May
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0272 Sunday, 31 May 2009 From: Gloria Betcher <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 30 May 2009 15:33:12 -0500 (CDT) Subject: MRDS Announces the NEW Barbara D. Palmer Award ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE BARBARA D. PALMER AWARD FOR THE BEST NEW ESSAY IN EARLY DRAMA ARCHIVES RESEARCH The Executive Committee of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS) has established an annual Barbara D. Palmer Award to honour our friend and colleague Barbara Palmer, retired Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington, and Scholar-in-Residence, Mary Baldwin College, MLitt/MFA Program. Prof. Palmer is the author of _The Early Art of the West Riding of Yorkshire_ in the EDAM series (1990) and is currently editing the Records of Early English Drama collections for Yorkshire West Riding and Derbyshire. She has written a series of influential articles on medieval and Renaissance drama; one of her most recent, 'Early Modern Mobility: Players, Payments, and Patrons', _Shakespeare Quarterly_ 56.3 (2005), 259-305, won MRDS's Martin Stevens Award for the Best New Essay in Early Drama Studies in 2006. Her research on the unique manuscript of the Towneley plays and their associated documents ('Recycling "The Wakefield Cycle": The Records', _Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama_ 61 [2002], 88-130) has changed forever the way we view that collection of plays. Barbara has been an outstanding contributor to Early Drama studies as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and administrator. She brings meticulous standards to her research and astute intelligence and generous commitment to any organization she belongs to. She played a foundational role in the early years of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society and continues to participate actively and annually in its sponsored sessions at Kalamazoo. At REED she has been instrumental in reactivating the Executive Board and has served as its Secretary since 2002. Previously she selflessly spent weeks of detailed preparation as the applicant for several major NEH grants for REED's broader purposes and for the collections of other editors. She continues to contribute to and delight in original practice productions mounted by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theatre, Staunton, VA, and by Poculi Ludique Societas at the University of Toronto. To honour Prof. Palmer's deep commitment to archival research and its power to transform interpretation of early modern drama in its historical context, the Executive Committee of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society has established a prize for the best new essay in early drama studies based on original research using published or unpublished records: The Barbara D. Palmer Award for the Best New Essay in Early Drama Archives Research. HOW TO DONATE TO THE PALMER AWARD FUND We are currently accepting pledges and donations to the Palmer Award Fund. If you would like to recognize achievement in early drama archives research by sending a tax-deductible donation to the fund, please visit the MRDS website <mrds.eserver.org>, where you will find a downloadable pledge form at <http://mrds.eserver.org/awards/palmer-award-pledge-donation-form.pdf/view>. Questions regarding the Barbara D. Palmer Award Fund may be directed to Prof. Alexandra Johnston, Records of Early English Drama <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >. _______________________________________________________________ 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 20.0271 Wednesday, 27 May 2009 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Subject: Closing One Door, and Opening . . . ? Dear SHAKSPEReans, On Monday, May 25, I cleaned out my office at Bowie State University; on June 1, 2009, my retirement after thirty-two years is official. I, however, have a doctor who believes that I should teach a course of two so that I can stay on a regular schedule and so that I can have a live audience. These are only two of the many reasons he believes I should continue to share what I have gained from my more than forty years of teaching in higher education. In addition to my teaching, I am an active scholar with various publications in subjects ranging from Shakespeare on television to the editing of electronic texts; I am co-editor, with Ian Lancashire, of _Shakes-peares Sonnets and Louers Complaint, 1609_ and editor of an electronic edition of _Venus and Adonis_ and _Lucrece_, part of the edition of Shakespeare's _Poems_ I am preparing for the Internet Shakespeare Editions. I was a founding member of SHAKSPER: The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference, one of the Internet's oldest and most highly respected academic listservs. I have edited SHAKSPER since 1992; for my work with it and my other scholarly activities, I was awarded the University System of Maryland's Board of Regents Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 1999. If anyone knows of adjunct teaching opportunities in the Baltimore, Annapolis, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia area, please let me know at my private e-mail address --This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . I am available to teach both undergraduate and graduate courses in the following areas: Shakespeare (especially Shakespeare in performance in the theater and on film and television), British Literature, drama, and research methods and humanities computing and others. I will gladly supply my CV, references, and previous syllabi upon request. Hardy M. Cook, Ph.D. Retired Professor of English Editor of SHAKSPER Independent Scholar _______________________________________________________________ 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 20.0270 Wednesday, 27 May 2009 [1] From: Louis