The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 21.0456 Thursday, 18 November 2010
[1] From: Nicholas Clary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: November 18, 2010 2:39:12 PM EST
Subj: RE: SHK 21.0455 Kenneth Rothwell
[2] From: David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: November 18, 2010 5:15:59 PM EST
Subj: Re: SHK 21.0455 Kenneth Rothwell
[3] From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Subj: Kenneth Rothwell
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Nicholas Clary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: November 18, 2010 2:39:12 PM EST
Subject: 21.0455 Kenneth Rothwell
Comment: RE: SHK 21.0455 Kenneth Rothwell
On Thursday, 18 November 2010, Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
wrote,
>>Ken [Rothwell] is probably best known for his work
>>incorporating Shakespeare on film into his teaching
>>and scholarship. At that time, many considered the
>>using of such practices as a 'dumbing down' of
>>Shakespeare."
>
>Some still do.
Some remain uncivil at every opportunity -- Ken Rothwell resisted such
temptations.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: November 18, 2010 5:15:59 PM EST
Subject: 21.0455 Kenneth Rothwell
Comment: Re: SHK 21.0455 Kenneth Rothwell
Whatever (and whoever) he might have been, Shakespeare was a playwright,
someone whose texts were constructed for performance. The idea that
incorporating performance, whether on stage, on film, or in the
classroom, is "dumbing down" Shakespeare suggests a fossilized attitude
toward what plays are and how they actually function. The real issue, as
in all teaching, is how the material is used by both the teacher and the
students.
cdf
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Subject: Kenneth Rothwell
I had my differences with some of Ken Rothwell's beliefs, so to maintain
civility I simply did not bring them up and stuck instead to subjects we
both loved: Shakespeare, Shakespeare in performance, and Shakespeare in
performance on film.
For someone to use a tribute I was making to a scholar for whom I had
the greatest respect, a scholar who significantly changed the way that
most of us thought about Shakespeare in performance and changed the way
we used performance in our classrooms, a man I loved for his kindness
and gentleness and enthusiasm, for someone to use that tribute to make a
snide and hurtful remark borders on the inexcusable.
Fortunately, such a display of ignorance can in no way tarnish the
contributions this wonderful man made to Shakespeare studies. Ken
Rothwell will be remembered much longer than his opponent "whose frown,
/ And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command" will be reduced to the
endless sands of nothingness and the "hand that mocked them, and the
heart that fed" will be moved only by the ceaseless winds of time and
nothingness.
Hardy
PS: "Ozymandias" is just about the only poem of Shelley's that I care
for:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." --
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