August
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0469 Monday, 31 August 2009 [1] From: Martin Mueller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Aug 2009 13:51:35 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale [2] From: Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Aug 2009 12:59:13 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale [3] From: Anna Kamaralli <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 29 Aug 2009 01:34:27 +0000 (GMT) Subj: Re: SHK 20.0459 The Ending of the Winter's Tale [4] From: Alan Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Aug 2009 16:20:35 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale [5] From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Aug 2009 14:39:30 -0700 (PDT) Subj: Re: SHK 20.0459 The Ending of the Winter's Tale [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martin Mueller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Aug 2009 13:51:35 -0500 Subject: 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale Comment: Re: SHK 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale I have always thought of the ending of the _Winter's Tale_ as an extravagant experiment that makes up for the equally extravagant experiment in _King Lear_. In the latter play, Shakespeare went against all the authorities of his sources and killed off Cordelia. In the former, he brought Hermione back to Life, against the explicit authority of Greene's _Pandosto_, his major source for the play. [2]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Aug 2009 12:59:13 -0600 Subject: 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale Comment: RE: SHK 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale Resurrection, the "miraculous restoration of life": yes, a universal longing. But aren't cynicism and hard-nosed "rationalism" in fact ways of dealing with the nagging worry that our deepest longings are only fantasies? I think Shakespeare is playing with that when he has Paulina say: Is't not the tenor of his oracle, That King Leontes shall not have an heir Till his lost child be found? which that it shall, Is all as monstrous to our human reason As my Antigonus to break his grave And come again to me. Of course, within a few minutes, Perdita returns -- but Antigonus doesn't. Even Hermione's return isn't a resurrection in the fullest and most literal sense. The New Testament reminds us that the doctrine of resurrection was considered "foolishness" by the Greeks; even the apostles themselves called the women's first report of Jesus' resurrection "idle tales" (Luke 24:11) -- a phrase I suspect Shakespeare had in mind in the play's references to "old tales." The play thus allows us the possibility of taking a dismissive attitude. Still, in part with a happy ending that seems unlikely but that surprises us into belief, the play suggests that just because something is "monstrous to our human reason" doesn't mean it is impossible. Bruce Young [3]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anna Kamaralli <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 29 Aug 2009 01:34:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 20.0459 The Ending of the Winter's Tale Comment: Re: SHK 20.0459 The Ending of the Winter's Tale David has identified my favourite theatrical moment to use as a lens through which to examine our attitudes to a few perrenials (endings, happiness/sorrow, parent/child relationships, husband/wife relationships, regret, forgiveness, death, hope). There has been a trend in performance in recent years for the closing scene to be melancholic in tone, and there has been an accompanying tendency to increase the role or presence of Mamillius (Hytner in 2001 and Donnellan in 1999, for example, as well as the Hall production Lynn describes). I think this is simply a manifestation of our current enamouredness with ambiguity, ambivalence, and the dark side of the human journey. We think it's cooler these days to not be too hopeful, or too obviously into happy endings. I don't think Adrian's assessment precludes a moving scene in the theatre, but I have an objection that lies elsewhere. Calling it a "male heterosexual fantasy", even as a criticism, makes the scene all about Leontes (as does Harold Bloom in his odious _Invention of the Human_, as did Hall's production, as did Declan Donnellan in his Russian production), when there are other people present who are just as important. It seems a perversion of the exquisite centering of that most rare thing, a mother-daughter relationship in Shakespeare, to speak of the scene as if it is there to serve Leontes, or to stage it thus. Remember, Hermione's only words are to her daughter, expressly stating that it was in the hope of seeing Perdita that she "preserved myself", and including an injunction for her to speak with her own voice. I came to similar conclusions to Lynn about Hall's production, though for slightly different reasons: I hated seeing Perdita obliterated from the concluding image. This play shows men trying and failing to silence women or control their voices. In this last scene Shakespeare not only shows their goal to be futile, he shows the men in question growing to the point where it is no longer what they want. The men are offered the perfect woman, the silent, pedestal-enthroned object of worship, and they actively reject this as an option, making clear their preference for a real woman who moves and is warm -- and who speaks. "Let her speak too." It seems to me the only way to do this theatrical justice is to ensure that in the final moments the men and women share the stage together. Regards, Anna Kamaralli [4]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Alan Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 28 Aug 2009 16:20:35 -0400 Subject: 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale Comment: Re: SHK 20.0463 The Ending of the Winter's Tale One question has not emerged in this discussion: to whom does Paulina address "It is requir'd / You do awake your faith"? To Leontes alone? To all onstage? To the playgoer (or reader or critic of the last twenty years)? And why the verb "awake"? Alan Dessen [5]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Aug 2009 14:39:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 20.0459 The Ending of the Winter's Tale Comment: Re: SHK 20.0459 The Ending of the