========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 21:28:07 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0001 Q: Negative Capability Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 1. Friday, 1 January 1993. From: Peter D. Junger Date: Thursday, 31 Dec 92 16:33:59 EDT Subject: Query about negative capability In an article I am writing I suggest that those who would understand law should have the negative capability that Keats ascribed to Shakespeare: At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously--I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Which Bartlett's Familiar Quotations ascribes to John Keats, Letter to George and Thomas Keats [December 22, 1817]. Can anyone supply me with a better source? Our library has the second and third editions of Maurice Buxton Forman's edition of Keats' letters and I suspect that I can find the quotation easily enough in one of those works, but I suspect that there may be some canonical citation of which I am ignorant. Thanks. Peter D. Junger Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, OH Internet: JUNGER@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.Edu -- Bitnet: JUNGER@CWRU ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 10:46:40 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0002 Re: Branagh's *Ado* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 2. Saturday, 2 January 1993. From: Luc Borot Date: Saturday, 02 Jan 93 13:34 Subject: Re: SHK 3.0406 Q: Branagh *Ado* From Luc Borot: Reply to Query on Branagh's *Much Ado*: A happy new year to all from the old Continent, both more united from yesterday Jan. 1st, and more torn apart with what happens further East from here. I have no news concerning the appearance of Branagh's film, but I can be positive that his *Hamlet* will move from London to Stratford upon Avon where it will open next April. I will see it then, with the *Richard III*, starring Simon Russel Beale. I will report for SHAKSPER if you will. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 14:42:37 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0003 Jacobi Hamlet Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 3. Monday, 4 January 1993. From: Rick Jones Date: Monday, 4 Jan 1993 11:59:07 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: Jacobi's Hamlet I just got back into town after a fortnight of parent-visiting (two sets), so the discussion of Jacobi's _Hamlet_ is still new to me. I'm surprised to see the very favorable response, because I absolutely LOATHED the BBC/film version. On the other hand, I was lucky enough to have seen Jacobi do the role at the Old Vic a couple of years earlier (for about $2.00 American, 10th row stalls, center -- the joys of student rush!), and adored it. The line I'll always remember is "Words, words, words." -- I'd seen that scene a dozen times or so, and never before had I heard a Hamlet actually answer Polonius's question! I still talk about that single moment (my students might say ad nauseum) in both my acting and directing classes as an example of what theatre can be. So why didn't I like the BBC version? I'd suggest two reasons: first, I'd already seen the stage version, and no film can possibly recreate the presence of the live actor, at least not in a vehicle designed for that presence. In the stage version, I could feel the immediacy much more palpably . . . and I could look at what I wanted to look at, although my attention was very skillfully directed to certain things: I like that freedom as an audience member. I suppose it's inevitable to make more direct contrasts when comparing two _Hamlets_ with the same leading actor. Secondly, the two versions had different Ophelias (I'm sure there were lots of other changes, too, but that's the one I noticed most). On stage, the Ophelia (and I'm sorry to say I've forgotten her name) was dynamic, passionate and just a little dangerous: in her scenes with Hamlet, sparks flew, because she could . . . almost . . . match his energy. Her destruction, then, becomes electric and devastating: an emblem of the down side of Hamlet's monomania. In the film version, the Ophelia (and here I've happily forgotten her name) was a simpering little wimp . . . I almost couldn't wait to see her gone. Thus, the confrontation scenes showed Hamlet as a big bully, the demise of Ophelia was much less tragic, and the whole nature of *Hamlet's* character changed from flawed hero to abusive egotist. I wouldn't have used this terminology at the time I first saw the BBC version, but the gender implications are manifold here: one is tempted to wonder whether the producing organization (Pioneer Theatre Company vs. BBC) had much to do with the portrayal of