September
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 21.0356 Wednesday, 1 September 2010 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Subject: Shakespeare in Klingon The following appeared in the Sunday, Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082702649.html?sub=AR How the Washington Shakespeare Company came to offer Shakespeare in Klingon By Peter Marks Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 29, 2010; E01 Don't you love that remarkable moment when roSenQatlh and ghIlDenSten exit the stage and Khamlet is left alone to deliver the immortal words: "baQa', Qovpatlh, toy'wl"a' qal je jIH"? No? Well, it always kills on Kronos. That's the home planet of the Klingons, the hostile race that antagonizes the Federation heroes of "Star Trek." We learned back in '91 in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" that the Klingons love them some Shakespeare. Or as he's known to his ridged-foreheaded devotees in the space-alien community: Wil'yam Shex'pir. The line above might be more familiar to earthlings as "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" But now, we Terrans have an opportunity to savor Shex'pir as the Klingons do. The Washington Shakespeare Company, that Arlington outpost of offbeat treatments of classic plays, is going where no D.C. enterprise has ever quite gone before, offering up a whole evening of Shakespeare -- in Klingon. At the company's annual benefit Sept. 25 in Rosslyn, selections from "Hamlet" and "Much Ado About Nothing" will be performed in the language that was invented for the Klingon characters of the "Star Trek" films. Actors will be speaking the verse in two languages, English and Klingon, and the lines in each will correspond to the Bard's signature meter: iambic pentameter. The translations are courtesy of the Klingon Language Institute, a Pennsylvania group that published "The Klingon Hamlet" several years ago, in addition to composing the Klingon version of "Much Ado About Nothing." Of course, when considering this curious approach to Shakespeare -- eccentric even by the idiosyncratic standards of contemporary niche theater -- the question inevitably arises: Why? As it turns out, the troupe has an answer so logical it might satisfy Mr. Spock. The chairman of Washington Shakespeare's board just happens to be the man who invented Klingonspeak for the films: Marc Okrand, a longtime linguist at the Vienna-based National Captioning Institute. Then, too, Shakespeare sci-fi style appeals to the whimsical impulses of the company's longtime artistic director, Christopher Henley. "It kind of fits into our company identity, of trying to breathe some fresh air into the classics, of doing something really, really different with them," he says. "It seems a way to say that we're not as reverent as other companies in town." No kidding. This is the group that three years ago staged a really, really different version of "Macbeth" -- in the nude. On this occasion, its actors will simply be cloaking the famous lines in words from the Klingon dictionary that Okrand published 25 years ago. Lines like "taH pagh taHbe.' " Which perhaps you know as: "To be or not to be." One of a large list Shakespeare is, of course, one of the most widely translated writers on the planet: The Folger Shakespeare Library has in its stacks the Bard's work in more than 45 languages, according to Georgianna Ziegler, the Folger's head of reference. "Hamlet" may be the play most frequently adapted in other tongues. "We have an Afrikaans 'Hamlet' from 1945," Ziegler says, as she begins the alphabetical roster. "We've got 'Hamlet' in Albanian, Arabic, Belorussian, Bengali . . . " It turns out Hamlet speaks Icelandic, Latvian, Maltese, Old Turkish, Persian, Tamil and Welsh, too. And that's not to mention the "Hamlets" in even more esoteric idioms, like Esperanto. The Klingon Language Institute's director, Lawrence M. Schoen, a science-fiction writer who works as chief compliance officer for a medical center in the Philadelphia area, had applied once upon a time to the Folger for a fellowship to aid in the effort to translate Shakespeare into Klingon. Although he was turned down, the group, whose members are a small global band of Klingon speakers, independently had set about the task. The effort was inspired by a line from "Star Trek VI," in which a Klingon chancellor played by the classical English actor David Warner declares, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." "What worked about that line for me was that nobody blinks," Schoen says. "Which can only be interpreted to mean that everybody agreed with what he said. That's how it hit me." To this former professor and advocate of the made-up language, an intellectual challenge was issued. Thoughts quickly turned to the question of which of the plays might be best savored in Klingon. "It's not that the Klingons are warlike; they're passionate," Schoen says. "There are no half measures with anything