Winter's Tale Lynn Brenner writes: >The Winter's Tale is a play about redemption. (As Paulina >says, "First, you must have faith.") Is Shakespeare here making a theological point, after Marlowe, that Paul was a juggler, and his Saviour's resurrection a sham? Curious, Joe Egert _______________________________________________________________ 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 20.0468 Monday, 31 August 2009 From: Michele Marrapodi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 29 Aug 2009 01:37:20 +0100 Subject: 20.0458 Frame Story for _Taming of the Shrew_? Comment: Re: SHK 20.0458 Frame Story for _Taming of the Shrew_? (...) "What's the purpose of the frame story?" It is the interpretive key to the whole play. A complex interplay of correspondences and parallelisms between characters and dramatic situations, iterative imagery, and linguistic and rhetorical strategies provide the necessary connections to the play proper, guiding us towards the right reading of Katherina's innovative role and of her unconventional marriage, which disrupts the traditional New Comedic solution. A few years ago, I traced in the commonest intertexts with Italian prose and drama the dramatic unity of this extraordinary three-part play (induction, main plot, and subplot), which assimilates and reinvents Italian theatregrams and narremes specifically deriving, among other direct and indirect allusions, from Aretino's _Marescalco_, Boccaccio's _Decameron_, and Ariosto's _Suppositi_. It is especially the unconventional, subversive, and anti-Petrarchan theatre of Aretino that provides the kind of pretence, playacting, and make-believe that link the induction scenes and the beffa-motif to the metatheatrical quality of both main and subplot and to the fictitious and "sly" character of Katherina. (See my contribution to Shakespeare Yearbook, 10, 1999). Cheers, Michele Marrapodi, University of Palermo _______________________________________________________________ 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 20.0467 Monday, 31 August 2009 From: Ian Stevens <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 31 Aug 2009 15:00:38 -0400 Subject: Thomas Middleton -- The Collected Works and Companion My company has acquired some copies of Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino's "Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works and Companion" from Oxford University Press. These were sold off by Oxford as overstocks and are brand new, still in their boxes. As a result, we are able to offer them at $69.98 (rather than their $350.00 published price). Here are details of the book on our website: http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/69955/Location/DBBC The David Brown Book Company Box 511 (28 Main St) Oakville CT 06779 USA Tel: (860) 945-9329 Fax: (860) 945-9468 www.oxbowbooks.com Find us on Facebook by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Oakville-Ct/The-David-Brown-Book-Company/128462876498 _______________________________________________________________ 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 20.0466 Monday, 31 August 2009 From: Martin Orkin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 30 Aug 2009 08:43:11 +0300 Subject: Shakespeare Studies Position Open-Rank Position in Shakespeare and/or Early Modern English Literature The University of Haifa announces a tenured or tenure-track position in Shakespeare and/or Early Modern English literature beginning Fall 2010. The position is open to any rank and is pending budgetary approval. Applicants must have a PhD and a demonstrated commitment to both teaching and scholarship. The successful candidate will be expected to teach four courses per year The language of instruction is English. Please send letter of application and dossier and a writing sample of no more than 8000 words to Professor Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Chair of the Search Committee, Department of English Literature, The University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Preference will be given to applications received by November 20, 2009. Interviews at the forthcoming MLA convention in Philadelphia. _______________________________________________________________ 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 20.0465 Monday, 31 August 2009 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, August 31, 2009 Subject: Janssen Portrait at the Folger Library The Sunday, August 30, 2009, _Washington Post Magazine_ had an article about the Cobbe Portrait, emphasizing the section of the argument that the Janssen portrait at the Folger Library might, in fact, be the original of the five portraits associated with the Cobbe -- "Waiting for William: After four centuries, we may finally be seeing history's greatest writer for the first time," by Sally Jenkins. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101928.html> Although the arguments are too long to go into detail with this posting, they are presented in as straight-forward a manner as I have ever seen them in news accounts of the Cobbe Portrait. I encourage anyone who is interested to read the piece at the Washington Post website and then if further interested to read _Shakespeare found!: A Life Portrait at Last_ by Stanley Wells et al. [I intend to review this book within the next six months as I work through my other commitments.]. I will here, however, attempt to synthesize the arguments in the essay and present as concise a summary as I am able to do in the short space of this posting. The Cobbe Portrait "is a dead ringer for a portrait [the Janssen] held by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, a picture that from 1770 to the 1940s was considered legitimately Shakespeare, until it was declared a forgery. Now it's possible that the Folger may not own a sham at all, but a scholarly grail, a true likeness of the bard painted during his lifetime." Cobbe and his friend and schoolmate, Alastair Laing, had discovered that the portrait Cobbe had bid goodnight to as a child growing up in Newbridge House "was actually of a longhaired man, and not just any man. He was identified as Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton and the "lovely boy" scholars suspect Shakespeare of obsessing on in some of his sonnets." "Just two images of Shakespeare are considered authentic by scholars, and both