The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.043  Wednesday, 8 January 2003

[1]     From:   Claude Caspar <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 7 Jan 2003 09:51:35 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.036 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

[2]     From:   Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 07 Jan 2003 10:31:48 -0500
        Subj:   Shakespeare and Marlowe

[3]     From:   Joanne Gates <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 7 Jan 2003 17:00:52 -0600 (CST)
        Subj:   Shakespeare and Marlowe


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Claude Caspar <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 7 Jan 2003 09:51:35 -0500
Subject: 14.036 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.036 Re: Shakespeare and Marlowe

Yes! Yet, the greatest question & mystery of our Swan abides: no one has
ever articulated how he, at one and the same time, is accessible to
every audience, both in age and sophistication, including every cast of
politics & creed, yet has yet to be "understood" by the most intelligent
minds, including all of us assembled here- we don't even know what he
did, let alone how he did it.  Bloom let's the secret out of the bag in
his recent book, by revealing that all we can really do is acknowledge
our own awe.

In preparing for "The Hours" I have been reading the diaries of
Shakespeare's sister, Virginia Woolf- anyone who reads the entry for
Sunday 13 April, (1930) will find a remarkable paragraph on the effects
of Shakespeare on a Shakespearian sensitivity, which ends:

"..Evidently the pliancy of his mind was so complete that he could
furbish out any train of thought; &, relaxing lets fall a shower of such
unregarded flowers. Why then should anyone else attempt to write.  This
is not 'writing' at all.  Indeed, I could say that Shre surpasses
literature altogether."

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 07 Jan 2003 10:31:48 -0500
Subject:        Shakespeare and Marlowe

David Kathman wrote:

"I've had a spirited e-mail exchange with Mike Rubbo over the past few
days after someone forwarded him my comments on his film from this
list.  Although we have many profound disagreements, I think Mike is a
good guy who tried to be fair in his film, even though he didn't quite
succeed."

Same here. And I generally agree with David's conclusions in the last
sentence quoted above. Mike DOES appear to be a genuinely good guy. To
us, he seems caught up in an unfortunate obsession; to him, we are
unable to face where the facts really lead.

As hard as it is, maybe that's where we have to leave it. I'll just make
one last point: from my perspective, some of Mike's evidence suggests
that Shakespeare was a more complicated person than we might think.
Sure, he was "gentle" and had good manners. But he may have been the
prototype of the "romantic" author: a far different person in everyday
life than when up in his room, or at the local tavern, writing such
remarkable plays.

Some authors say a different self emerges under the pressure of
composition. I haven't a creative bone in my body, alas, but I believe
it could be so.

--Ed Taft

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Joanne Gates <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 7 Jan 2003 17:00:52 -0600 (CST)
Subject:        Shakespeare and Marlowe

Much Ado About Something was the subject of a long (3-part) review at
Salon.com, by Gavin McNett, dated March 2, 2002, who noted that it had
played at the Film Forum in New York for 2 weeks.  If the address does
not work, search for it at the article finder on Salon's main page.

http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/03/02/shakespeare/index.html

Alas, I was not in NY then and our PBS station did not carry it on the
night advertised.  I therefore cannot endorse McNett's enthusiasm.

Joanne Gates

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