that has to do with the Klingons. From that point of view, it made sense to start with the best Shakespearean play we've got." The institute's "restored Klingon version" of the play was put together in the mid-1990s by a linguist from Australia, Nick Nicholas, and an American, Andrew Strader. They worked from a vocabulary and syntax that, in a sense, go back to 1982, when Okrand serendipitously found himself in a room at Paramount Pictures, making up alien gibberish to match the movement of the Vulcan characters' mouths in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." Creating Klingon A native of Southern California who came to Washington for a post-doctoral linguistics fellowship at the Smithsonian and later got a job at the National Captioning Institute, Okrand had gone to Hollywood that year as a liaison for the first closed-captioned telecast of the Oscars. While there, he went to a lunch with a pal at Paramount, the studio that owned the "Star Trek" franchise, who mentioned that the producers were looking for someone to concoct a few alien phrases. Before he knew it, this student of dead Native American languages was taking a meeting. [ . . . ] 'Hamlet' to Klingons At gatherings of Klingon speakers, some participants "take the vow" for the duration of the conference, promising not to speak in anything except Klingon -- a feat even Okrand can't accomplish. "Sometimes it's like, 'What have I done?' " he says, sitting in a coffee bar near his Adams Morgan home. "Of course, it's a good feeling. I've created a game and they're having a really good time." In Klingon warrior culture, "Hamlet" qualifies as both subversive and cautionary. Schoen explains that after Hamlet discovers that Claudius murdered his father, the only proper Klingon reflex would be instantaneous revenge: "If Hamlet is a good Klingon, he immediately confronts him and kills him. Instead he whines, he vacillates, he sacrifices his Klingon heritage. From that point of view, 'Hamlet' is seditious, because it sends the wrong message to the Klingon youth." Ah, but what message do the people of Earth receive? Henley says he's still in the process of casting the benefit, called "By Any Other Name: An Evening of Shakespeare in Klingon." The scenes performed in the alien tongue will be kept short and tight: "Even the most diehard Klingon fan would find it hard to follow seven or 10 minutes in Klingon," Henley says, adding that by alternating scenes in English and Klingon, "what we'll try to underline is the different kinds of cultural impulses. The Klingon version will be much more violent." As a final grace note, George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu on the TV series and in the movies, is scheduled to make a guest appearance. But it'll be King's English only for him. "He's going to do a monologue he really loves from 'Julius Caesar,'"Henley says. By Any Other Name: An Evening of Shakespeare in Klingon Sept. 25 at Rosslyn Spectrum, 1611 N. Kent St., Arlington. Tickets, $150 for the Klingon event and four flex passes to Washington Shakespeare Company's 2010- 11season; $250, for the package and a VIP reception after the performance. Call 800-494-8497 or visit www.washingtonshakespeare.org. _______________________________________________________________ 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 21.0355 Wednesday, 1 September 2010 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Subject: Shakespeare without Boundaries: Essays in Honor of Dieter Mehl _Shakespeare without Boundaries: Essays in Honor of Dieter Mehl_ Edited by Christa Jansohn, Lena Cowen Orlin, and Stanley Wells (Newark: Delaware Press, 2010) Shakespeare Without Boundaries offers a wide-ranging collection of essays written by an international team of distinguished scholars. Their aim is to define, to challenge, and to erode boundaries that currently inhibit understanding of Shakespeare, and to exemplify how approaches that defy traditional bounds of study and criticism may enhance understanding and enjoyment of a dramatist who acknowledged no boundaries to his art. Contents Foreword: Shakespeare without Boundaries Christa Jansohn Dieter Mehl: The Boundary Crosser Ann Jennalie Cook Part I: Early Modern Playwriting and Editing: Boundaries and Thoroughfares The Limitations of the First Folio Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells Anonymous Was a Woman Phyllis Rackin Thomas Heywood, Script-Doctor Grace Ioppolo Part II: Beyond the Bounds of Medium: From Page to Stage to World Wide Web Performance and the Play-Text R. A. Foakes "He shifteth his speech": Accents and Dialects in Plays by Shakespeare and his Contemporaries Brian Gibbons Shakespeare and Dance: Dissolving Boundaries Alan Brissenden Passing Through: Shakespeare, Theater Companies, and the Internet Peter Holland Part III: Crossing Intratextual Boundaries Making Mistakes Shakespeare, Metonomy, and Hamlet Ann Thompson and John O. Thompson Dot Dot or Dash: A Strange SOS