Ophelia. I'd be interested in seeing more about this, especially from those who liked the Jacobi film. Cheers, Rick Jones Cornell College ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 07:22:37 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0004 R: Jacobi Hamlet; Q: Burton Hamlet Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 4. Tuesday, 5 January 1993. (1) From: Kevin Berland Date: Monday, 4 Jan 93 19:47 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0003 Jacobi Hamlet (2) From: Leo Daugherty Date: Tuesday, 5 Jan 93 01:54:15 -0800 Subj: Onscreen Hamlets (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Berland Date: Monday, 4 Jan 93 19:47 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0003 Jacobi Hamlet As the party who introduced the topic of the Jacobi/BBC Hamlet, I feel compelled to reply to the criticism of the "wimp" Ophelia: I agree with your evaluation -- except for three places: 1) the startled look toward the place Polonius and Claudius are hiding when Hamlet asks her where her father is and the studious avoidance of the spot thereafter, as she painfully goes through the lie knowing Hamlet knows, and knows that she knows, &c. -- 2) the concept that she is really rather ordinary, not powerful, not especially interesting, but "nice" -- because tragedy destroys the bystanders, too [I find Ophelias who are intellectual and moral matches for Hamlet anachronistic and beside the point]; -- and 3) the rage and "bullying" is nicely framed by Jacobi's emphasis, "They *have* made me mad", staring at his hands. So, good people, what of this last point? Is Jacobi acknowledging Hamlet's madness, extending the mad act, or acknowledging the fineness of the line between furious actions undertaken while feigning madness and furious actions generated by real madness -- or what? Oh, and happy new year. Kevin Berland (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Leo Daugherty Date: Tuesday, 5 Jan 93 01:54:15 -0800 Subject: Onscreen Hamlets I think I've seen most of the screen Hamlets -- some of them several times -- starting with the very corny Olivier many years ago, and running on through Nicole Williamson, Derek Jacobi, and Mel Gibson. I really didn't like any of them much. But I DID like Richard Burton's Hamlet very much -- which I think was shot on video from a performance (in maybe 1963 or 1964) and then shown in a few theaters around the country. I'd love to see it again, and I find that I'm always wanting to show it to my students when I teach the play. So I thought I'd post this note to ask: does anybody know how I can get a copy? (Ideally, I'd like to have one for our college library.) I'd also like to know what any other SHAKSPEReans who may have seen the Burton think of it now. Thanks. Leo Daugherty The Evergreen State College ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:10:18 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0005 Hamlet on Film and Video Responses Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 5. Tuesday, 5 January 1993. (1) From: Rick Jones Date: Tuesday, 5 Jan 1993 11:53:25 -0600 (CST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0004 R: Jacobi Hamlet; Q: Burton Hamlet (2) From: Gus Sponberg Date: Tuesday, 5 Jan 1993 09:22 CST Subj: Burton's Hamlet (3) From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Tuesday, January 5, 1993 Subj: Burton's Hamlet (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones Date: Tuesday, 5 Jan 1993 11:53:25 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0004 R: Jacobi Hamlet; Q: Burton Hamlet I'm sure that Kevin Berland and I will agree to disagree on the Ophelia in the BBC _Hamlet_: I'll grant the strengths he mentions but find them insufficient to overcome the negatives; he seems willing to grant the criticisms but finds them outweighed by positives. Fine. But I would like to follow up on his parenthetical comment, "I find Ophelias who are intellectual and moral matches for Hamlet anachronistic and beside the point". The first point, about anachronism, is probably true at least at a literal level: it is unlikely the Shakespeare conceived of Ophelia as an intellectual or moral match for Hamlet. So a "strong" Ophelia is indeed anachronistic: but so is a sympathetic Shylock or a Petruchio who isn't celebrated for his male chauvinism . . . or, for that matter, a _female_ Ophelia! What interests me here is that it would _not_ be anachronistic for a _comic_ female character to be both sympathetic and strong, but that combination is almost unheard of in tragedy (Cordelia, maybe?). And if such a female character _does_ appear in a tragedy or a history, she almost certainly must be rendered comic in some way: e.g. the thick accent of Katherine