W. Thompson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 23:19:45 -0700 Subj: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? [2] From: Jess Winfield <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 12:56:10 -0700 Subj: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? [3] From: Stanley Wells <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 22 May 2009 15:17:01 +0100 Subj: RE: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Louis W. Thompson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 23:19:45 -0700 Subject: 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? Comment: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? On May 8, 2009 I posted the question: "Does anybody on the list believe the new portrait is Shakespeare - wholeheartedly and without reservations?" On May 18, 2009, Hardy wrote: "On the surface this question would appear to be an innocent one, but now I am beginning to regret that I posted it." The problem: the introduction of "belief" into what Hardy hopes will be a responsible academic discussion. Hardy quoted the OED on the word "believe" and focused on that sense of the word that is "faith" -- an acceptance of something for which there is no proof. "Looking at these definitions," Hardy wrote, "I have begun to wonder if I should have permitted a question of faith in the first place, but I did and will try to see if scholarly exchange is still possible." When I posted the question, I too was hoping for a scholarly exchange. I hoped to find someone outside the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust who had come to accept the Cobbe portrait as Shakespeare - someone who had scholarly reasons for his beliefs and who could explain them in precise language. No one of the sort has appeared. I received several off-list responses to my question from persons who -- for one reason or another -- didn't believe the sitter was Shakespeare. On list, Lynn Brenner dismissed the Cobbe with a couple of sentences: "Given the paucity of evidence, one must be an ardent wishful thinker to believe it 'wholeheartedly and without reservations.' (And as you can probably guess, my own view is Bah, humbug.)" Stanley Wells sternly replied: "Lyn Brenner's offensively dismissive comment might be justified if she gave any sign of having considered the evidence that has been adduced." Wells went on to refer readers to the "Shakespeare Found" section of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust website and also to the new book, Shakespeare Found! A Life Portrait at Last...." published jointly by the Cobbe Foundation, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and edited by Stanley Wells. Belief? Faith? Scholarly discussion? We all have well-grounded beliefs which have little to do with faith. I believe the planets move around the sun in elliptical patterns because of the work of Johannes Kepler and later scientists, though quite honestly, I would be unable to check their calculations. So when I asked for believers in the Cobbe portrait on this list, I was looking for well-grounded believers. I didn't ask the question in a chat room. I asked in this scholarly forum. Hardy wondered whether a scholarly discussion would still be possible regarding the Cobbe. Earlier today, May 20, Hardy was able to post an excellent and academic discussion of the painting. Hopefully his fears have abated I submit though, that if the discussion occasionally runs to irreverence, it is due to the grand and certain presentation of the Cobbe by the Trust, combined with, as Lynn Brenner deftly put it, a "paucity of evidence" to support it. "Shakespeare Found! A Life Portrait at Last" they announced. Did a microscopic examination reveal "W. Shaksp" embroidered on the sitter's clothes? Did the artist write "This is the poet W. Shakespeare" somewhere on the frame? Perhaps they found a diary entry: "Went to Southampton's house and saw a portrait of William Shakespeare" along with a description of the Cobbe portrait. Nothing of the sort. The Wells and the Trust present a list of tenuous associations: the painting almost certainly hung in Wriothesley's house - (unless it wasn't Shakespeare and it didn't hang in Wriothesley's house). The Wriothesley and Cobbe families are distantly related. Someone within living memory of the poet thought the painting was Shakespeare. This is Shakespeare by association. It doesn't put the poet on the canvas. The problems are obvious. Wells and the Trust assert that the Cobbe portrait was the model for the Droeshout engraving, but the painting hung for nearly 400 years without anyone noting a similarity. In fact, someone believed the painting was Sir Walter Ralegh and wrote his name on the back. If the Cobbe portrait was Shakespeare, why not simply reproduce it for the First Folio? Would the designers of the volume have told Droeshout to use the Cobbe portrait as a model, but give Shakespeare less hair? What could be wrong with remembering Shakespeare with a full head of hair? Then there is the date, 1610, or "about 1610" derived by scientific testing of the wood. Is it really possible to date a painting to the precise year it was painted? Might other scientists looking at the painting come up with a different year? And, how big is "about"? Could the painting have been done in 1600? Or 1630? We need to hear from the scientists who analyzed the paining, as well as others in the same field who might agree or disagree. But that may be outside the range of this forum. Another line of investigation involves the unidentified painter. He was obviously a person of great ability, noted in his time. Perhaps he can be identified by art historians studying his paints and his brush strokes. Might there be some written record of his commissions and his portrait subjects? Wells and the Shakespeare Trust have proved that the Cobbe portrait might be Shakespeare. Is it really the poet? That would take a leap of faith. Louis W. Thompson [Editor's Note: Above Louis W. Thompson wrote, "Earlier today, May 20, Hardy was able to post an excellent and academic discussion of the painting. Hopefully his fears have abated." HMC: Louis, yes, they have. The discussions since my post has been excellent. -HMC] [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jess Winfield <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 12:56:10 -0700 Subject: 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? Comment: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? Bob Grunman says, "the man in the portrait could easily be 46. Some people stay young, especially if slightly idealized by a painter." The grasping at straws "idealization" issue aside -- Some people may stay young, but unless we are to cast aside Droeshout and the monument entirely, we can see that Shakespeare did not. As men do, he got bald, then balder and paunchy, then died. Cobbe man transforming to Monument man in just six years seems inconceivable to me. The argument that Cobbe could itself be a copy of an earlier painting, well, there's a can of worms. It's possible, but highly speculative, and obviates any claim that it was painted "from life." [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stanley Wells <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 22 May 2009 15:17:01 +0100 Subject: 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? Comment: RE: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare? As I have been closely involved in claims for the Cobbe portrait I have tried not to participate excessively in the internet discussion, but since Professor Katherine Duncan-Jones's TLS article has been invoked by several readers, it seems only fair to make available a published reply to it written by Mark Broch, Dr Paul Edmondson, and me, along with a letter which the TLS chose not to publish from the curator of pictures of the National Trust. +++++++ Sir, Katherine Duncan-Jones attempts to revive David Piper's ill-founded suggestion of 1964 and 1982 that the Cobbe portrait portrays not William Shakespeare but Sir Thomas Overbury. Piper claimed that an 'early inventory' of the Ellenborough collection, sold in 1947, 'lists a portrait of Overbury'; but his reference leads to a list of pictures belonging to the Delabere family. No portrait of Overbury is recorded in the Ellenborough collection, and Piper merely footnoted the fact that their portrait was sold with a traditional identification as Shakespeare. Duncan-Jones, noting resemblance, suggests that the Cobbe copies the Bodleian portrait. No art historian has made this claim; the different compositions make it extremely unlikely. The doublets are completely different, and direct examination reveals a cloak over Overbury's left shoulder. Unlike engravers, painters normally copied faithfully. In any case, perceived resemblance unsupported by documentary evidence is a naive (though natural) basis for identification. Different people can look alike. De Critz's portrait of Sir Walter Cope, for example, bears an uncanny resemblance to Van Somer's of James I. Anyhow Overbury's nose is more beaky, his chin jutting, and his neck thicker. Overbury was notorious; it would be astonishing if none of the numerous versions had come down without his name. We do not merely 'claim' the Cobbe as the original of four surviving copies; this has been conclusively demonstrated through independent scientific investigation. It is not true that we provide 'no dates or sources' for the 'long traditions' that the portrait represents Shakespeare; they are discussed at length in the exhibition guide, which Duncan-Jones saw. The major source of the tradition is the Janssen (or Folger) portrait, altered early to reduce the hair, as recorded in a copy of around 1630 which belonged to the 1st Marquess of Dorchester (1606 -- 1680). The Folger portrait has been 'altered' not 'at various times', only once. When this alteration -- removed in 1988 - was discovered in the 1940s, it was assumed to have been made to enhance a likeness to the Droeshout engraving. Our discovery that the alteration was early re-authenticates the Folger as a genuine portrait of Shakespeare, updated within living memory of him. The inscription includes an exclamation mark, according to Duncan-Jones 'highly unusual'. But there is one in, for instance, an inscription on Thomas Jenner's 1622 engraving of the family of James I. Duncan-Jones claims that 'the man portrayed . . . appears far too grand and courtier-like to be Shakespeare.' But 'Master William Shakespeare's' family had a coat of arms, displayed on his monument and his daughter Susanna's seal. From the age of 33 he owned a grand house in Stratford, where he bought 107 of acres of land for ?320 in 1602, two years later paying ?440 for an interest in the tithes and in 1613 ?140 for the Blackfriars Gatehouse . His will is that of a wealthy man, his memorial elaborate. His colleague and collaborator, John Fletcher, was no less splendidly portrayed in 1620 . Duncan-Jones thinks the man in the picture looks younger than 46. But inscribed ages frequently differ from what appearance might suggest: another fresh-faced 46-year-old is William Sheldon, painted by Hieronymus Custodis in 1590. Portrait painters flattered. Attempting to deny the portrait's wide dissemination she says 'A single 1770 mezzotint of "Shakespeare" derives from the "Folger" portrait . . . but that seems to be all.' It is not. The Folger Shakespeare Library owns a copy of c. 1770, the Staunton portrait, and an early 19th-century copy after the mezzotint; a copy on canvas was engraved in 1824; another of about 1763-64 belonged to the Duke of Anhalt; M. H. Spielmann discussed others, most now untraced, in articles for The Connoisseur in 1910 and 1912. The composition spawned many engravings during the later 18th and 19th centuries. Even the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare in the National