from Prospero's Island Bruce R. Smith The Problematization of Generic Boundaries: Lyrical Inroads into Shakespeare's Dramatic Dialogue Alexander Shurbanov Part IV: Crossing Intertextual Boundaries William and Geoffrey Catherine Belsey "It will have blood they say; blood will have blood"? Proverb Usage and the Vague and Undetermined Places of Macbeth Martin Orkin The Fall of a Sparrow: Shakespearean Tragedy and the Bible Piero Boitani Part V: Dissolving National Boundaries Foundational Myth in Cymbeline David Bevington Shakespeare and Velazquez Hugh Macrae Richmond Crossing the Dotted Line: Shakespeare and Geography Chee-Seng Lim Part VI: Boundary Crossings: Translations and National Discourses "there's the rub": Translating Hamlet's Thought Process Werner Habicht "Bottom, thou art translated" Marta Gibinska Hamlet across Boundaries of Language and Genre in Jacinto Benavente's Comedy Hamlet's Jester Jesus Thonch Part VII: Boundary Crossings: "Afterlives"; or, Shakespeare without Boundaries Hamlet's Furniture: Shakespeare Sat Here Catherine M. S. Alexander Dickens and Shakespeare's Ghost(s) Adrian Poole Madame Odier Illustrates Shakespeare Georgianna Ziegler Shakespeare in the Edwardian Nursery: Simple Stories as the Passport to Plays Velma Bourgeois Richmond Notes on Contributors Index University of Delaware Press On the Web at http://www2.lib.udel.edu/udpress About the Editors: Christa Jansohn is Professor of British Studies at the University of Bamberg. Lena Cowen Orlin is Professor of English at Georgetown University. Stanley Wells is Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace 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 21.0354 Wednesday, 1 September 2010 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Subject: Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project www.henslowe-alleyn.org.uk Now freelyavailableonline The Archive of Dulwich College in London, England, holds thousands of pages of manuscripts left to the College by its founder, the eminent actor Edward Alleyn (1566-1626). This archive includes his personal and professional papers and those he inherited from his father-in-law Philip Henslowe (d. 1616). As a group, these manuscripts comprise the largest and most important single extant archive of material on the professional theatre and dramatic performance in early modern England, the age of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Heywood, Dekker, Chettle, and so many of their contemporaries and colleagues. Henslowe and Alleyn built and expanded several London public playhouses, including the Rose, the Fortune, and the Hope, the foundations of some of which have recently been discovered or excavated by Museum of London staff. Named by King James I as Joint 'Masters of the Royal Game of Bears, Bulls and Mastiff Dogs', Henslowe and Alleyn also staged such blood sports as bull- and bear- and lion-baiting at the Bear Garden and other venues, including royal palaces. Henslowe and Alleyn commissioned plays from dramatists and ran several of the most successful acting companies of the time, including the Lord Strange's Men and the Lord Admiral's Men, for which Alleyn performed such famous roles as Dr Faustus and Tamburlaine. The sole surviving actor's 'part' (or script) from the period, for the play _Orlando Furioso_, is in the Dulwich archive, as is the 'plot' (or prompter's outline) of the play _The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins_, one of only six plots from this period known to survive in part or in whole. In fact, most of what modern scholars know about the early modern English theatre, both as financial enterprise and artistic endeavour, comes from the study of the Henslowe and Alleyn papers at Dulwich College. The Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project has two aims and objectives: first, to protect and conserve these increasingly fragile manuscripts, and, second, to make their contents much more widely available in a free electronic archive and website, not only to specialist scholars but to all those interested in early modern English drama and theatre history, as well as social, economic, regional, architectural, and legal history, and palaeography and manuscript studies. It is the hope of the Henslowe Alleyn Digitisation Project members that the use of these manuscripts in electronic and digital form will not be confined to students and scholars but to a wide-ranging and ever-changing community of readers in a variety of ways. Over 2000 digita limages of manuscripts from the Henslowe-Alleyn archive of theatrical papers (1580s-1640s) including Henslowe's Diary, Alleyn's Diary, The Fortune Theatre Contract, The Rose Theatre Deed of Partnership, The 'Part' of Orlando, The Plot of The Seven Deadly Sins, Pt 2 The Manuscript Play of The Telltale, The Royal Patent for Bearbaiting and 15 Digital Essays by leading scholars. List of Essays Manuscripts in MSS 1 'W.P's Letter to Edward Alleyn with a Copy of Verses Addressed to 'sweete Nedd', by H. R. Woudhuysen. 