April
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.0757 Wednesday, 23 April 2003 From: Don Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Apr 2003 12:18:12 -0500 Subject: 14.0747 Re: The Public Theater's AS YOU LIKE IT Comment: Re: SHK 14.0747 Re: The Public Theater's AS YOU LIKE IT John Zuill writes, >I saw a four person Macbeth in Shefield England recently. One man played >Macbeth and women played all the other parts. It was heavily cut and the >woodsy scenes were not represented, but it was a genuinely scary >production and well worth driving to Sheffield. Golly. I just about get myself talked into the validity of small-cast productions and then I see a recommended version that frankly appalls me. As I understand it, the three women played, besides Lady M, the witches, and Lady Macduff, all the men: Banquo, Macduff, Duncan, Malcom, Donalbain. The Porter, Siward, Ross, the Sergeant, the Old Man, Fleance and miscellaneous thanes, children, doctors, and apparitions. Or were these all cut? What was left? Cheers, don _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0756 Tuesday, 22 April 2003 From: Elliott H. Stone <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Apr 2003 08:54:37 EDT Subject: Re: The Strachey Letter The Oxford World's Classics new edition William Shakespeare THE TEMPEST has a wonderful introduction by Stephen Orgel. It has many wise comments to make on the play and at page 62 he writes, "The play is almost certainly indebted to a letter of William Strachey describing the voyage of Sir William Somers to Virginia in the summer of 1609, during which his ship was driven off course and shipwrecked in Bermuda. Strachey's letter is dated from Virginia 15 July 1610, and would have reached England at the earliest in the beginning of September-----These accounts may also have been in Shakespeare's mind: at any event the recent events they describe certainly were. Chambers believes Shakespeare 'doubtless used' them: William Shakespeare i. 492". Appendix B of this Oxford Edition contains THE STRACHEY LETTER . We all must be aware of the fact, that the letter itself was never published and that this material was taken from Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625) published after the Tempest had made its first appearance, in first place, in the First Folio. My recollection is that sometime in the 1920's SQ had an article by a well known Princeton scholar that demonstrated the clear connection between lines in the Tempest and lines in the Strachey letter. No one can deny that convincing evidence. However, those that would claim that Shakespeare was a common plagiarist have recently received a good thrashing, as well they should, by that careful scholar Brian Vickers. Was William Strachey a competent poet or writer capable of the wonderful descriptions that appear in the letter? Wasn't Strachey a convicted swindler, a liar, a traitor, a bankrupt and a man who plagiarized from all the leading explorers in the New World i.e. Raleigh and Smith? Wasn't he the man that the Stationer's Company forced to return his profits on his early sight seeing book on France to the original writer? Was he not the man that reopened the Children's Theater after it was closed by the Crown and its true owner had fled to the continent? ( Is this the man who wrote the terrible versification of the satire known as THE ELEGY BY W.S.?) Is this the man we are to believe that Shakespeare used as a mentor! It seems more than likely that Strachey was the plagiarizer and the thief. Is it not true that his letter was used by him to BLACKMAIL the shareholders of The Virginia Company? I suggest that the Strachey letter be run through a computer program to determine if it truly has his DNA or that of Shakespeare's? The hard part will be trying to find anything that is truly Strachey's and not stolen literary property! The likely scenario is that Jonson was editing the First Folio and gave his business partner William Strachey some material to use to help him stave off his creditors and his pending incarceration in Debtor's Prison! There is no doubt that the First Folio contains material from the Jacobean period, added after earlier staging, that may refer to topical events like the Bermuda shipwreck. There is nothing new about my view. This was the view of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain and Herman Melville all men who understood a little bit about writing and literary criticism. Sam Schoenbaum described them as the "Groupists". Best, Elliott H. Stone _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0755 Tuesday, 22 April 2003 From: Tanya Gough <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 22 Apr 2003 09:36:48 -0400 Subject: Kozintsev Hamlet and Lear Just a brief update on the Kozintsev Hamlet and King Lear DVD releases: It would appear that both are being released in North American format DVD by the same company that distributes the Burton Hamlet, so I am guessing the price range should be around $36.99 US, though I'll have more specific information later in the year. The Hamlet is being released in the 4th quarter of this year, while the Lear is being released "sometime next year," after they have completed the digital clean up of the print. I'll post an actual release date as soon as I find out what it will be. Tanya Gough Poor Yorick Shakespeare Catalogue http://www.bardcentral.com _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0754 Tuesday, 22 April 2003 From: William B. Hunter <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 21 Apr 2003 13:47:21 EDT Subject: ANQ Articles I have been disappointed in the responses to my request several weeks ago for responses to my two articles in last fall's ANQ. The only comments have mentioned the proposed responsibility of Heminge and Condell for editing F1, a major subject. But there were other important ideas too such as the private performances of DREAM on May 2, 1594, and Valentine's day 1596 with the lapse of a day between the performance of the former and its epilogue, the fairy masque; the proposed doubling of Egeus and Puck; the four epilogues of the play written for three different venues, and so on. It is obvious that none of the responders had actually read my articles and so did not engage with any of the evidence that I present in them. I had not realized what a limited distribution ANQ has. As a remedy therefore I shall mail a copy of both articles to anyone who requests them atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. My only request that I receive from each a statement of how the ideas are viewed--positive or negative (or indifferently). William B. Hunter _______________________________________________________________ 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 14.0753 Tuesday, 22 April 2003 From: Tom Berger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >> Date: Tuesday, 22 Apr 2003 11:17:10 -0400 Subject: Malone Society Panel at Renaissance Society of America Convention Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting New York City, March 25-27, 2004 MALONE SOCIETY @ RSA The Malone Society invites abstracts for papers on Early Modern English Drama, 1475 - 1660. Papers may consider such topics as drama in manuscript; drama as it moves from manuscript to print; printing house practises relating to drama; public, private, court, and academic drama and their possible interrelationships. Please submit a 200-250 word abstract, with a brief CV (one page), by June 1, 2003. Acceptances will be e-mailed before mid-June. Anyone whose proposal is accepted is required to be a member of the RSA at the time of registration for the New York meeting. E-mail abstracts and CV's to:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Or mail them to: Thomas L. Berger Flat 8 74 Marquess Road London N1 2PY ENGLAND Fax: (020) 7405-6707 Malone Society home page: www.smuc.ac.uk/malone The Malone Society is named after Edmond Malone, editor of the first variorum edition of Shakespeare. Since its foundation in 1906, its purpose has been to make more accessible the materials essential for the study of English Renaissance drama. Its publications are renowned for their meticulous scholarship and high standard of accuracy, and are indispensable to students of early drama, and to university libraries providing resources in the fields of English Renaissance literature and theatre history. The Society, a registered charity, publishes editions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century plays from manuscript, photographic facsimile editions of printed plays of the period, and editions of original documents relating to Renaissance theatre and drama. Recent volumes include: newly discovered plays (The Wisest have Their Fools about Them); Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles (Romeo and Juliet); works by canonical authors (Gallathea and Sapho and Phao by John Lyly and Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess); rare or otherwise inaccessible texts (The Country Captain by William Cavendish); drama of the early sixteenth century (Two Moral Interludes) and various collections of documents relating to the drama of the period. _______________________________________________________________ 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.