of France in _Henry V_. I wonder if anyone could suggest some sources to explore the distinction in gender terms between comedy, wherein, for example, Rosalind clearly has far more on the ball than Orlando ever will, and tragedy, wherein Ophelia can only be "nice". One final question for Kevin, which I hope won't be misinterpreted: when you call "strong" Ophelias "anachronistic and beside the point", are you making two separate criticisms, or is being "beside the point" an extension of anachronism? Am I making sense? :> Rick Jones Cornell College (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gus Sponberg Date: Tuesday, 5 Jan 1993 09:22 CST Subject: Burton's Hamlet Add me to Leo Daugherty's request for a copy of a video of Burton's Hamlet. I have an LP of Burton doing scenes and soliloquies and have used it to good effect but I think a video would be more appealing in the classroom. Gus Sponberg Valparaiso University (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Tuesday, January 5, 1993 Subject: Burton's Hamlet It's my understanding that Burton "hated" the filmed version of his *Hamlet*, which showed for a few days in 1964, and ordered that ALL prints of the film be destroyed. After Burton's death, however, a print was recovered and is available at the Folger Shakespeare Library. I have fond memories of the film, but I was a high school student at the time and not nearly as knowledgeable as I am today (or so I hope). I still have the souvenir program and an excerpt record (a student has mention having the full production on records), but I wouldn't imagine that a video of the production would be forthcoming unless arrangements were made with Burton's estate. It seems that if you would like to see the film again, you'll have to visit Washington, D.C. Hardy M. Cook HMCook@boe00.minc.umd.edu Bowie State University ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 21:35:01 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0006 SHAKSPER LOGS on Gopher Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 6. Tuesday, 5 January 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Tuesday, January 5, 1993 Subject: SHAKSPER LOGS on Gopher Dear SHAKSPEReans, The SHAKSPER logs are now available on Gopher, which offers an alternative to ordering logs from LISTSERV. I would like to thank SHAKSPERean Ann Miller, who suggested the idea to me, and Steve Younker, the LISTSERV Manager at the University of Toronto, who mounted the logs on Gopher. If you do not know how to use Gopher, contact your Academic Computing Service for details. I TELNET to INFO.UMD.EDU, Bowie State's being a University of Maryland System institution. Below is an edited, sample session I logged. ****************************************************************************** $ telnet info.umd.edu Trying...128.8.10.29 Connected to INFO.UMD.EDU. Escape character is '^]'. ULTRIX V4.1 (Rev. 52) At the login: prompt below, enter: info for access to the Information On-line files and programs. gopher for access to the Gopher interface and Internet Resources. ======== TYPE gopher ======== login: gopher Last login: Tue Jan 5 19:50:47 from crts1.umbc.edu ULTRIX V4.1 (Rev. 52) System #3: Tue Dec 22 18:20:17 EST 1992 UWS V4.1 (Rev. 197) Welcome to the University of Maryland Information Service As you explore this service, you will be experiencing first-hand the beginning phases of the "information revolution". The UofM Information Service is your connection to computing sites around the country and indeed around the world. Clearly, the UofM bears no responsibility for the quality of data at other sites. The interfaces to the data are also, for the most part, beyond our direct control. Help may be available by entering a "?". We strongly encourage you to read through the section "About This System" on the upcoming menu before embarking on your "travels through the Internet". Enjoy! please enter your terminal type (? for a list, RETURN for 'vt100'): ===== TYPE terminal type ===== Welcome to the wonderful world of Gopher! Gopher has limitations on it's use and comes without a warranty. Please refer to the file 'Copyright' included the distribution. Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1, Copyright 1991,1992 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Press any key to continue ===== PRESS any key ===== Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 University of Maryland at College Park (in development) 1. About This System (PLEASE READ)/ 2. Faculty/Staff Phone Book 3. Info - Gopher Interface/ 4. Info - UMCP Developed Interface 5. Victor - Online Library Catalog 6. USAToday/ 7. Campaign '92/ 8. Other Systems/ ===== SELECT Other Systems ===== Other Systems 1. Archie File Searching Service 2. Campus-wide Information Systems/ 3. Gopher and Information Servers/ 4. HYTELNET 5. Internet Resources/ 6. Library Catalogs/ 7. Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS)/ 8. World Wide Web (WWW) ===== SELECT Gopher and Information Servers ===== Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 Gopher and Information Servers 1. All the Gopher Servers in the World/ 2. Search Gopherspace using veronica/ 3. Europe/ 4. Middle East/ 5. North America/ 6. Pacific/ 7. South America/ 8. Terminal Based Information/ 9. WAIS Based Information/ ===== SELECT North America ===== Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 North America 1. Canada/ 2. USA/ ===== SELECT Canada ===== Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 Canada 1. Bedford Institute Of Oceanography (Canada)/ 2. Camosun College, Victoria B.C. Canada/ 3. Dalhousie University/ 4. Dalhousie University's Unofficial Gopher Service/ 5. Lakehead University/ 6. Nova Scotia Technology Network, N.S., Canada/ 7. Queen's University, Kingston, Canada/ 8. Saint Mary's University (Canada)/ 9. Simon Fraser University (Canada)/ 10. Technical University of Nova Scotia (Canada)/ 11. Trent University, Peterborough Ont, Canada/ 12. University of Alberta/ 13. University of Guelph (Canada)/ 14. University of Manitoba/ 15. University of New Brunswick (unix server)/ 16. University of Toronto/ 17. University of Victoria, Canada/ 18. University of Victoria, Canada (Faculty of Fine Arts)/ ===== SELECT University of Toronto ===== Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 University of Toronto 1. About Internet Gopher. 2. Gopher at University of Toronto. 3. GP UNIX/ 4. Department of Physics, University of Toronto/ 5. Scarborough Campus/ 6. ONET information/ 7. CA*net Traffic Statistics/ 8. LISTSERV Archives/ 9. Other Gophers/ 10. Canadian Weather Information, via NSTN/ ===== SELECT LISTSERV Archives ===== Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 LISTSERV Archives 1. TACT-L - TACT-L Discussion - Electronic Forum for TACT Users/ 2. SHAKSPER - Shakespeare Electronic Conference/ 3. RESCOMP - RESCOMP - Research Computer Architecture Group/ 4. REED-L - REED-L: Records of Early English Drama Discussion/ 5. MACMAIL - MAC Mail Discussion List/ 6. IROQUOIS - Iroquois Language Discussion/ 7. INFO-MAC - INFO-MAC Digest/ 8. INFO-GCG - INFO-GCG: GCG Genetics Software Discussion/ 9. IBMPC-L - IBMPC Digest/ 10. I-KERMIT - INFO-KERMIT Digest/ 11. COCHCOSH - COCHCOSH Discussion/ 12. COCAMED - Computers in Canadian Medical Education/ 13. CDPLUS-L - CDPLUS Software User Group/ 14. BEST-L - Best North America Discussion group/ ===== SELECT SHAKSPER ===== SHAKSPER - Shakespeare Electronic Conference 1. shaksper.log9007. 2. shaksper.log9008. 3. shaksper.log9009. 4. shaksper.log9010. 5. shaksper.log9011. 6. shaksper.log9012. 7. shaksper.log9101. 8. shaksper.log9102. 9. shaksper.log9103. 10. shaksper.log9104. 11. shaksper.log9105. 12. shaksper.log9106. 13. shaksper.log9107. 14. shaksper.log9108. 15. shaksper.log9109. 16. shaksper.log9110. 17. shaksper.log9111. 18. shaksper.log9112. 19. shaksper.log9201. 20. shaksper.log9202. 21. shaksper.log9203. 22. shaksper.log9204. 23. shaksper.log9205. 24. shaksper.log9206. 25. shaksper.log9207. 26. shaksper.log9208. 27. shaksper.log9209. 28. shaksper.log9210. 29. shaksper.log9211. 30. shaksper.log9212. 31. shaksper.log9301. ===== SELECT SHAKSPER log and read ===== ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 07:22:46 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0007 Q: *Two Gentlemen of Verona* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 7. Wednesday, 6 January 1993. From: Adrian Kiernander Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 1993 12:54:09 +1300 Subject: TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA I am curently directing a production of _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ outdoors in Wellington, New Zealand (which to anybody who knows the climate in Wellington might seem foolhardy, but this is the 11th consecutive annual production and the weather hasn't been too much of a problem so far). I'd be interested in hearing any ideas anyone has on the play, and any references to any little-known published material would also be helpful. Jonathan Goldberg's work in _Voice Terminal Echo_ has been useful to us so far. I believe the script is much more interesting and substantial than most commentators give it credit for--we are playing it not at all as a Romantic Comedy but as a savage satire of a world of spoilt rich brats for whom rape is an internalised part of their conceptual framework--both Julia and Valentine say expressly that when women say no they really mean yes, Silvia