May
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.1031 Tuesday, 31 May 2005 From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 May 2005 18:52:14 +0100 Subject: 16.1023 Shakespeare's Biblical References Comment: Re: SHK 16.1023 Shakespeare's Biblical References Bill Arnold wrote (amongst other self-glorifying nonsense - there's a fine piece of gibberish about the Septuagint): "I do not believe that the statement that Tyndale's was the basis for the KJV is accurate. Interested readers will find my book covers all this." And disinterested readers will seek out the introductions by David Daniell (a fine Shakespearean, as it happens) to his modern-spelling editions of "Tyndale's New Testament [1534]" (Yale University Press, 1989) and "Tyndale's Old Testament" (Yale University Press, 1992). Also the preface to the British Library original spelling edition (2000) of Tyndale's 1526 New Testament (the burnt one). 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 16.1030 Tuesday, 31 May 2005 [1] From: Peter Farey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 May 2005 05:27:19 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare [2] From: Elliott Stone <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 May 2005 17:33:14 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare [3] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 May 2005 13:24:26 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter Farey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 May 2005 05:27:19 +0100 Subject: 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare Comment: Re: SHK 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare There are various ways in which names were hidden within a meaningful text at that time. For example, the words "Sir Francis Walsingham" appear on his tomb as an acrostic of the first letters of the epitaph, and the name "Margaret Ratcliffe" is hidden in a similar way in Ben Jonson's poem to the lady in question. In his "Execration Upon Vulcan", Jonson also mentions telestichs (using the last letter of each line), but I know of no use of the progressive acro-stic (first letter of first line, second letter of second line etc.) or similarly complex methods as early as this. The Friedmans (p.95) give an example of a 1499 acrostic which uses the first letter of each section, however, giving (in Latin) the message "Brother Francis Collonna passionately loves Polia". Anagrammatizing names was certainly popular in those days. 'James Stuart' = 'a just master' is one that comes to mind, and I found a rather naughty one in the Anthony Bacon papers. Anthony's secretary, Jaques Petit, was posing as the valet of a Frenchman called M. le Doux who was working as a tutor at a stately home in Rutland, and le Doux had been having an affair with a defrocked nun also employed there. In a letter to Anthony (LPL MS.654 f.69), Petit thinks that she would be after him too if he gave her half a chance. Her name was IDE DU WAULT, and (using the W as two Vs) he suspects that she wants DU VI DU VALET ('vit' or 'vi' apparently being an old French word for the male organ)! Another approach was that of the rebus, of which John Aubrey gives a pretty dreadful example. It seems his grandmother used to have a rhyme about Sir Walter Raleigh ('raw'+'lie'): "The enemy to the stomach and the word of disgrace / Is the name of the gentleman with a bold face". The pictorial rebus, such as the one created for the name Abel Drugger in Jonson's "The Alchemist" is in a slightly different category. Several things can be observed about the text-based examples, though. First, where the actual letters of the name are used, the spelling is always one which would have been known (albeit just one of several ways) at the time. Second, there is a fairly simple key or clue which, if followed, leads to the solution. Third, the name is in a context which says something, particularly about the person named. This can be either in the overt meaning or in the hidden one, but it is there somewhere. This means that random findings of just 'will', 'sha-c sp-y', 'ever', 'becaaan, 'kit' etc. are only ever going to be just that, random. But this does NOT mean that a message meeting those conditions might not be out there somewhere (in fact I believe I know of one), and I think it would be a pity for people to stop looking just because most of the suggestions made so far have been far from adequate. Peter FareyThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/index.htm [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Elliott Stone <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 28 May 2005 17:33:14 -0400 Subject: 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare Comment: Re: SHK 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare People do not have to pursue secret messages in the typography of the Sonnets. It would be much more helpful and fruitful to look at the plain language of the dedications to Shakespeare's work. I believe that Thomas Thorpe wrote the Dedications to Lucrece, Venus and Adonis, and the Elegy by W.S. Thorpe certainly had good reasons and most importantly financial reasons to be ironic and witty. It might be very instructive to read Professor Foster's Book's argument entitled "The Case For William Shakespeare"pp80 and change it to read "The Case For Thomas Thorpe". Certainly the Dedication to The Elegy By W.S., as well as the truly awful poem itself, were