May
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0205 Monday, 28 May 2012
[1] From: Hannibal Hamlin <
Date: May 25, 2012 2:12:28 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew Verbs
[2] From: Chris Kendall <
Date: May 25, 2012 10:40:00 PM EDT
Subject: Hebrew Verbs--I am and God
[3] From: John Crowley <
Date: May 26, 2012 3:20:58 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew Verbs
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From: Hannibal Hamlin <
Date: May 25, 2012 2:12:28 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew Verbs
I should let Joe off the hook and take credit or blame for hauling in Coleridge. I do think the “motiveless malignity” idea has merit, even if it seems over Romantic. Sure, Iago mentions several motives, but some of them are absurd (Othello and Emilia?) and none of them seem sufficient to justify (dramatically, psychologically) his behavior. And the fact that he tries out so many of them suggests that he’s not convinced himself, perhaps looking for his own motivation (I think here too of Shylock’s rejection of motivation in the Venetian court, when he likens his hatred of Antonio to the inability of some to hold their bladders on hearing the bagpipe). On the matter of Iago and Satan, I don’t want to push this too far. He certainly isn’t Satan, any more than Desdemona is Christ or Othello Judas. Biblical allusions draw the characters parallel, and the interpretive task for the playgoer-reader is to determine how far the parallel is viable or to what dramatic purpose it is made. I might add too, at the risk of repeating myself, that “I am not what I am,” at least in Iago’s mouth, seems more complex than the “I am not what I seem,” which we might expect. For one thing, having “am” rather than “seem” is necessary to make the allusion to Exodus, but it also suggests a more essential problem than mere dissembling, especially with the implications of the biblical allusion in mind.
Hannibal
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From: Chris Kendall <
Date: May 25, 2012 10:40:00 PM EDT
Subject: Hebrew Verbs--I am and God
The King James Version had it right. Present tense only. Though this assertion may remain debatable, the God of the Old Testament, and the New, exists outside time, in eternity, where past and future tenses are a nullity. I think this is so as a theological construct whether you are a believer or not.
My impression is that Viola’s “I am not what I am” is a wink to the audience regarding her gender, and the actor’s gender, while Iago’s is a wink to the idea of evil as an animate force.
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From: John Crowley <
Date: May 26, 2012 3:20:58 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew Verbs
Or: “I will be being what I am being.”
John Crowley
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0204 Monday, 28 May 2012
From: Pete McCluskey <
Date: May 25, 2012 12:24:53 PM EDT
Subject: RE: Maria
The actor playing Maria could double as Antonio; Maria leaves 3.4 with enough time for a quick costume change to Antonio, and since his presence is needed in 5.1, Maria doesn't appear.
Peter M. McCluskey
Associate Professor
Middle Tennessee State University
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0203 Friday, 25 May 2012
From: John Drakakis <
Date: May 24, 2012 12:47:10 PM EDT
Subject: RE: SHAKSPER: Hebrew Verbs
I wonder if the sentence in question, though it has a number of biblical resonances, points elsewhere in ‘Othello’, giving Iago’s utterance a heavily ironic context. The direction in which I am thinking is the hero himself who clearly is not what he is: he has a ‘black’ exterior but ‘fair’ interior. He is only present to himself briefly in Act 5 immediately after the murder of Desdemona, and it is Aemilia who points this out, although it is never sustained. The issue here, surely is one of ‘presence’ in the Derridean sense of the term. Absolute ‘presence’ might be ‘God’ as in the opening of NT John. Iago is surely identified as ‘satanic, though I’m not sure that Joe Egert’s invocation of Coleridge’s ‘motiveless malignity’ is of much help. Iago’s problem is that he has an abundance of motives, some of which he shares with Claudius, or Macbeth, and these we can unpack in relation to different forms of ‘ambition’. In Othello—as elsewhere in Shakespeare, there are repetitions of the conflict between God and Satan and this clearly structures Renaissance psychology in interesting and nuanced ways. Ours is a much more secular account of motivation (as Andre Greene’s reading in ‘The Tragic Effect’ might suggest).
I’m not sure that the claimed link with Viola is very helpful either, since the context in TN is completely different; although it has to be admitted that the actor, always in disguise, and the dramatist conscious of the practice, both have open to them this ‘fact’ as a powerful metaphorical resource.
Cheers
John Drakakis
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0202 Friday, 25 May 2012
From: John Briggs <
Date: May 24, 2012 10:39:57 PM EDT
Subject: Maria in Twelfth Night, Act 5
Has anyone ever come up with a convincing explanation as to why Maria is not present in Act 5 of Twelfth Night? Her absence is not dramatically convincing, and it can’t be for any weird doubling reason, e.g. with Sebastian (although superficially plausible, that would have resulted in at least two impossible exits/entries.)
John Briggs
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0201 Thursday, 24 May 2012
[1] From: Larry Weiss <
Date: May 23, 2012 4:23:42 PM EDTc
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew
[2] From: Joseph Egert <
Date: May 23, 2012 4:45:36 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Hebrew Verbs
[3] From: S. L. Kasten <
Date: May 24, 2012 7:20:19 AM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew Verbs--I am and God
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From: Larry Weiss <
Date: May 23, 2012 4:23:42 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew
>I’m sorry, Larry, but the reverse of a well-known biblical positive has
>a great deal of importance. In Iago’s case, it identifies him with Satan
>and privative evil. In Viola’s case, it identifies her, however playfully,
>with the traditional prejudice against theatrical performance as a
>manifestation of that same evil in order to subvert the equation.
Actually, I was not taking a position as to whether there is a connection between Iago’s and Viola’s statements and the passage in Exodus. I was just trying to refocus on the mission of this List.
The suggestions of some members that Iago’s declaration is intended to equate himself to Satan, as possibly confirmed by Othello’s looking at his feet (but even Othello acknowledges “that’s a fable”), is intriguing. But wouldn’t the parallel be “I am what I am not,” rather than “I am not what I am”? It is a greater stretch to find a connection between Viola’s statement and the biblical passage, as these responses show.
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From: Joseph Egert <
Date: May 23, 2012 4:45:36 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Hebrew Verbs
Hannibal Hamlin supposes
>one could argue that Iago’s statement is also just a confession of
>dissembling, but I have Coleridge’s remark in mind about his “motiveless
>malignity” which seems right—and there are the satanic allusions.
Indeed, these allusions are so striking and so carefully wrought as to cast doubt whether Iago’s ‘malignity’ was truly ‘motiveless’:
http://shaksper.net/archive/2009/274-april/26913-playing-iago
Joe Egert
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From: S. L. Kasten <
Date: May 24, 2012 7:20:19 AM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Hebrew Verbs--I am and God
Larry Weiss asked:
>To bring this back to Shakespeare, does anyone think this “I am” stuff
>has anything to do with Iago or Viola, both of whom declare that “I am
>not what I am”?
As usual a seemingly throwaway remark by Larry opens interesting avenues: Whom Iago would destroy he first makes mad.
The Viola connection seems deeper but given enough time and fluency in the narrative, literary and religious, one might succeed in reading the metaphor suggested by this borrowed, albeit inverted, phraseology.
All the best,
Syd Kasten