'An Inventory of Theatrical Apparel (c. 1601/2)', by S. P. Cerasano. 'A Letter from Nathan Field, Robert Daborne and Philip Massinger to Philip Henslowe (c. 1614)', by R. A. Foakes and Grace Ioppolo. 'Robert Daborne's Contracts to Write Plays for Philip Henslowe (1613)', by Grace Ioppolo. 'Robert Daborne's Foul Papers and Fair Copies (1613)', by Grace Ioppolo. 'Ben Jonson's Autograph Fair Copies of Two Poems', by Peter Beal. The 'Part' of Orlando in Robert Greene's play Orlando Furioso', by R. A. Foakes. Manuscripts in MSS 2 'A Draft of the Royal Patent for the Mastership of the Game of Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs (November 24, 1604)', by S. P. Cerasano. Manuscripts in MSS 7 'Henslowe's Diary (1591-1609)', by S. P. Cerasano. Manuscripts in MSS 9 'The Diary of Edward Alleyn (1617-1622)', by Grace Ioppolo. Manuscripts in MSS 19 'The 'Platt' (or Plot) of The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins', by R. A. Foakes. Manuscripts in MSS 20 'The Manuscript of The Telltale', by R. A. Foakes, Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo. Muniments, Series 1 and 3 'The Deed of Partnership in the Rose Playhouse (January 10, 1587)', by Julian Bowsher and S. P. Cerasano. 'The Contract for the Fortune Playhouse (1600)', by R. A. Foakes. 'The Foundation Deed of God's Gift College (1619)', by Jan Piggott. Founder and Director: Grace Ioppolo Photographer: David Cooper Computer Manager: Paul Vetch Advisory Board: Peter Beal, Julian Bowsher, S. P. Cerasano, R. A. Foakes, John Lavagnino, Calista Lucy, Jan Piggott, H. R. Woudhuysen www.henslowe-alleyn.org.uk _______________________________________________________________ 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 21.0353 Wednesday, 1 September 2010 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Subject: 9th World Shakespeare Congress: Prague 2011 [Editor's Note: I learned of some interesting upcoming events, publications, and the like at the International Conference in Stratford a few weeks ago. I will start distributing them today. -Hardy] The International Shakespeare Association 9th World Shakespeare Congress Prague 2011 For further information about the World Congress and joining the ISC visit the website: www.shakespeare2011.net _______________________________________________________________ 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 21.0352 Wednesday, 1 September 2010 From: Joseph Sullivan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: August 30, 2010 8:17:36 AM EDT Subject: CFP: 2010 OVSC (submission deadline extended until 9/6/10) The submission deadline for this year's Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference has been extended by one week (until September 6th, 2010) Please see our webpage at http://www.marietta.edu/departments/English/OVSC The planning committee of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference is seeking abstracts and paper proposals that investigate the gaps, lacunae, indeterminacies, omissions, silences, and "undecidabilities" in the work of Shakespeare and/or his contemporaries. Papers can focus on individual works (E.g. what happened to Lear's Fool? Why is Isabella silent?), or on cultural, dramaturgical, cinematic, theoretical, and editorial issues. How do actors, directors and editors deal with the inevitable gap between players and performers? How do biases and the historical treatment of Shakespeare reflect and affect appreciation? How have biographers dealt with Shakespeare's early years? In addition to welcoming contributions from faulty and independent scholars, for the past five years the OVSC has awarded prizes to the top papers given at the meeting by graduate and undergraduate conferees. Abstracts or proposals are due by June 15, 2010 (early decision) or August 27th (final deadline). All inquiries should be directed to: * Russ Bodi * English Department * PO Box 10,000 * Toledo, OH 43699-1947 or e-mailThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . E-mail abstracts toThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Please include academic affiliation, if any, and status: independent, faculty, grad student, or undergrad. Plenary Address: Katharine E. Maus, Author, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, Four Revenge Tragedies of the English Renaissance, Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory and Seventeenth-Century Poetry, (ed. with Elizabeth Harvey), and Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind. Plenary Address: Matthew Wikander, Author: Fangs of Malice: Hypocrisy, Sincerity, and Acting; The Play of Truth and State: Historical Drama from Shakespeare to Brecht; Princes to Act: Royal Audience and Royal Performance; contributor to the Cambridge Companions to Shaw, Strindberg, and O'Neill. _______________________________________________________________ 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.