March
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.0787 Wednesday, 31 March 2004 From: John F. Andrews <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 31 Mar 2004 06:53:45 -0800 Subject: Gielgud Centenary Gala Gielgud Centenary Gala on April 19 in London As you may have heard, The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, The Royal Shakespeare Company, and The Shakespeare Guild are joining forces for an April 19 gala at the Gielgud Theatre that will commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Sir's John's birth. BBC personality Ned Sherrin will serve as master of ceremonies for a cast to be led by Judi Dench and Paul Scofield. Among the other presenters for a program that will feature vignettes, anecdotes, and tributes to the Gielgud legacy will be Clive Francis, Peter Hall, David Hare, Rosemary Harris, Martin Jarvis, Barbara Jefford, Michael Pennington, Ian Richardson, and Donald Sinden. For additional information about what promises to be a memorable occasion, click on the link below. http://www.rsc.org.uk/home/111_1412.asp For details about ancillary activities (among them gatherings at The National Portrait Gallery, The National Theatre, and The Theatre Museum), as well as about a travel service recommended by the Guild, simply respond to this message. Hoping to see you a few weeks hence in London, All the best, John _______________________________________________________________ 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 15.0786 Wednesday, 31 March 2004 From: Robin Headlam Wells <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 31 Mar 2004 10:18:13 +0100 Subject: Literature, Science and Human Nature SHAKSPERians may be interested in a symposium on Literature, Science and Human Nature at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH on Saturday 8 May. Among the speakers will be two distinguished Shakespeareans: Catherine Belsey and Ania Loomba. Other speakers will include Simon Baron-Cohen, Joseph Carroll, Rita Carter, Gabriel Dover, Ian McEwan, Kenan Malik, Steven Pinker and Philip Pullman. For more information and booking details go to http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/humannature/ The symposium is jointly hosted by the Federal University of Surrey and the ICA in association with the University of Missouri St Louis. _______________________________________________________________ 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 15.0785 Tuesday, 30 March 2004 [1] From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 17:14:04 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 15.0775 Stylometrics [2] From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 11:59:25 -0500 Subj: SHK 15.0767 Stylometrics [3] From: Gerald E. Downs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 18:57:06 EST Subj: Re: SHK 15.0775 Stylometrics [4] From: Mac Jackson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 30 Mar 2004 12:21:07 +1200 Subj: RE: SHK 15.0775 Stylometrics [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robin Hamilton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 17:14:04 +0100 Subject: 15.0775 Stylometrics Comment: Re: SHK 15.0775 Stylometrics Not really Shakespeare but related (Renaissance) ... I could never really get excited by stylometric studies of Shakespeare as this is essentially fiddling on the margin. Conspiracy theories and Oxfordians aside, there are 36 plays we know were written by Shakespeare, and maybe two or three that are doubtful, so while interesting, it's no big deal. There are, however, two English Renaissance writers where there *is* a serious question around what they wrote. Ralegh and Thomas Wyatt. Leaving Ralegh aside, the Wyatt Canon can stretch from under 200 poems to 350+. I tried to constuct a Wyatt Canon based on MS title sequences -- Egerton, Devonshire, Blage, Tottel (K --not an MS) and Arundel. The first problem I hit was that I seemed to be constructing the tightest canon for Wyatt of anyone -- I'd dump even 15 poems that Tottel ascribes to Wyatt. In the back of my head was that eventually, anything I did in this area really ought to be checked by a stylometric analysis. But the trouble is that with Wyatt, you're dealing with short texts. I tried a thought-experiment as to how you *might* be able to run a stylometric analysis on a sonnet and to me it seemed to come down to a three-orthographic-item sequence. (I ran this past a couple of statisticians I knew and they essentially said that, yes, it might be possible to construct a program to do this, but that I was barking mad.) So three points ... (1) stylometric analysis began pre-computers with an attempt to identify the authorship of the Pauline Epistles, and it kicked-up some (now taken-for-granted) pretty devastating results. (2) Stylometrics seems to be currently bogged down in or obsessed by Shakespeare, where it isn't a serious problem. (3) How do you apply stylometrics to short texts? I can identify the question but I don't know the answer. Robin Hamilton [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 