says yes by seeming to say no, and Proteus notoriously tries the real thing. All four of them constantly relate to one another (as conveyers of status and/or wealth) through various mediating devices--letters, pictures, messages and so on, and Launce's use of Rent-a-Bride is only a more up-front example of the same thing. We're going deliberately anachronistic, using costume elements from both now (or more specifically the '80s) and the Elizabethan period, and making the fullest possible use of status symbols from both times. Verona 90210. I've also heard about a recent production in England which was set in a kind of Brideshead Revisited world--has anyone on the list seen this, and if so, how did it work? I look forward to any information/suggestions/etc. Adrian Kiernander English Department The University of Queensland (but currently operating out of Theatre and Film, Victoria University of Wellington.) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 07:29:25 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0008 Re: Burton Hamlet Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 8. Wednesday, 6 January 1993. (1) From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 93 00:23 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0004 R: Jacobi Hamlet; Q: Burton Hamlet (2) From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 93 05:12 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0004 R: Jacobi Hamlet; Q: Burton Hamlet (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 93 00:23 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0004 R: Jacobi Hamlet; Q: Burton Hamlet Leo, If you discover any extant copies of the Burton Hamlet video, please let me know. This is a prime candidate for closed captioning if we can identify the copyright holder. Many thanks, Vint Cerf (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 93 05:12 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0004 R: Jacobi Hamlet; Q: Burton Hamlet Leo, From the book: Shakespeare on Screen by Kenneth S. Rothwell and Annabelle Henkin Melzer, Neal-Schuman Publishers, 23 Leonard St., NY, NY 10013 page 70 117. Hamlet USA, 1964 Recorded at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York City, June 30/July 1, 1964. Directed by John Gielgud. Hamlet played by Richard Burton. Publisher: Classic Cinemas Copy location: Library of Congress, Motion Picture Division Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC Restrictions: Archival use ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 07:36:54 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0009 Gopher Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 9. Wednesday, 6 January 1993. (1) From: Peter Scott Date: Wednesday, 06 Jan 1993 06:09:16 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0006 SHAKSPER LOGS on Gopher (2) From: Peter Scott Date: Wednesday, 06 Jan 1993 06:18:53 -0600 (CST) Subj: Complete Shakespeare on Gopher at "World" Public Access Unix (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter Scott Date: Wednesday, 06 Jan 1993 06:09:16 -0600 (CST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0006 SHAKSPER LOGS on Gopher >The SHAKSPER logs are now available on Gopher, which offers an alternative >to ordering logs from LISTSERV. I would like to thank SHAKSPERean Ann >Miller, who suggested the idea to me, and Steve Younker, the LISTSERV >Manager at the University of Toronto, who mounted the logs on Gopher. > >If you do not know how to use Gopher, contact your Academic Computing >Service for details. A quicker way to get to the Toronto gopher is to use your gopher client (if, of course, one is installed on your system). At your system prompt type: gopher vm.utcs.utoronto.ca 70 This will take you directly to Toronto's gopher. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter Scott Date: Wednesday, 06 Jan 1993 06:18:53 -0600 (CST) Subject: Complete Shakespeare on Gopher at "World" Public Access Unix To access the Complete Works of Shakespeare on the Online Book Initiative at std.com, point your gopher client to: world.std.com 70 1. Information About The World Public Access UNIX/ 2. OBI The Online Book Initiative/ 3. Book Sellers/ 4. Electronic Frontier Foundation/ 5. FTP/ 6. Libraries/ 7. News/ 8. Other Gopher and Information Servers/ 9. Phone Books/ 10. Sun Managers/ 11. University of Minnesota Gopher Server/ Select item 2 OBI The Online Book Initiative 1. About The Online Book Initiative. 2. The OBI FAQ. 3. About The OBI Mailing Lists. 4. The Online Books/ Select item 4. Then select Shakespeare (currently item 115) Shakespeare 1. Comedies/ 2. Glossary/ 3. Histories/ 4. Shakespeare.complete. 