December
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2026 Thursday, 8 December 2005 From: Peter Bridgman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 19:56:57 -0000 Subject: 16.2015 Celtic or English Folklore Purgatory Comment: Re: SHK 16.2015 Celtic or English Folklore Purgatory Bill Arnold writes ... >Thanks to Peter Bridgman, perhaps the premise of Shakespeare's >Hamlet might be brought into a more proper focus ... Bill flatters me unnecessarily. The Hamlet-St. Patrick's Purgatory connection has been written about by lots of people, notably Stephen Greenblatt who devotes much of his book 'Hamlet in Purgatory' to the subject. Peter Bridgman _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.2025 Thursday, 8 December 2005 [1] From: Jim Blackie <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 08:37:03 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique [2] From: L. Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 11:33:12 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique [3] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 07 Dec 2005 15:00:57 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique [4] From: Scot Zarela <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 14:09:10 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique [5] From: Alan Pierpoint <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 23:41:07 EST Subj: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jim Blackie <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 08:37:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: 16.2014 Hic et ubique Comment: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique Sarah Cohen asked about a question raised by Frank Whigham concerning Hamlet moving around the stage when he swears them to silence: is he moving in fear or wariness. She points to "Hic et ubique? Then we'll change our ground" Initially Hamlet is trying to elude his partners/friends in order to follow the ghost who/which seems to want a private word with his/its son. - That is very different from the instances in which Hamlet is swearing his friends to silence. The "Hic et ubique?" line asks/tells us the ghost is here and everywhere, therefore inescapable. Why move someplace else then? I think it is neither fear or wariness or even searching, but rather his frantic excitement over the moment, his adrenaline high, he moves about nervously. He shows no fear of the ghost hearing (of course) or of the spirit itself. Alternately- as he was (to me) trying to instill fear of the ghost in Marcellus, this was an attempt to demonstrate the inability of a human to escape the ghost should it need to "do something" to the person breaking his word. - In fact, I think that is most probably the more correct interpretation. Jim Blackie [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: L. Swilley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 11:33:12 -0600 Subject: 16.2014 Hic et ubique Comment: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique Might it be that Hamlet understands that the Ghost wants to secure secrecy "here and everywhere" and that the moving about would make that point - and tend to satisfy the Ghost on it? L. Swilley [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 07 Dec 2005 15:00:57 -0500 Subject: 16.2014 Hic et ubique Comment: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique >where can I find Jenkins and those subtle and apt LNs? Jenkins was the editor of Arden2 "Hamlet." I think it is still in print. If you can't get it at www.bardcentral.com, you can get it at Amazon. "LNs" is nothing more mysterious than "long notes" which Jenkins put at the end of the book, rather than the margins. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scot Zarela <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 14:09:10 -0800 Subject: 16.2014 Hic et ubique Comment: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique Sarah Cohen asks: "Do most of the members of this list think Hamlet is moving away from the ghost? If so, why? ... I have always thought that Hamlet is moving towards the ghost during the swearing business. After all, he has spent the entire scene chasing it. ... If Hamlet's fear and wariness overpowers his need to search for his noble father in the dust (or the cellarage), when does this happen, and why? Have list members seen a production of Hamlet where the prince was clearly moving away from the ghost's voice, rather than following it? Have any of you played Hamlet that way? Did it work?" I've seen Hamlet move away from the Ghost's voice, never towards it. Occasionally this part of the scene is cut. (I think Gielgud, when he directed the Richard Burton Hamlet, cut the business-you could check this in Richard L. Sterne's published journal of the production: as I recall, the reason for the cut was that the director and star agreed this particular admixture of comic business into a generally somber scene never quite worked. In Gielgud's production, the Ghost was represented as an offstage-mic'd-voice, and an unfocused light. I can certainly see how any funny business would be a wrench there.) When I have seen the Old Mole scene acted, the motivation for Hamlet's move away hasn't always been "fear and wariness": what's worked best for me has been an excess of high spirits, which reads ambiguously as both an attractive side of Hamlet's personality, and (especially circa 1600) a sign of incipient madness ... real or pretended. Could he run towards the voice instead