11:59:25 -0500 Subject: Stylometrics Comment: SHK 15.0767 Stylometrics The defining character of stylometrics lies in its leaden-footed plodding after that modern chimera, authenticity. In the manufacture of soul-gelding, buttock-clenching tedium, this is a pursuit that has few equals. No wonder. To shackle texts grimly to specific authors, is to deny that they have overriding and unassignable imperatives and styles of their own. T. Hawkes [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gerald E. Downs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 18:57:06 EST Subject: 15.0775 Stylometrics Comment: Re: SHK 15.0775 Stylometrics To Ward Elliott: I'm suspicious of 2 H4 as wholly Shakespeare's. What's your mechanical opinion? Gerald E. Downs [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mac Jackson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 30 Mar 2004 12:21:07 +1200 Subject: 15.0775 Stylometrics Comment: RE: SHK 15.0775 Stylometrics As Bill Godshalk says, I have argued that the case for Shakespeare's having at least contributed to Arden of Faversham, a case accepted by some good nineteenth-century commentators, deserves reconsideration: that was in "Shakespearean Features of the Poetic Style of Arden of Faversham", Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen and Literaturen, 230 (1993), 279-304. The stylometric work done by Ward Elliott and Robert Valenza suggests rather strongly that the play cannot be wholly Shakespeare's. But collaboration between Shakespeare and another or others is not ruled out by their tests. Further, at least one of the tests failed by Arden of Faversham depends on use of a text of that play that has (at least in this one respect) been edited on principles quite different from those on which the base Shakespeare texts have been edited. Arden is said to have a rate of 28 hyphenated compounds per 20,000 words, which is much too low to fit within the Shakespeare base range of 52-180. But if Martin Wine's Revels edition is taken as the foundation text for Arden, the rate is 51 per 20,000 words, and the Temple edition of Ronald Bayne (1897, reprinted 1955) would yield a rate of 72 per 20,000 words. In Defining Shakespeare: "Pericles" as Test Case, p. 76-9, I discuss the difficulty of ensuring that non-Shakespearean texts are edited or "commonized" in precisely the same ways as texts that have always been accepted as belonging to the canon. Mac Jackson _______________________________________________________________ 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 15.0784 Tuesday, 30 March 2004 [1] From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 07:13:29 -0800 Subj: RE: SHK 15.0773 The Three Sons in Hamlet [2] From: Philip Tomposki <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 20:37:51 -0500 Subj: The Three Sons of Hamlet [3] From: Jack Heller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 30 Mar 2004 08:10:54 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 15.0773 The Three Sons in Hamlet [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 07:13:29 -0800 Subject: 15.0773 The Three Sons in Hamlet Comment: RE: SHK 15.0773 The Three Sons in Hamlet Ed Taft writes, >No general would agree with Sean, even the most inept. Having sharked up >a band of ruffians, Fortinbras would be idiotic to attack all of >Denmark, including Elsinore. Yet that is exactly what Claudius seems to >fear, given the opening scene and its implications. Sean will recall >that in the final scene, Fortinbras takes over all of Denmark the first >opportunity he gets. Moreover, it's clear he doesn't think much of >Claudius. Your rather ad hominem remark hardly helps your case, which is becoming increasingly illogical. First, you say that Fortinbras must have been planning to attack all of Denmark for reasons of revenge, then you say that he must be idiotic to try with his army. So which is it? Are his goals limited to what he can achieve with a list of landless resolutes, or are his goals total, because he's planning revenge? In any case, none of this changes the fact that limiting a war-effort to a war-goal usually isn't always possible, as any competent strategist can tell you. Tsar Nicholas discovered something similar when he asked his generals to support Serbia, but not provoke Germany. To capture any part of Denmark, Fortinbras must be prepared to defeat Denmark itself. Hence, Denmark's war-effort. Finally, the fact that Fortinbras claims Denmark eventually hardly means that he was plotting to take it all along. Yrs, SKL. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Philip Tomposki <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 20:37:51 -0500 Subject: The Three Sons of Hamlet To Sean Lawrence comment "There is, therefore, no reason to think that Fortinbras's objective is greater than the capture of the territories lost by his father, or that this limited goal does not necessitate an attack on Denmark in general." Ed Taft replies: "No general would agree with Sean, even the most inept." Robert E. Lee, considered by few military historians to be inept, did exactly what Sean suggests - twice. In both his invasions of Union territory, his objective was to threaten Washington and force Lincoln to sue for peace. He came close to succeeding both times. Threatening a valuable target, even when it's not the ultimate objective, is a time-honored military strategy. Clausewitz advised that the purpose of war was to destroy the opponents will to resist. A serious threat to Elsinore could have accomplished exactly that. Philip Tomposki [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jack Heller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 30 Mar 2004 08:10:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: 15.0773 The Three Sons in Hamlet Comment: Re: SHK 15.0773 The Three Sons in Hamlet >Jack Heller suggests that: "...Fortinbras's strongest case is against >the Danish court itself, something Uncle Norway (reportedly) thinks he >has persuaded Fortinbras to forget about. I'm not convinced that we must >agree with that report, and the permission given to Fortinbras to >traverse Denmark on the route to Poland strikes me as politically >stupid. Among his other faults, Claudius is a bad politician." > >To suggest that Fortinbras and/or his uncle have planned a covert >invasion of Denmark wanders far from the mark. At least that is my >opinion and will remain so until someone can explain the logic of >Fortinbras marching his army through Denmark to fight a war in Poland, >and then returning battleworn and surely in need of resupply to attack >his actual target. Or are we also not to agree with the report: "Young >Fortinbras, [return] with conquest come from Poland"? After a while, by >not believing the text we could find sufficient conspiracy undercurrents >to have another play, perhaps we could call it "Fortinbras' Secret >Revenge". I made a few assertions on Hamlet that have provoked some skeptical responses. I'll answer this first, which fits the substance of some of the other replies. Jay Feldman argues that by not believing the text, I can essentially reshape it to another point. Well . . . yes. Or it could be said that I don't believe the supposed reports of the changes in Fortinbras's purposes, and I do believe the sounds of war Hamlet, Osric, and Horatio hear as Hamlet is dying. Those sounds are noted in Act 5, scene 2, lines 329-350. Now, I'll return the opportunity to reply: Show us the text indicating troops "returning battleworn and surely in need of resupply." Line 332 quoted above ends "To the ambassadors of England gives/ This warlike volley" (lines 333-334). Whatever one may say about Branagh's filming of Fortinbras's arrival, it has some textual support. Jack Heller Huntington College _______________________________________________________________ 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 15.0783 Tuesday, 30 March 2004 [1] From: Jay Feldman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 12:02:30 EST Subj: Re: SHK 15.0772 The Murder of Gonzago [2] From: D Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 15:00:39 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 15.0772 The Murder of Gonzago [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay Feldman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 12:02:30 EST Subject: 15.0772 The Murder of Gonzago Comment: Re: SHK 15.0772 The Murder of Gonzago Please forgive my prior post if it was confusing. The paragraph in question should have read [addition in CAPS]: I believe this is a case where the tail wags the dog. Hamlet does not make his declaration because of Claudius' response, rather THE ACTOR WHO PLAYS Claudius must make a significant reaction, 'upon the talk of the poisoning', because he knows what Hamlet is going to say. I see Hamlet's comment as a stage direction (working backward) that should be seconded by a strong affirmation from Horatio. Apologetically, Jay Feldman [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: D Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 29 Mar 2004 15:00:39 -0600 Subject: 15.0772 The Murder of Gonzago Comment: RE: SHK 15.0772 The Murder of Gonzago I'm always a trifle startled at people's inability to see the implications of their theorizing. Hamlet sets out to catch the conscience of the king -- that is, to prove to himself that the ghost's accusation can be trusted -- by re-enacting the murder (as the ghost related it) in front of the king and court. At the time when the "murderer" commits the crime and Hamlet begins to summarize the rest of the events (a further direct parallel), the king stops the play and storms off. The deduction that the one causes the other is so easy that some people apparently mistrust it. But why else would the king leave at just that point? In actors' terms, what possible motivation could he have except the obvious one? Imagining yourself the actor playing the part is often, I find, a good supplement to imagining yourself the character when you're trying to figure out what's going on. And it often simplifies things greatly 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.