The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0381 Friday, 15 June 2007
From: Nicole Coonradt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 12 Jun 2007 00:37:46 +0000
Subject: 18.0372 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0372 Distinguishing Goneril from Regan
RE the Quart/Bonomi posts and the extent to which "just words" (Quart)
were enhanced by "plenty of action" (Bonomi): both comments make sense,
and it leads me to another issue of recent interest, especially
branching off Quart's comments on free speech (and the lack thereof for
Early Moderns). In contemplating what might have often been very
topical treatment of current events in Shakespeare's day, it has been
demonstrated that, as Bonomi noted, action could easily enhance the
playgoer's experience-- theater is, after all, *live,* and actors depend
heavily on audience reaction on many levels for their performances,
script or no. Theatre is interactive, not passive, and the whole of
it-- script, delivery, action, and audience *reaction*-matters immensely.
With this in mind, I note that I had the opportunity to attend a course
on Shakespeare in Oxford last summer and the attendees were treated one
afternoon to a snippet of a play that a seminarian, Martin Dodwell, had
written and directed at St. John's, Wonersh (he wrote and directed a
second one this spring). What he explored, in part, was the extent to
which action might be added to any production to communicate with a
given audience. Certainly something to be performed at court might
differ significantly from what one might do at an Inn, or for a private
patron with an even more select audience. We know that plays were
carefully censored by Tilney (Master of the Revels) and his well-known
ties to the Howards might mean that he was looking out for the interests
of those with whom he might sympathize. That is to say, some of his
advice for alterations or censorship might have been as much to spare
the playwrights trouble as get them into it.
At any rate, given that there was certainly "plenty of action," even a
play whose text had satisfied Tilney's watchful eye might easily gain
deeper or "other" meanings via added action *not* specified in the
script. To cross-reference a bit, at the "Upstart Crow" thread, a
member (Forbing) posted a comment about rivals ribbing each other-- ergo
Ben Jonson to Shakespeare-- which often happened textually, in an often
thinly-veiled manner (frequently referred to as the "Poets' War"). A
play performed at an Inn catering to an audience of students or lawyers
might easily gain added appeal by "pimping" those viewers,
good-naturedly, via actions rather than words. Some of the script might
actually have been ad-libbed as well, for all we know now, not having
any recordings, films, or transcripts of live performances to confirm or
deny this.
And, just for the record, while most Elizabethans were often
"illiterate" this should not be confused with our ideas of
"ignorance"-Stone's depiction of "uneducated yeomen" sitting on "rough
benches." Both Quart and Bonomi make a valid case for this. It was
probably a pretty savvy audience (politically) most nights.
A final comment. Quart noted quite saliently, "We have freedom of
speech. [Elizabethans] could be arrested for saying the wrong thing.
Lack of freedom fosters secret languages, codes, levels of meaning we
simply don't bother with because we can come right out and say what we
mean." There is current scholarship discussing this very
thing-dissidence in Early Modern art-called "Dissident Theory" (a
"neologic" methodology of value to examine any "text" created in times
of repression). We see this in the composition of William Byrd, the
recusant Catholic composer, a contemporary artist of Shakespeare's.
Among others, Byrd scholar David Skinner (currently at Cambridge) has
made the case for Byrd's brilliant use of "safe" texts (the Psalms, for
example), which he enhanced with the "action" of music, whereby even the
emphasis in the score on a specific part of speech could convey a coded
message to the audience . . . much the same way we might imagine the
action on the stage enhancing a censor-approved script with a forbidden
or dangerous topical message.
Cheers,
NM Coonradt
University of Denver
Denver, CO USA
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