5. Tragedies/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 14:50:05 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0010 Rs: *Two Gentlemen of Verona* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 10. Wednesday, 6 January 1993. (1) From: Thomas G. Bishop Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 93 12:46:23 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0007 Q: *Two Gentlemen of Verona* (2) From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Wednesday, January 6, 1993 Subj: RSC *Two Gentlemen* (3) From: Jay L Halio Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 1993 13:51:23 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0007 Q: *Two Gentlemen of Verona* (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Thomas G. Bishop Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 93 12:46:23 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0007 Q: *Two Gentlemen of Verona* >Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 7. Wednesday, 6 January 1993. > >From: Adrian Kiernander >Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 1993 12:54:09 +1300 >Subject: TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA > >I am curently directing a production of _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ >outdoors in Wellington, New Zealand (which to anybody who knows the climate >in Wellington might seem foolhardy, but this is the 11th consecutive annual >production and the weather hasn't been too much of a problem so far). I'd >be interested in hearing any ideas anyone has on the play, and any >references to any little-known published material would also be helpful. >Jonathan Goldberg's work in _Voice Terminal Echo_ has been useful to us so >far. I dont know if this really counts as "little known," but you might want to look at the Appendix to Robert Weimann's "Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater" which has some useful remarks on Launce and his relation to the audience. Good luck with the weather. -- Tom Bishop Dept of English Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH 44106. (tgb2@po.cwru.edu) (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Wednesday, January 6, 1993 Subject: RSC *Two Gentlemen* Robert Smallwood reviews David Thacker's "irresistible production" of *The Two Gentlemen of Verona* for the RSC at the Swan Theatre in the Fall 1992 *SQ* (43.4: 350-353). Smallwood maintains that "Setting the play in the 1930s, with an eight-piece band and singer upstage throughout the performance, Tacker achieved what seemed to me a legitimate and revealing relationship between social and verbal elegance and moral shallowness of the play's characters, and the same qualities in his chosen period." Smallwood thoroughly approved of Thacker's treatment as his concluding remarks reveal: In the silence that followed his [Proteus's] quiet and deliberate speech -- "I do as truly suffer / As e'er I did commit" -- one was aware of Sylvia looking very hard at Valentine, willing him to accept this apology; after that moment of understanding between them she moved across to the kneeling Proteus and put her arm round his shoulder, the first to forgive him. The notorious "All that was mine in Sylvia I give thee" thus came to mean something like "the mutual love and trust between Sylvia and me is something in which you can now share," and even as we were taking this in, Julia collapsed and we were into the mechanical unwinding of the plot that concludes the play. It was a daring and in many ways brilliant solution to what has so often been regarded, on the page, as an intractable problem; from seeming to many readers merely a property, a chattel, in the scene, the silent Sylvia was made its motor, and comic form was thus preserved. One could argue, of course, that from the character being the chattel of the dramatist's chauvinist vision the actress had become chattel of the director's sentimental invention, but that would be another essay. The scene made sense as directed, and Shakespeare's so- called failure, his apprentice work, his unplayable flop, became the hit of the season. I hope this helps. Hardy M. Cook HMCook@boe00.minc.umd.edu (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay L Halio Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 1993 13:51:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0007 Q: *Two Gentlemen of Verona* I saw the RSC performance at the Swan a couple of years ago (if that is the one referred to as a "Brideshead Revisited" setting), and it worked fine with torch songs sung between each act! See reviews and especially Tom Clayton's excellent analysis of the ending in *Shakespeare Bulletin* last year. Jay Halio ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 10:07:23 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0011 