meant to be IRONIC. It is a SATIRE. The poem was published to be sold for English pence. The idea that the author (Strachey, Ford and certainly not Shakespeare) paid for the publication out of his own pocket is not credible. The only reason for its publication was to make money out of an incredible bit of news that Thorpe and his friends believed could be exploited. William Peter after a day of drunken carousing and while riding on horseback was murdered. He was stabbed by a short sword through the back of the head by Edward Drew who later escaped from custody. (I will not vouch for the suggestion that Drew ran off to Virginia to help found America!) These dedications are not secret messages. They are just encrusted with interpretations from people who can not get a joke Best, Elliott H. Stone [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 May 2005 13:24:26 -0400 Subject: 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare Comment: Re: SHK 16.1024 The Genius of Shakespeare Basch's cryptograms remind me of the cyphers which Nashe (he of the beautiful mind) fancied he saw in newspaper headlines. And Nashe admits to paranoid schizophrenia. _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1029 Tuesday, 31 May 2005 From: D Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 May 2005 11:50:10 -0500 Subject: About Hamlet Edmund Taft writes, "Erasmus's views on kingship seem to me to have had a profound effect." I had already gathered that, but I wished to see some evidence. "Elizabeth and James . . . practiced a policy of tending to their own gardens." If the discussion is of Elizabeth and James, as opposed to Renaissance monarchs generally, then that is a different issue. I was thinking of the latter, as best I could summon my limited knowledge of rulers in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc., as well as England and Scotland. We could go into the question of whether England's policy toward Ireland displays the difference between bad Medieval and good Renaissance attitudes, and whether the pacific policies of the two monarchs mentioned had more to do with comparative national weakness, than superior morality, but frankly I haven't the energy for it. Likewise: "As for friendship, it's hard to imagine that anyone in the middle ages would or could write "On Friendship," as Michel de Montaigne did." I don't see this as evidence that would justify the broad generalization about Medieval attitudes toward friendship. My view is influenced by items like the following, a list (quoted) of suggested topics for the 38th International Congress on Medieval Studies, 8-11 May 2003, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan: "Medieval Friendship" * idealized same-sex friendship * sworn brotherhood (e.g., Amis and Amiloun) * chivalric friendship (comradeship in arms) * monastic friendship and/or friendship with God * marital friendship * friendship and sexuality * queer friendship * friendship and courtliness * friendship and patronage * the politics of friendship * the influence of classical ideals of friendship (e.g., from Aristotle, Cicero) in the Middle Ages I could, of course, be wrong, but my impression is that friendship was of extreme importance in the Middle Ages. I would hazard a guess that Montaigne, Spenser and Shakespeare were more likely trying to maintain an admired tradition what was, perhaps, getting lost than starting something wholly new. Does anyone out there know of some recent scholarship on this subject (that is, the attitude toward friendship in the Middle Ages) that I could consult? 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 16.1028 Tuesday, 31 May 2005 From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 29 May 2005 21:54:14 +0000 Subject: Antony and Cleopatra's Worm Comment: SHK 16.0994 Antony and Cleopatra's Worm Jack Heller writes, "Here, I think, the bawdiness is fully intended." Heller and Bevington are exactly right. To reiterate: in Shakespeare (as Freud would be the first to admit), a cigar/worm is never just a cigar/worm. To the London audience of the day, many of them frequenting the neighborhood stews and pubs, the phallic association of worm/aspic with coition would be immediate and dominant. Death and orgasm were intimately linked to this lusty lot, not to be denied their cakes and ale despite the thunderings of their preachers. As Bevington notes, the scene is suffused with "erotic violence." Cleopatra will become a morsel not for the monarch Caesar but for the emperor worm, the organ of both life and death. Regards, Joe Egert _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.1027 Tuesday, 31 May 2005 From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 30 May 2005 14:46:15 +0100 Subject: 16.1018 First Falstaff [Was Gambon as Falstaff] Comment: Re: SHK 16.1018 First Falstaff [Was Gambon as Falstaff] Holger Schott Syme wrote, >I'm not absolutely sold on the identification >of the Falstaff in the _Wits_ frontispiece as >Lowin (just as I don't necessarily believe that >Tamburlaine illustration depicts Alleyn), though >it's not implausible. You're right to be sceptical. In Theatre Notebook 47 (1993) pages 122-40 John Astington demolished the authority for the former and in Shakespeare Quarterly 44 (1993) pages 73-86 he did the same for the latter. Regards Gabriel Egan _______________________________________________________________ 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.