January
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0034 Wednesday, 17 January 2008 From: Sylvia Morris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 18 Jan 2008 21:32:57 -0000 Subject: Reopening of Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive I am pleased to announce that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's Library and Archive service in Stratford-upon-Avon has reopened. The SBT holds wide-ranging collections of research material, and over the past few months the Shakespeare and Local collections have merged into a single reading room with joint staffing, which will strengthen the Trust's position as both the most important holder of Shakespeare material in the UK and a major resource for the history of Stratford and south Warwickshire in their local and national contexts. The Shakespeare Collections of the SBT and RSC were awarded Designated status in 2005, recognising their national and international importance. This combined service is now the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive. Part of the SBT's reorganised Learning Department, it is reached via the doors next to the visitors' entrance to Shakespeare's Birthplace. As part of the aim of improving access to the Royal Shakespeare Company's archives, all the RSC Theatre Records cuttings volumes are on open shelves, and up to date production images of RSC shows are available through four workstations as part of the joint RSC/SBT image management system. Video and DVD viewing spaces are included. 2500 extra volumes of Shakespeare criticism and indexes to the extensive collections of Shakespeare-related pictures and playbills are publicly available for the first time. Access to electronic resources such as the World Shakespeare Bibliography has also been widened. Opening hours are 10-5 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10-7 on Wednesday, and 9.30-12.30 on Saturdays. Booking in advance is essential for videos and is advised for other materials. For more information see www.shakespeare.org.uk. We look forward to welcoming readers old and new. There is no charge to join and all you have to do is bring some ID such as student card, passport or driving licence. Sylvia Morris Head of Shakespeare Collections Shakespeare Birthplace Trust _______________________________________________________________ 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 19.0033 Thursday, 17 January 2008 [1] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 13:39:18 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0028 Soliloquies - Truth or Lie...or Overheard [2] From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 13:51:30 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0028 Soliloquies - Truth or Lie...or Overheard [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 13:39:18 -0500 Subject: 19.0028 Soliloquies - Truth or Lie...or Overheard Comment: Re: SHK 19.0028 Soliloquies - Truth or Lie...or Overheard Tony Burton is surely correct when he says that the text offers "a menu of performable juicy choices," but to distinguish that from "ambiguity and confusion" invites the question of whether there is a difference between those two formulations beyond the obvious rhetorical one -- "juicy choices," good; "ambiguity and confusion," bad. Putting the semantic quibble to the side, Tony has offered one possible choice, depending on Hamlet's unexpressed deduction from all the circumstances that he is being overheard. Scott Shepherd offers another alternative, down to the manner in which the returned gifts are wrapped. Both, I suppose, can be presented on stage with varying degrees of cogency; but as I think that Tony, at least, will acknowledge, neither is compelled by the text. In fairness, I do not claim that my interpretation is absolutely compulsory either or, indeed, that it is the only plausible answer. My more modest claim is that it is the best answer that has yet been advanced. It has the advantage of being supported by two short consecutive speeches ("For to the noble mind ..." and "Ha ha! Are you honest?") which the actors can easily perform in a fashion which instantaneously suggests that Ophelia was coached and Hamlet recognizes that. Tony's interpretation, on the other hand, requires the audience to recall a galaxy of details and reach the conclusion that Hamlet also has reached the same deduction without the benefit of a speech saying so. Scott's interpretation is even worse in that it requires the director to employ stage business and props that are nowhere hinted at in the text. The director may choose to do that; but that is his choice, not Shakespeare's. Don Bloom is also on to something when he suggests that interpretations may be informed by the background and cultural biases of the critic, and he cites Merchant of Venice as the obvious example. In this case, however, diligent self analysis has failed to identify anything in my background which can be said to have influenced my solution, except a native tendency towards logic and reason, and professional experience in construing words and drawing conclusions from the statements and actions of others. [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 13:51:30 -0500 Subject: 19.0028 Soliloquies - Truth or Lie...or Overheard Comment: Re: SHK 19.0028 Soliloquies - Truth or Lie...or Overheard I sympathize with Don Bloom's impatience, even if it is expressed rather ad hominem. But I do think the topic is interesting and textually arguable, and worth a bit of a fight because the standard interpolation has become so entrenched and so radically alters the meanings of the scene. _______________________________________________________________ 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 19.0032 Thursday, 17 January 2008 [1] From: Matthew Henerson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 07:19:08 -0800 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? [2] From: Martin Mueller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 