Portrait Gallery seems to have generated fewer early copies. Duncan-Jones waves away our suggestion that the Cobbe portrait was the basis for Droeshout's 1623 engraving, where the sitter is only slightly less richly dressed. Certainly Droeshout (aged twenty-two) appears to have simplified the image, updated the collar, and given Shakespeare less hair, possibly reflecting his later appearance. He was keen enough to catch the cast in Shakespeare's left eye, not present in the Overbury portrait. But engravers commonly simplified and updated; the Droeshout was copied for Benson's 1640 Poems with equally drastic changes. Compositionally the 1623 engraving and the Cobbe portrait match perfectly. Duncan-Jones ignores most of the recently unearthed evidence on this fascinating portrait. Her recycling of flawed twentieth-century arguments does nothing to diminish our case, based on much earlier evidence, that the portrait represents Shakespeare. Mark Broch, Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells ********** To:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. From: Alastair Laing Date: 17 April 2009 19:17 Subject: Portraits of Shakespeare Sir, Erin Blake's letter (Letters, April 17) once again raises the possibility - first proposed only in 1964 by David Piper apropos of the Ellenborough copy traditionally identified as a portrait of Shakespeare -- that the 'Janssen' portrait in her care in the Folger Shakespeare Library -- and so, a fortiori, the newly-revealed original of that in the Cobbe collection -- is a portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury. She does so on the most treacherous grounds -- in the absence of any other evidence -- for the identification of any portrait: those of apparent likeness. She goes even further, to suggest that Droeshout might have resorted -- but why ever should he have done such a thing ? -- to a portrait of Overbury for elements of his posthumous portrait of Shakespeare. There are, however, in fact clear difference between the features of the sitter in the well-attested portrait of Overbury in the Bodleian Library and those of the sitter in the Cobbe portrait. This was recently confirmed by laying a tracing of the former over the latter. What has bedevilled all consideration of the portraiture of Shakespeare is that almost everyone has worked backward from the Droeshout engraving of 1623, and from the bust on Shakespeare's monument in Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet each of these is a posthumous image, and so must either have been an invented likeness, based on memories of him, or have taken his features from some lost original or originals of which we have no knowledge. That it is almost certainly the former that is the case, is demonstrated by the fact that not only is there neither trace nor record of such an original or originals, but that there is also not a single surviving copy of it or them. That there was a demand for portraits of Shakespeare ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century is clear. In the case of the later monument and print, however, what was doubtless wanted was what there may well have been no model for: a likeness of him as people remembered him, in older age. A true ad vivum portrait of Shakespeare in earlier life is likely to be one of which there are a number of early copies. Not only does the Cobbe portrait meet that requirement, it alone has a provenance that plausibly connects it, if not with the poet himself, at least with his patron, the Earl of Southampton. It is such arguments, not the fragile ones of imagined likeness, that should carry most weight when the identification of the portrait of any celebrated figure is in question. Alastair Laing Curator of Pictures & Sculpture The National 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 20.0269 Wednesday, 27 May 2009 [1] From: Anna Kamaralli <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 04:30:41 +0000 (GMT) Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio [2] From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 08:09:27 +0100 Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio [3] From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 13:34:29 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio [4] From: Brian Willis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 16:40:58 -0700 (PDT) Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio [5] From: Anthony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 11:46:15 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anna Kamaralli <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 04:30:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio "Horatio is like tofu." Can we have that put on a T-shirt? Regards, Anna Kamaralli [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 08:09:27 +0100 Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio A counter question: why should anyone who has not been talking to the Ghost believe that the Mousetrap has proved Claudius' guilt? The court has just seen a play in which a nephew kills his uncle accompanied by Hamlet's mocking of his uncle. What would you conclude? Horatio, who knows about the Ghost's existence but not the Ghost's story, gives the appropriate, cautious, press-conference sort of answer. Arthur [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 13:34:29 -0400 Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio I think Lynn Brenner is right that Horatio's "hedging" if it could be put across, would only bewilder us -- and I would add, bewilder us in the wrong way. This is not an example of good, or deepening, ambiguity, but just a misunderstanding. For one thing Horatio does not invite psychological investigation the way Hamlet does. But the main argument, which goes back a long way, turns first on the pointlessness -- cf. Jenkins -- of this "ambiguity". We can hardly help believing the ghost, but just in