July
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 22.0155 Thursday, 14 July 2011
From: Brad Irish <
Date: July 13, 2011 2:35:22 PM EDT
Subject: Revels Office Manuscripts
I’m curious to know if the manuscripts of Revels Office accounts from the Elizabethan period have been microfilmed or are available in digital form. I’m specifically looking for the records from early 1574 -- which Feuillerat, in Office of the Revels in the time of Queen Elizabeth, cites as “Audit Office, Accounts Various, BD 1213, Revels 4,” and which I believe are now cataloged as TNA, AO 1/2045/4.
Thank you in advance for any advice on how to view the documents remotely.
Best,
Brad
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SHAKSPER: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
The SHAKSPER Web Site <http://shaksper.net>
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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 22.0154 Wednesday, 13 July 2011
From: John W Kennedy <
Date: July 12, 2011 4:04:56 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Rom. Scholarship; MV
From: Larry Weiss <
>Actually, there should be no doubt about who the merchant is.
>In the modern world, all businessmen are sometimes called
>"merchants," but that is a corruption of the word. A merchant
>in the strict sense (and under the Uniform Commercial Code)
>is someone who buys and sells goods, as opposed to those
>who make the goods (manufacturers, or artisans in the old
>days), supply the real estate (landlords) or the capital
>(investors or bankers). Shylock was one of the latter –
>a "moneylender" in contemporary parlance. We now
>understand that money is a commodity similar to others,
>but it wasn't regarded as such, in theory, in the Elizabethan
>age. This point is made in the play's wordplay about money
>breeding.
It is by that same reasoning that Dante treats homosexuality and usury as two aspects of the same sin.
From: Joseph Egert <
>Stuart Manger asks:
>
>[ . . . ] why is that when MoV is discussed,
>the role of Shylock is almost always the only topic of
>debate while the play itself is
>manifestly not about him primarily?
>
>Indeed, how could this play be "otherwise called the Iewe
>of Venyce"? in 1598, no less? It strains credulity. Surely
>the Roberts entry was forged. No?
"Julius Caesar"? "Cymbeline"? Not to mention that the very notion of the title as a fixed part of the authorial text was still not yet thoroughly established. And, of course, there is the fundamental fact here that Shylock is irrelevant to the last act.
_______________________________________________________________
SHAKSPER: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
The SHAKSPER Web Site <http://shaksper.net>
DONATION: Consider making a donation to support SHAKSPER: shaksper.net.
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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 22.0153 Wednesday, 13 July 2011
From: HR Greenberg <
Date: July 12, 2011 11:36:27 PM EDT
Subject: More on Archbishop's Oration, Act 1, Sc 2, H 5
Since I have not corresponded with SHAKSPER for a while, a bit about bona fides. I am a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst/film scholar, no Shakespearean credentials but have written a bit here and there. (See if interested a review of the MERCHANT OF VENICE film at the InternationalPsychoanalysis website, and a piece on Hamlet's Pirates, online at the PSYART website -- Journal for the Study of Psychology and the Arts).
At any rate, I have been involved for the last 5 years or so in an attempt to parse and present the Archbishop of Canterbury's long, long oration justifying Henry's right to the French throne, in Act I, Sc 2 H5.
I am interested in the actual historical background for the speech, and have found through several sources that the Archbishop -- Henry Chichele or Chicheley -- was in fact not present at Henry's High Parliament in Leicester when Chichele supposedly gave the speech. According to some sources, Chicheley was not present, there was no hanky-panky by the Church in aid of urging a French war upon Henry, and that the entire tale of the supposed speech was invented to support the Tudor founding myth sometime around 1540 -- can't remember the actual person who wrote about this, or rewrote about this, in a book about the Tudors at that time.
Is this fabrication in fact true? Who was the alleged fabricator? It's said that Shakespeare derived the speech from the Hall and Holinshed chronicles, which I gather were written after 1540. Can anyone tell me what the 'historical' or 'pseudohistorical' grounds for the Chronicles' account of the never-actually-given speech? Who provided Holinshed and Hall's sources? Can we know or not know that the Holinshed et al. knew they were spreading a lie, if indeed it was a lie, regarding the speech's not ever having been actually spoken -- if indeed this was the case? Can anyone say or guess whether Shakespeare knew that what he was writing was in fact a fabricated speech in aid of furbishing the Tudor myth -- it would seem that he took the prose oration from the Chronicles and pretty much rendered it whole into choice verse.
My overall argument about the speech in fact has nothing to do with the 'true' history, but is solely based on what Shakespeare has written for Chichele, and how this huge arcane oration can be rendered comprehensible and interesting to a modern audience. But I would like to set forth the truth or falsehood behind the speech, whether indeed there had ever been a bill introduced some years before but set aside because of the 'scambling times' et cetera.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. HR Greenberg MD
_______________________________________________________________
SHAKSPER: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
The SHAKSPER Web Site <http://shaksper.net>
DONATION: Consider making a donation to support SHAKSPER: shaksper.net.
