The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0151 Friday, 7 March 2008
[1] From: Cheryl Newton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 29 Feb 2008 16:16:49 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 19.0136 Solid Flesh Once More
[2] From: Steve Roth <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 6 Mar 2008 09:03:22 -0800
Subj: Re: SHK 19.0131 Solid Flesh Once More
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Cheryl Newton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Friday, 29 Feb 2008 16:16:49 -0500
Subject: 19.0136 Solid Flesh Once More
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0136 Solid Flesh Once More
David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> writes,
[ . . . ] but since this thought apparently doesn't compute with anyone
on this list, I must tentatively conclude, with pleasant surprise, that
I am the only critic who has ever thought of it..
Almost, almost! I suggested that the word is 'solid,' and that the
closing is not 'to a dew' but 'to adieu' ( to farewell/death.) Another
Lady Scholar here suggested the same thing.
Cheryl
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Steve Roth <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 6 Mar 2008 09:03:22 -0800
Subject: 19.0131 Solid Flesh Once More
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0131 Solid Flesh Once More
What a stunningly good post. Thanks, Martin, for contributing to our
understand of the "dense network of Shakespeare's usage."
This emblematic debate reveals:
1. The either/or difficulty that an editor (for stage or [but especially
for] page) faces in having to select a single variant. (Something that a
reader/auditor/ponderer need not do.)
2. The often rather pointless either/or debates that (we) scholars
engage in.
3. The fact that Hamlet exists in innumerable fixed versions for stage
and page, but that its ultimate expression exists only in the mind of a
reader/auditor/ponderer capable of perceiving, (nearly?) simultaneously,
multiple and multivalent intertwined meanings.
4. The fact--happily now more widely accepted since Lukas Erne re-opened
the door for interpretations that allow for a reader rather than
auditors only--that reading, re-reading, researching, analyzing, and
pondering Shakespeare's plays reveals depths and complexities of meaning
unavailable to (even a multiple) auditor. (Which itself suggests that
Shakespeare had both auditors and readers in mind while composing.)
So:
Q: Is Hamlet's flesh sullied, sallied, or solid?
A: Yes.
But "and," not "or."
Special thanks to Martin for bringing the military meaning of
sally/sallied firmly into the field for this line. It adds a whole ream
of cross-correlations, echoing across the play.
See, for instance, the vector from this military connotation to Hamlet's
comment on Fortinbras' Polish adventure, and that passage's association
between military sallies and sullied flesh:
Two thousand soules, & twenty thousand duckets
Will not debate the question of this straw,
This is th'Imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breakes, and showes no cause without
Why the man dies.
Which echoes back to Hamlet's bit on how Denmark's "atchieuements,
though perform'd at height" are sullied by Claudius's "heauy headed
reueale east and west." A "dram of eale," "some viscious mole of nature
in" "particular men," sullies "all the noble substance" of a man, or of
a warlike state.
I would add associations with the word "sallet," as in seasoning. (With
some connotations with rotten meat, since seasonings were used to both
prevent and disguise same.)
cf Hamlet approvingly remembering the comment by his fellow auditor of
Dido ("whose judgement[s] in such matters cried in the top of mine"),
who was himself so approving of Dido and its playwright. The play, said
this worthy critic, was not sullied with condescensions to "the
general." It had "no sallets in the lines to make the matter savory."
(Could "sallets" also hint at military sallies, fights and bombast
played to the pit? Perhaps...)
Likewise (thank god!) Hamlet's highbrow co-critic found "no matter in
the phrase that might indite the author of affect[at]ion."
<g>
Steve
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