case, Claudius tells us he's guilty in his "painted word" speech before the play. Then we get more confession in the prayer scene. The problem here is not that the audience would doubt his guilt. The first question is why Hamlet would. A ghost might be generically questionable so we can allow for the play to delay revenge, just barely. But the difficulty of revenge is the real problem. Horatio's "note" gives Hamlet a pun to take off on, indicating his agitation -- and pointing to his susceptibility to madness. The argument finally turns on a recognition of dramatic convention. The "ambiguity" crowd is saying that plays work the way plays don't work. Best wishes, David Bishop [4]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Brian Willis <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 16:40:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio Surely, Horatio's repetition of the words "very well" settles the matter. Not only that, it seem to me a texturing of the script that indicates to the actors playing Claudius and Horatio how to react to The Murder of Gonzago. An argument for prevarication on Horatio's part seems paratextual to me and countertextual to everything we can glean about Horatio from the rest of the script. Brian Willis [5]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anthony Burton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 11:46:15 -0400 Subject: 20.0249 What ho, Horatio Comment: Re: SHK 20.0249 What ho, Horatio Let me add my voice to those who agree with Cheryl's professor friend, but with a somewhat different reason from others. To be sure, the studied neutrality of Horatio's response is distinctly unenthusiastic, and far from a statement of agreement that Claudius has just betrayed his own guilt for murdering the old king. But there is another feature: Hamlet has misdescribed the situation -- and is leading us all astray -- in saying the king rose "upon the talk of poisoning." The text reads: Ham. A poisons him i' th' garden for his estate. His name's/ Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very/ choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer/ gets the love of Gonzago's wife. Oph. The king rises. What Horatio very well did note is that the king rose as soon as Hamlet declared that he would show how the murderer would get the love of the king's wife, in fulfillment of his purpose to obtain his victim's estate. I discussed this topic at length, showing how Claudius's marriage to Gertrude disinherited Hamlet and put the old king's estate into Claudius' hands, in a series of articles published in The Shakespeare Newsletter, and now available online at hamletworks.org at the "Hamlet criticism" tab. The point to note here is that Claudius did not rise during the dumbshow enactment of poisoning, nor Hamlet's provocative statement to that effect. Nor does he rise when Hamlet declares the motive for murder -- obtaining the king's estate. He knows that the murder itself and his personal motive are safely unprovable against him. However, he rises to interrupt the entertainment the moment Hamlet announces that the next scene will show how he won the king's widow -- the essential last step in obtaining the dead king's estate -- because that is something Gertrude (his "jointress") and the court know all about; the hasty wooing, the existence of a (presumably) negotiated jointure agreement, the importance of the timing ("within a month") of the marriage, were all public knowledge. Gertrude and the court might find the presentation -- and the linkage of the murder with the marriage -- all too convincing a revelation of Claudius's cynical duplicity for him to tolerate. There is no reason to believe he lost his composure, only that he terminated the festivities. Kozintsev's Russian film Hamlet brilliantly captures a display of autocratic self-control (applauding as he leaves) which works well in this context. So Hamlet has construed as proof of guilt for murder, an action that proved only Claudius's unwillingness to tolerate an enactment of how he got the "love" of Gertrude. The playgoers have already seen for themselves that Hamlet is mistaken, so there is no need for Horatio to make the point. In fact, his noncommittal, nonjudgmental, and supportive attentiveness is entirely in keeping with the character who was so easily accepted as a confidante by Marcellus, Francisco and Barnardo; then Hamlet; then Claudius and Gertrude; and then the pirates. I do not take his Fifth act "'Twere to consider too curiously to consider so" as a reproof to Hamlet, any more than his expressions of disbelief before the first appearance of the ghost. All are simply statements of his own thinking at the moment, marked by his characteristic unwillingness to speculate but subject to correction as further evidence may require. Tony _______________________________________________________________ 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 20.0268 Wednesday, 27 May 2009 From: Bob Grumman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 23 May 2009 16:34:28 -0500 Subject: 20.0252 A Shakespeare-Related Visual Poem of Mine Comment: Re: SHK 20.0252 A Shakespeare-Related Visual Poem of Mine Thanks much for the full & thoughtful response to my Sonnet 18 variation, Bill. As for the Zeitgeist, I tell IT what to do, not the other way around! Seriously, it does seem to have come with the part of the zeitgeist that's generating visual poetry -- but also, I hope, for Shakespeare's zeitgeist (and against it!) In due course, I'll give my interpretation of the poem. What I hope for from others responding to it is the kind of thing you came up with -- best would be many impressions like yours, but each a bit different -- all, however, plausible. Yours is close to mine in some ways, not so in others. All best, Bob _______________________________________________________________ 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.