October
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.2181 Thursday, 31 October 2002 From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 31 Oct 2002 08:46:13 -0500 Subject: West Wing--What Is Up? Since Shakespeare has been mentioned in several episodes of the West Wing, I thought I'd check it out more regularly this season, and so watched some of last night's episode. I ended up having some thoughts and questions about the series in general, and beg Hardy's indulgence to put them forward here (to shorten the life of any thread that may develop, I'll stop with this post) in order to be able to grasp more fully why Shakespeare should be on the show (part from giving us insight into the President's character). I was impressed by the intelligence of the show. It's very well-written and acted, and visually, it is innovative (widescreen image, use of various film and video stocks, and so on). But I as generally baffled by the show for a number of reasons. 1. It assumes that there is intelligent, sane life in the White House, that political hacks are all principled. Why, given that an idiot is currently President surrounded by madmen like Jack D. Rumsfeld. 2. Why is the President a Democrat? What kind of fantasy is this about? Whose fantasy? Moreover, he's a popular Democrat who trounces his Republican opposition. 3. What kind of new Democrat politics are being hobbled together here and why? On the one hand, you get the President saying things that many Democrats would love to hear from Democratic senators or representatives, but which they never say (about education, for example. By the way, is the President a green?). A Democratic voice no longer heard except, rarely, from a few courageous Senators like Byrd and Kennedy, is, oddly enough, heard on the West Wing. This in itself seems highly bizarre tome. But then I am even more baffled by way that the President and his advisors articulate various far right positions on foreign policy, so that the Pres seems like Nixon and (Hitchens') Kissinger combined. Israeli "targeted assassinations" are justified by "terrorism," as are CIA assassinations (ordered by the Pres) of foreign leaders. If the show is incoherent, why? If the show's watchers are mainly Dems, why assume they support the Israeli illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli war crimes? I am sure they don't, even after 9/11. 5. Why should Shakespeare come up in the context of a Machiavellian foreign policy (end of last season episode), a policy that resembles W's increasingly Nietzschean post-"axis of evil," imperialist foreign policy (i.e. whatever the U.S. wills is what should be)? _______________________________________________________________ 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 13.2180 Thursday, 31 October 2002 From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 31 Oct 2002 14:17:40 +0800 (SGT) Subject: Re: Laurence Nowel Can anyone on the list verify the (past) existence of a Laurence Nowel, antiquary, of Lichfield, d. 1576? Arthur Lindley _______________________________________________________________ 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 13.2179 Thursday, 31 October 2002 From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 31 Oct 2002 11:26:14 -0000 Subject: 13.2159 Re: Barbican Comment: Re: SHK 13.2159 Re: Barbican I don't think much public activity of any sort happened in the Barbican district. It was very much on the periphery (as its name implies). John Briggs _______________________________________________________________ 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 13.2178 Thursday, 31 October 2002 [1] From: Ira Zinman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 30 Oct 2002 16:25:41 EST Subj: Re: SHK 13.2160 Recent Discovery of T. Jenkins' Diary (Titus Andronicus) [2] From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 30 Oct 2002 22:41:12 -0000 Subj: Re: SHK 13.2160 Recent Discovery of T. Jenkins' Diary (Titus Andronicus) [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ira Zinman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 30 Oct 2002 16:25:41 EST Subject: 13.2160 Recent Discovery of T. Jenkins' Diary (Titus Comment: Re: SHK 13.2160 Recent Discovery of T. Jenkins' Diary (Titus Andronicus) Dear Mr Huang: Here is an excerpt from THE SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARY, pub. Oxford U. Press related to Thomas Jenkins: "Grammar School Stratford-upon- Avon: Known in Shakespeare's day as the King's New School; now the King Edward the Sixth School for Boys. The early schoolroom is next to the Guild Chapel, above the former Guildhall. It was a good school, with well-qualified masters. Names of sixteenth-century pupils do not survive. Shakespeare probably went to it from the age of 7 or 8, leaving when he was about 15 or less. His principal master would have been Thomas Jenkins." Perhaps there are two Thomas Jenkinses, but this may be the person whose reference is being confused with the person whose diary may be the one you inquired about. I hope it helps. Regards, Ira Zinman [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 30 Oct 2002 22:41:12 -0000 Subject: 13.2160 Recent Discovery of T. Jenkins' Diary (Titus Comment: Re: SHK 13.2160 Recent Discovery of T. Jenkins' Diary (Titus Andronicus) How 'recent' was this 'discovery'? Was it on the First of April? There is a useful rule that if something seems too good to be true, it is! This 'discovery' (if it really exists) has many, many things wrong with it. Perhaps the most glaring are that the theatres were closed on 2 December 1592 and that "Titus Andronicus" was probably not written until a year later. If the forged entries really exist, we should perhaps assume that they were made in the 19th century, when knowledge of Latin was better than it is today. I am sure that others can suggest likely candidates. John Briggs _______________________________________________________________ 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 13.2177 Thursday, 31 October 2002 From: David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 30 Oct 2002 16:12:34 -0500 Subject: 13.2158 Re: St. Crispin's Day Comment: Re: SHK 13.2158 Re: St. Crispin's Day Steve Roth quotes Alison Anne Chapman's University of Pennsylvania dissertation, " Reforming Time: Calendars and Almanacs in Early Modern England on the Sts. Crispin/Crispianus issue: "Just as Henry forestalls the traitors' challenge to his life and kingship, on the eve of battle he preempts another threat to his sovereignty, one that is posed by plebeian shoemakers and that challenges his control over the calendar and the nation's memory. ...by linking St. Crispin's Day to a rhetoric of obedience, martial solidarity, and loyalty to the king, the play neutralizes the tendency of shoemakers to make subversive holidays that celebrate their own material advancement." The quotation, and the general tenor of Roth's survey, seem to put Chapman's work in interesting contrast with David Cressy's *Bonfires and Bells*, which Roth commends as being "largely untainted with ideological cant." I am especially struck, however, by her confident ascription of motive and agency to a Henry who materializes in the play at 4 or 5 removes at least from the actual personage: Shakespeare's representation of Holinshed's representation of half-a-dozen written medieval sources' representation of the battlefield/council chamber/hunting fields memories of people who personally witnessed the young king in action. Roth's summary and quotation may misrepresent the depth and richness of Chapman's argument; if she can point to additional materials outside the play that sustain her argument, I would be happy to hear of them. And if "Henry" in the quotation is only a metonymy for something like "the representation of Henry constructed by Shakespeare and the other authorial agents of the play, " I think it equally plausible that Shakespeare noticed the reference in Holinshed, and amplified it in the play as a tacit memorial to Thomas Deloney, who had recently died (some time shortly before April, 1600), and/or a nod to the shoemakers and tailors in the audience--to some of whom, no doubt, the Chamberlain's Men owed money. Sanctimoniously, Dave Evett _______________________________________________________________ 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.