of away from it? Perhaps, but there's a sense of a game of tag here, with its excited reversal: the Ghost eluded him at first, so now he runs from it. (Another game of tag comes later, in "Hide fox and all after".) -- Scot [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Alan Pierpoint <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 23:41:07 EST Subject: 16.2014 Hic et ubique Comment: Re: SHK 16.2014 Hic et ubique Shakespeare is playing this part of the scene for comedy; none of Hamlet's words, from the entrance of Horatio and Marcellus to the last "swear," suggest a wish to avoid the ghost. Therefore, towards. -Alan Pierpoint _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.2024 Thursday, 8 December 2005 From: Stuart Manger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 08 Dec 2005 00:44:04 +0000 Subject: 16.2019 Claudius and Realpolitik Comment: Re: SHK 16.2019 Claudius and Realpolitik Not sure I entirely agree with Abigail Quart: Machiavellian 'realpolitik'? Princes must rule, and I wonder if the lesson of so many Renaissance plays is that 'ruling' nearly always involves using state muscle, not asking too many awkward questions, not challenging the Prince too claustrophobically in his dealings? The safety of the state is important such that individuals within it might feel they can trust the Prince's governance. The problem comes in the grey areas when protecting the state oversteps moral or international law perhaps? Is that not what Claudius has done? Have we not been here before? Are we not indeed there now as Ms Rice globetrots to justify rendering extraordinarily [or not as the case may be]? By all accounts, Claudius seems a rather effective ruler - and that effectiveness may well be manifest in some pretty unpleasant dealings, but would I feel safer with Claudius ruling me than a man who thinks too precisely upon the event? If H would have proved royally, does that mean he would have been less decisive than Claudius but more moral? Or more the man who, as Ms Quart suggests, has had a pretty bloody hand in a number of extra-judicial killings? Tricky stuff. _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.2023 Thursday, 8 December 2005 From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 7 Dec 2005 17:58:19 -0500 Subject: Former Soldier Cites H5 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/11/13/all_in_the_family?mode=PF All in the Family Returning soldiers and their spouses, parents, and children are the backbone of the antiwar movement spreading today in the United States. And they're speaking louder than ever. By Nan Levinson | November 13, 2005 Much as Iraq vets may have appreciated the hate-the-war-love-the-warrior stance of this new antiwar movement, now that they have returned to civilian life, some are eager to speak for themselves. At 25, Joseph Turcotte of Derry, New Hampshire, is that state's youngest member of Veterans for Peace and also one of a handful of IVAW members in New England. . . . Turcotte is a reader - the bedroom of his tiny apartment is dominated by a bursting bookcase - and his reading had made him skeptical about the need for war, he says. Still, he echoes other soldiers as he explains, "When you're out there, the only thing relevant is staying alive and making sure everyone comes home." Turcotte has thought hard about what he and his fellow soldiers do. "`Every subject's duty is the King's, but every subject's soul is his own,' " he quotes from Henry V. "I don't blame the individual soldiers. As far as they can't control where they are, I think that their souls are safe. But for the men who sent them, I think they're finding out that there's going to be hell to pay for it." Courtesy of Scott Newstock. _______________________________________________________________ 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 16.2022 Thursday, 8 December 2005 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, December 08, 2005 Subject: Reminder On Tuesday (SHK 16.2009), I announced that I was undertaking an experiment. Tomorrow (Friday, December 9, 2005), I will end these threads: "Gertrude-Ophelia"; "Lions and Tigers and Wagers...oh my..."; "Shadowplay"; and "Living Characters." Today's digests of the four topics will be further identifies with Penultimate in the Subject line. Tomorrow's, with Closed. Anyone who is compelled to comment should begin a new thread with a new Subject line that identifies as precisely as possible the aspect of the discussion that you would like to continue. Yesterday, I announced another option that I endorse wholeheartedly. On his own, Tom Krause set up a Yahoo group to discuss the theories he set forth in his paper "A Picture in Little Is Worth a Thousand Words: Debasement in Hamlet and Measure for Measure." I encourage other SHAKSPER members to follow his lead and example. This might be done individually or in groups. For example, over the years, plays such as <I>Hamlet</I> or characters such as Shylock have initiated extensive and impassioned exchanges. Those who have a fervent interest in a particular play, character, theory, or interpretative method after setting up specific-purpose groups would be able to debate unencumbered by my intrusions. When such a group exists, members could refer others to the group rather than repeating their arguments on SHAKSPER. I will do all I can to assist in the establishing of such groups. Hardy _______________________________________________________________ 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.