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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 22.0152 Tuesday, 13 July 2011
[1] From John Drakakis <
Date: July 11, 2011 10:42:44 AM EDT
Subj: RE: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
[2] From: Harry Berger Jr <
Date: July 11, 2011 2:36:07 PM EDT
Subj: Re: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
[3] From: Larry Weiss <
Date: July 11, 2011 3:24:46 PM EDT
Subj: Re: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
[4] From: Joseph Egert <
Date: July 11, 2011 4:44:33 PM EDT
Subj: Re: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Drakakis <
Date: July 11, 2011 10:42:44 AM EDT
Subject: RE: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
My comments were on a particular RSC performance of The Merchant of Venice and were not intended to provoke a full-blown discussion of what the play is or is not about. I was not interested in suggesting that the play was Shylock’s ‘tragedy’ at all. In fact the performance I saw offered a quite original gloss on the play as the British tax-payer’s ‘tragedy’ since s/he has to subsidise this half-baked thoughtless nonsense.
My reference to the superficial gloss on the play from Fergusson was to his contribution to the programme notes that can be best dealt with my dismissing them with contempt. My comment on the contribution to the programme notes from Linda Levy Peck however had a little more substance to it. Her contribution was headed ‘cultural materialism’ and its emphasis was on goods and consumption, and was at some considerable distance from the play. This kind of approach is symptomatic of what passes these days for ‘materialist’ criticism in some quarters, a ‘materialist’ criticism that purports to be ‘historical’ but that in effect does little more than fetishize the commodities it alludes to rather than explains them –indeed it seems to resurrect a completely passe version of ‘cultural materialism’ that occupies a position of status quo ante to what has been at issue in Shakespeare Studies at any time during this last 30 years or so. In the present context, the contributions of Fergusson and Peck are little more than ‘product placement’ and take their place with all of the other ‘commodities’ that are peddled under the RSC brand (including editions of the plays). Insofar as The Merchant of Venice is ‘about’ commodities, then it deals with them in a very oblique way indeed. It’s subtle way of dealing with them is both dialectical and political, and a failure to recognise this is to remain very much on the surface of the play, which is where this distinctly trans-Atlantic domesticated mode of ‘materialism’ is located. What is important in the play is the complex (and sometimes contradictory) network of social relations in which the material objects are caught up. Only those, who are uncritically besotted with the operations of capitalism and the alleged virtues of the free market, fail to recognise the subtleties of this play. The RSC production, capitulating as it does to a glossy version of the free market, while at the same time (some may feel) trying to offer a weak critique of it, ends up in a sentimentalising gesture that situates Elvis Presley at the centre of the whole thing. Belmont may, indeed, be Graceland to those who harbour a very parochial view of popular culture, but with the best will in the world, I think we have a right to expect a little more thought to emerge from what advertises itself as the major (and, let it be emphasised, very heavily subsidised) medium for Shakespeare. I am all for subsidising art that invites us to think about ourselves and the world in which we live. Thoughtless and mechanical reproduction that is preoccupied with the process of producing the very commodities that it should be criticising (which is one of the many things that the play can be said to be ‘about’) should be left to the vicissitudes of the free market.
Give me leave to go from hence. I am not well
As ever,
John Drakakis
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Harry Berger Jr <
Date: July 11, 2011 2:36:07 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
"I recognize that I am baiting the hounds of hell, but for Hardy's sake, I hope the gentles and scholars among us are capable of recognizing that the sniping at and ad hominem flogging of those who dare to disagree with the "regular" authorities on this list in the past have driven many of us lesser beings away. I hope to gain insight from scholarly disputes . . . not to come away from them sickened and dismayed by what passes for debate." -Carol Barton
Kudos to Carol Barton. I fully agree with her criticism.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <
Date: July 11, 2011 3:24:46 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
Erin Weinberg says,
"The beauty of the play’s vague title is that one cannot be sure to whom Shakespeare is referring, and if the referent is the protagonist or antagonist."
Actually, there should be no doubt about who the merchant is. In the modern world, all businessmen are sometimes called "merchants," but that is a corruption of the word. A merchant in the strict sense (and under the Uniform Commercial Code) is someone who buys and sells goods, as opposed to those who make the goods (manufacturers, or artisans in the old days), supply the real estate (landlords) or the capital (investors or bankers). Shylock was one of the latter -- a "moneylender" in contemporary parlance. We now understand that money is a commodity similar to others, but it wasn't regarded as such, in theory, in the Elizabethan age. This point is made in the play's wordplay about money breeding.
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Joseph Egert <
Date: July 11, 2011 4:44:33 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Merchant of Venice in a Las Vegas Setting
Stuart Manger asks:
>[...] why is that when MoV is discussed,
the role of Shylock is almost always the only topic of
debate while the play itself is
manifestly not about him primarily?<
Indeed, how could this play be "otherwise called the Iewe of Venyce"? in 1598, no less? It strains credulity. Surely the Roberts entry was forged. No?
No!
Joe Egert
"Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?" (IV.1)
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SHAKSPER: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
The SHAKSPER Web Site <http://shaksper.net>
DONATION: Consider making a donation to support SHAKSPER: shaksper.net.
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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 22.0151 Tuesday, 13 July 2011
From: Jack Heller <
Date: July 11, 2011 3:05:02 PM EDT
Subject: Romeo and Juliet Scholarship
I hope this question won't come across as asking "Who is Hamlet?" For the next month, I will be working on creating a short seminar on Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps because of a sense of over-familiarity, I've read very little scholarship about the play. I am currently reading Stanley Wells' chapter on the play from SHAKESPEARE, SEX, AND LOVE. What other writings on this play have seem particularly instructive to other listmembers?
Jack Heller
_______________________________________________________________
SHAKSPER: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
The SHAKSPER Web Site <http://shaksper.net>
DONATION: Consider making a donation to support SHAKSPER: 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.