The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0539 Wednesday, 10 September 2008
From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 8 Sep 2008 13:49:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 19.0531 Aaron Manson
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0531 Aaron Manson
Felix de Villiers writes:
>I must thank Sam Small for reminding me in which play
>that monstrous Aaron comes up, as I think about him quite a
>lot. He is the one character In Shakespeare that is defiant in
>his evil doings until the bitter end, like Don Giovanni who
>goes on unrepentant until he is swallowed by the flames of hell.
But Felix,
Doesn't Aaron's unrepentant company include
--Antonio (TEMP)
--Claudius and Ghost (HAM)
--Cloten and Iachimo (CYMB)
--Don John (ADO)
--Goneril & Regan (LEAR)
--Iago (OTH)
--Macbeth (MAC)
--Parolles (AW)
--Richard III (H6; R3)
--Tarquin (LUCR)
--Tybalt (R&J)
--Volumnia (COR) ?
>So Aaron is a key figure in Shakespeare. There is so much violence
>and cruelty around him that he is, in a way, its logical conclusion. Both
>Aaron and and Charles Manson where the products of the world they
>lived in, the difference being that the one lives in fantasy and the other
>lived in reality. I would not like to encounter a real Charles Manson and
>if I did I would call the police. Yet slamming and punishing them and
>being morally indignant about monsters is not enough : The real ones
>get loads of fan mail in prison. We have to understand the social
>background that breeds such creatures.
Others (Shakespeare himself?) might argue that heart-hardening Original Sin,
Nature's thing of darkness within, sows such breeding grounds. And that undue
overemphasis on man as solely a social creature undermines personal
responsibility, leading to ever more Mansons. No?
Joe Egert
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