were done after the playwright died. A clumsy funerary bust over his tomb in the chancel of Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford depicts a portly man in robes with a quill in his hand. It must have looked like him at his death because his family approved it. The other is the cartoonlike engraving on the cover of the First Folio, the authorized collection of his plays published in 1623, seven years after he died. The engraving, by a Flemish artisan named Martin Droeshout, shows a neckless man with an absurdly domed forehead, pouches under his eyes and a hint of flab around his chin." "Both depictions are so unintelligent-looking that scholars blame them for instigating the Author Controversy, which is not really a controversy so much as a campaign by conspiracy-minded amateurs to prove that someone more visually appealing wrote the plays. . . . The Author Controversy persists despite considerable documentary evidence. We have the man from Stratford's pay stubs for performing at court, his certificate of occupancy for the Globe Theatre, and his will, in which he left memorial rings to some London actors. Funny he would do that if he was just a country burgher who didn't write the plays." [ . . . ] "The hunt for a likeness of the bard in his heyday has turned up various candidates over the centuries, almost all of them illegitimate. Up to now, the painting with the most credible claim as a life image is the Chandos portrait, the star of London's National Portrait Gallery. It shows a dusky, writerly-seeming man with receding hair and an earring. But its provenance is unclear. The search is complicated by the fact that a 1770s mania for Shakespeare souvenirs resulted in a spate of good forgeries. The Janssen portrait held by the Folger was thought to be one of those. The "Searching for Shakespeare" exhibit was therefore really a show about likely and, mostly, unlikely contenders. Cobbe and Laing wandered through the viewing, looking at bogus bards, until they arrived at a far wall, on which the Janssen portrait hung, on loan from the Folger. The oil-on-wood is legitimately dated to 1610, but it was discredited in 1937 when new X-ray technology showed the brow had been over-painted to make the sitter bald. It fell from grace under the supposition that it was altered to look more like the Droeshout. In 1988, the Folger restored the original hairline and exhibited it as an interesting mistake." [ . . . ] "O, sweet Master Shakespeare!" he says, "I'll have his picture in my study at court." Portraits of Shakespeare, Wells believes, would have been in demand. By the mid- to late-1590s, he was so hugely popular that his name began appearing on quartos of his plays, the Tudor version of paperbacks-the first time audiences ever cared who wrote their entertainments. In the early 17th century, portraits of actors were coming in vogue, and Shakespeare "was kind of a pinup, shall we say," Wells observes. [ . . . ] The case for the Cobbe, Wells asserts, is complicated and not easy to trace, but after three years of research and evaluations from art historians at Cambridge and the Tate Museum, he was persuaded it deserved higher consideration than the other impostors parading around in wooden frames. The proof for the Cobbe is not definitive, Wells acknowledges. "I've never declared myself absolutely finally certain." Still, the various strands of evidence add up to "a very strong circumstantial case." Here is the case that has been developed by Wells and the team of researchers that includes Paul Edmondson, Mark Broch, Alastair Laing and other consultants: POINT ONE: "The first task was to establish the portrait's period *authenticity*. Tree-ring dating, X-rays and infrared reflectography showed the wood was felled between 1579 and 1593, and the oils were consistent with the era. Curator Rupert Featherstone, former art conservator to the queen, affirmed a dating of around 1610, when Shakespeare would have been 46. POINT TWO: Next, they examined the painting's *provenance*. Cobbe traced the probable genealogical path of the painting into his hands: Southampton's great-granddaughter Elizabeth had married a Cobbe cousin, and when the couple died childless, Charles Cobbe, the archbishop-builder of Newbridge House, inherited much of their artwork. The fact that the painting was stashed away in a country house along with the image of the young Southampton-it wasn't peddled by art dealers-is in its favor, according to Laing. "There's no evidence of pictures having been bought; they really do seem to have been passed down through the family," Laing says. From there, the case became more tortuous. The Cobbe portrait, it developed, was just one of a *cluster of five paintings of similar appearance, including the Janssen*. They all depicted an enigmatic courtier in silver-blue doublet and close beard. None of them, however, had the Cobbe's liveliness of expression. This led the team to believe that the Cobbe was the original "prime" portrait, of which the others were copies. HOWEVER: One of those copies was called the Dorchester, another puzzling lookalike -- but the really interesting thing about it was that it was bald. Follow closely: The Dorchester appears to be a work from the mid-1600s. If the bald Dorchester is a copy of the Folger's Janssen portrait -- which it certainly appears to be -- that means the Janssen was already bald when the painter copied it. Which means it was altered in the mid-1600s, a lot earlier than previously thought. The assumption was that the Janssen was made bald as a forgery at the height of Shakespeare mania in 1770. But if the revision dates to around 1660 or earlier, that means the portrait was altered within living memory of Shakespeare, when people who knew him were still alive. It was not uncommon for portraits to be modified to reflect changes in age or appearance. It's possible the picture was innocently updated to reflect the sitter -- Shakespeare? -- at the end of his life. The next portion of the article involves the attitudes of the Folger Library staff regarding the authenticity of the Janssen portrait, which is being re-hung from, if I remember correctly since it has been a number of years since I last read at the Folger, in the periodicals section of the Library addition to the Founders' Room, so the public can 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.