting empirical experiment, in which Don Bloom's hypothesis has been established as true (to a certain extent). Initially, Don suggested that "the meaning of 'machiavellian' is whatever your readers think of when you write it, even if that's wrong". I replied, "Sounds fishy to me". Don pretended that he understood the word "fishy" in its common-or-garden sense of "Suspect, unconvincing", and defended his suggestion by adding, "Writers write and readers understand, to put it as simply as possible. If Reader A misunderstands what you write, that may be your fault or it may be his. But if 95 per cent of your readers misunderstand you, that is definitely your own fault". Whose fault was it that "fishy" was misunderstood - if we suspend our pretence for a moment - in this instance? Well, according to Don's statement, it was mine, because I chose to use the word "fishy" in a context-specific, obscure way that would only be readily recognisable to <5% of my readers. Don, pretending to misunderstand, expertly played the role of the reading community to illustrate the point. But the conclusion to our experiment threw up an unexpected problem: if there is "fault" to be located and quantified - and misunderstanding, we might assume, is an undesirable outcome of attempts to communicate ideas - then there must be a preferable meaning to what one writes. It is not possible simply to locate this preferable meaning, however democratically, in the response of a majority of one's readers, because this meaning might disagree with the meaning intended by the writer - so we get the undesirable breakdown in communication again. And yet the preferable meaning cannot be located in the esoteric, unique notion of the meaning ascribed to words by their writer, for the same reason. It seems that we need a non-contingent meaning in which to locate our preference. But, faced with this requirement, Don offers his own devastating critique of the hypothesis with which we began, and which our experiment seemed to have confirmed as true: "(Or is their some meaning to 'fishy' that I'm not picking up on?)" Who knows? Only Martin Steward. Or perhaps context can help us. Maybe Mr. Steward used the verb "Sounds" to qualify or define his use of the word "fishy"? And maybe his addition of "to me" was already anticipating the course of the experiment, its spiral into ever-decreasing circles of meaning, in which no word signifies beyond what it signifies "to me". Or maybe the real question is: "Is there an experiment in this class?" I think that it might be a figment of Mr. Steward's imagination, like "the geat globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit". m _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0729 Monday, 11 March 2002 From: Jan Pick <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 17:46:26 -0000 Subject: Original Plots Lots of writers in 16th and early 17th century re-wrote classical or popular plots or made up variations on the theme - as you probably know, it was considered perfectly acceptable! To suggest that Shakespeare was not interested in plot and could not have made up the originals he wrote is somewhat arrogant! Reminds me of those Victorians who tut tutted over his lack of historical and geographical knowledge and 'corrected' his errors for him. Can't think why he is considered such a genius at all, really! Jan _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0728 Monday, 11 March 2002 [1] From: Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 17:17:07 -0000 Subj: Re: SHK 13.0706 Re: MND Adaptation for Children? [2] From: Sophie Masson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 11 Mar 2002 20:49:33 +1100 Subj: Re: SHK 13.0690 Re: MND Adaptation for Children? [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 8 Mar 2002 17:17:07 -0000 Subject: 13.0706 Re: MND Adaptation for Children? Comment: Re: SHK 13.0706 Re: MND Adaptation for Children? Thomas Larque writes, "I also expected to hear from those who consider any introduction of Shakespeare to children to be futile (whether in original language or in adaptation) and that viewpoint seems to have remained surprisingly unexpressed in this exchange - unless Martin Steward's tongue-in-cheek post strays into that territory". The remarks of mine were concerning the use of children's drama from the early modern stage for modern children's productions. I can assure Thomas that I was in earnest, not because I think introducing Shakespeare to youngsters is futile (that would be professional suicide!!!!), but because there is so much tremendous repertoire out there which just doesn't get read/performed/acted/enjoyed very much. Does it really strike other list members as such a crazy idea? I am not a teacher of young children, so maybe I am just overestimating their ability to cope with old plays that aren't Shakespeare. m [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sophie Masson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 11 Mar 2002 20:49:33 +1100 Subject: 13.0690 Re: MND Adaptation for Children? Comment: Re: SHK 13.0690 Re: MND Adaptation for Children? I agree about children liking the original language, in extracts anyway. When my youngest son's Year 5 (10-11 year olds) class did a boiled-down version of Macbeth as their school play, it was the original language they loved the most. It was funny to see them screaming around the playground declaiming the witches' speeches and Lady Macbeth's ravings. Sophie Masson Author site: http://www.northnet.com.au/~smasson _______________________________________________________________ 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 Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.332 / Virus Database: 186 - Release Date: 3/6/02