09:35:50 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? [3] From: Katy Stavreva <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 10:13:13 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? [4] From: Jennifer Pierce <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 13:04:38 -0500 Subj: RE: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? [5] From: Joe Wagner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 21:58:51 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? [6] From: Anne Cuneo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 07:27:21 +0100 Subj: SHK 19008 Richard III novel [7] From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 09:56:47 +0000 Subj: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? [8] From: Kelly Rivers <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 06:46:42 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Matthew Henerson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 07:19:08 -0800 Subject: 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Comment: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? This is a bit off-kilter, but *Richard III *has always put me in mind of *Vanity Fair.* Social ambitions rather than political, but an equally ruthless, and correspondingly disadvantaged protagonist, and God knows it is a weighty brute. Matt Henerson [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martin Mueller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 09:35:50 -0600 Subject: 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Comment: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? There is always Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. Not exactly a "weighty" or "classic" novel, but a novel that has its own take on ambition and the distortions to which it leads. MM [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Katy Stavreva <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 10:13:13 -0600 Subject: 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Comment: RE: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? How about Alexander Dumas' _La Reigne Margot_? It's bursting at the seams with characters driven by political ambition. And it teaches wonderfully! Katy Stavreva [4]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jennifer Pierce <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 13:04:38 -0500 Subject: 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Comment: RE: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Machiavelli's _The Prince_ seems about right. Jennifer Pierce [5]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joe Wagner <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 21:58:51 -0500 Subject: 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Comment: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? You might try "The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III" by Sharon Kay Penman--it's a compelling read that offers a very different spin on Richard. Joe Wagner Kent State University (Emeritus) [6]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anne Cuneo <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 07:27:21 +0100 Subject: Richard III novel Comment: SHK 19008 Richard III novel I would recommend anyone of the Balzac novels, from "Le Pere Goriot" on. And Stendhal's "La chartreuse de Parme". Sorry for not knowing the English titles, but you will no doubt be familiar with them. Reading Balzac made me understand what makes ambitious (and sometimes unscrupulous) politicians tick. There is of course "All the President's Men", which focuses on the ambitious politician's downfall, but perhaps that does not rate as a classical novel... Friendly greetings, Anne Cuneo [7]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 09:56:47 +0000 Subject: 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Comment: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? My immediate and somewhat puzzled response is that I can think of an extraordinary number of plays, as early as *Antigone*, as late as David Hare's *Stuff Happens,* that would fit, but very few major novels. (No doubt I'm forgetting something obvious.) If the link were tyranny rather than ambition, I would suggest *Emma* or *Mansfield Park.* Both books are centrally concerned with misrule and right rule. Frank Churchill and Henry Crawford-actors, manipulators, seducers, petty tyrants-both bear significant resemblances to Richard but specifically lack the political ambition that might go with their rank. Of course, if this is *the *Ken Adelman, he might have a particularly interesting perspective on *Stuff Happens.* Regards, Arthur Lindley [8]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kelly Rivers <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 06:46:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: 19.0018 Richard III Novel? Comment: Re: SHK 19.0018 Richard III Novel? What about Machiavelli's _The Prince_? It's not really a novel, but it covers political discourse in such a way that it would inform any reading of RII. Kelly Rivers _______________________________________________________________ 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 19.0031 Thursday, 17 January 2008 [1] From: Jeremy Fiebig <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 09:10:42 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain [2] From: Steve Sohmer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 14:57:40 EST Subj: Re: SHK 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain [3] From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 09:00:54 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jeremy Fiebig <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 09:10:42 -0600 Subject: 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain Comment: RE: SHK 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain I recently employed the doubling of the Captain and Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night at my college. I wonder if the "joke" for Globe patrons might have been the doubling itself: the captain cannot come because the actor playing him is preoccupied with playing Malvolio. [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Sohmer <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 14:57:40 EST Subject: 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain Comment: Re: SHK 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain Dear Friends, St. Paul wrote to the Illyrians twice and visited them three times ... because the idolatrous Corinthians were having difficulty adapting to his brand of Christianity. Let me enumerate some of the problems Paul addressed. Apparently, these were still rampant in Shakespeare's Illyria. There were divisions and factionalism between households (1 Cor 1:11)-and within households. Stewards were on the verge of becoming unfaithful (4:1-2). Servants were seized with ambition (7:20) and bridling at their low station (7:21). There was fornication (5:1)-and raillery and drunkenness (10:21, 11:21). Unmarried Corinthian women were refusing to marry (8:28ff). The men had become haughty; to use Paul's phrase, "puffed up" (4:18)-that's Malvolio's condition-as Fabian observes, "see how imagination blows him" (2.5.40-1). Some Corinthians were speaking in strange and undecipherable tongues (14)-as do Feste, Toby, and Andrew. Caritas was in decline, and the collecting of alms had lapsed (16). Paul also reprimanded the Illyrians for bringing lawsuits against each other in pagan courts (6:1-6). Doesn't this explain Shakespeare's sudden and inexplicable allusion to Malvolio's lawsuit against Viola's loyal captain? Hope this helps, Steve [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 17 Jan 2008 09:00:54 -0600 Subject: 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain Comment: RE: SHK 19.0019 Malvolio and the Captain Cary Barney writes: >I recently directed "Twelfth Night" for my university and we grappled >with the mysterious fifth act revelation that the Captain is being held >under arrest at Malvolio's instigation. Rather than have it come out of >the blue, we took the liberty of adding a dumb show in which the Captain >tries on Viola's "women's weeds" out of curiosity and Malvolio has him >arrested for cross dressing in public. Dubious, but it worked, at least >in the context of our production. I'm wondering if anyone knows of other >productions which have addressed this loose end in any way. I certainly hope not, at least if this is exemplary. I can find no authority for this in the slightest. Why should Malvolio care what a sea captain does in his spare time? How would he find out? He has no authority outside the countess's household and less there than he thinks. Although he has some views in common with Angelo, he lacks the means to enforce them on much of anybody. Second, there is no suggestion that cross-dressing is a crime in Illyria. Viola never says that she's in peril of arrest for what she's up to. Third, this all smacks of voyeurism and a desire to be up to date. "We're going to show male cross-dressing, te-hee." Granted, the line is a problem, but it is far more likely that a man would be arrested for debt, especially if he fell afoul of usurious loan-sharks, of whom it is easy to imagine Malvolio being one. However, it is not very important and I don't think that anybody really cares what the issue might have been between the captain and Malvolio. I hate to be so harsh, but students are impressionable. Some of them might think this idea had something to do with Shakespeare's play. 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 19.0030 Thursday, 17 January 2008 From: Lene Petersen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 16 Jan 2008 17:22:14 +0100 (GMT+01:00) Subject: Call for papers: Esse-9 Conference, Seminar 20: Shakespeare and Discourse Stylistics ESSE 9 conference - Aarhus, Denmark, 22-26 August 2008: Seminar 20: Shakespeare and Discourse Stylistics. The next ESSE conference will be held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, from 22 to 26 August 2008. We invite papers for seminar 20 on 'Shakespeare and Discourse Stylistics' Panel Abstract: From copia to stylistic reticence, Shakespeare's playtexts map out the extreme limits and impasse of verbal communication. The present seminar aims at assessing and highlighting the discourse strategies and structures at stake in conversational exchange and interaction in the very process of capturing the world of human understanding and relationships. Such a process involves the difficulty, sometimes the impossibility, and the exhilaration of mediating that world through language. Shakespeare's playtexts should be envisaged as being rooted in a cultural and rhetorical context in which meaning (and the difficulties of conveying meaning) is a collaborative construction, involving author, text, culture, and reader. Papers are welcome on the range of Shakespeare's negotiations with the problematics of the production of meaning. Areas of exploration include textual stylistics, semantics, pragmatics, and semiotics. Contact details for Panel 20: Dr. Mireille Ravassat (University of Valenciennes, France) E-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Dr. Lene Petersen (University of the West of England, Bristol, UK) E-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Those wishing to participate in seminar are invited to submit 200-word abstracts of their proposed papers directly to both convenors of the seminar in question before 1 March 2008. The convenors will let the proponents know whether their proposals have been accepted no later than 21 March 2008. For more details, see the conference website: http://www.esse2008.dk/cfp_seminars.html There is a general conference website at http://www.esse2008.dk/ _______________________________________________________________ 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.