Electronic Shakespeare at the MLA Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 11. Thursday, 7 January 1993. (1) From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Thursday, January 7, 1993 Subj: Electronic Shakespeare at the MLA (2) From: John Lavagnino Date: Monday, 4 Jan 1993 21:09 EST Subj: Electronic Shakespeare at the MLA (3) From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Thursday, January 7, 1993 Subj: THE PUBLIC DOMAIN SHAKESPEARE by Ian Lancashire (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Thursday, January 7, 1993 Subject: Electronic Shakespeare at the MLA Dear SHAKSPEReans, About eighteen months, there was a lively discussion on SHAKSPER about the possibility of creating a Public-Domain, Old-Spelling Electronic Shakespeare. For that project, I offered a transcription of the 1609 Quarto of the Sonnets in an untagged and a minimally tagged version (available on the SHAKSPER Fileserver as SONNETS 1609Q and SONNETS TAG1609Q). One of our members, Dr. Ian Lancashire, Director of the Centre for Computing, University of Toronto, envisioned this project as a part of work already going on at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities. Some months ago, I began working with him on fully encoding the 1609 Quarto of the Sonnets and Lovers Complaint as a prototype electronic edition for a long-range project of developing accurate, scholarly electronic editions of Shakespeare's original texts. As we get close to the time that the Q1609 text will be ready to be released, Professor Lancashire reported on his vision of the entire Public Domain Shakespeare project at the Electronic Archives session at the 1992 MLA Convention. What follows is a summary of Professor Lancashire's presentation that was made by Michael Sperberg-McQueen and submitted to SHAKSPER by John Lavagnino. I did not believe that the summary conveyed as accurately as it could have the substance of Professor Lancashire's remarks, so I asked him if he would share his paper with us. He has agreed and the next posting contains excerpts of the MLA presentation. The complete paper with appendices is available of the SHAKSPER Fileserver as LANCSHIR PD_SHAKE. SHAKSPEReans can retrieve LANCSHIR PD_SHAKE by issuing the interactive command, "TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET LANCHIR PD_SHAKE SHAKSPER." If your network link does not support the interactive "TELL" command (i.e. if you are not directly on Bitnet), or if LISTSERV rejects your request, then send a one-line mail message (without a subject line) to LISTSERV@utoronto, reading "GET LANCSHIR PD_SHAKE SHAKSPER." (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Lavagnino Date: Monday, 4 Jan 1993 21:09 EST Subject: Electronic Shakespeare at the MLA I pass along an item from another list that you might want to post, on a discussion of electronic Shakespeares from the MLA. This is an excerpt from C. M. Sperberg-McQueen's "Trip Report: Modern Language Association," 30 December 1992, from the TEI-L list at uicvm.bitnet; this is from the account of the panel discussion on Electronic Archives, chaired by James Sosnowski, which took place at the MLA. (The entire text of the report is available as EDW34 DOC from listserv@uicvm.) John Lavagnino, Brandeis University Ian Lancashire spoke next, on "The Public-Domain Shakespeare," in which he reviewed the various versions of Shakespeare available in electronic form, including numerous versions of the Folio and early Quarto texts --- which however include only 64 texts of the canon, leaving 133 early printings yet un-electrified. He drew attention to the commercially available texts (some based on well known reputable editions, some not) as well as the many texts available from the Oxford Text Archive, and dwelt some time on the various methods adopted by encoders in handling such things as textual variation, archaisms of spelling, and corruption in the text. Many available texts contain editorial emendations, which IL curiously contrasted with "Shakespeare" pure and simple, to the detriment of the emenders. The opposition struck me as very odd, since "Shakespeare" pure and simple is precisely what the editors, by emending, are claiming not to be represented by the early printings. Unless IL wished to claim that the early printings of Shakespeare all represent the author's ipsissima verba, it seems dangerously misleading to refer to the early printings as "Shakespeare" and attempts to correct their defects as merely "editors". Phrased differently (the e-texts contain editorial interventions instead of simple reproductions of the sometimes dubious early printings), the point is valid and important but ceases to prejudice the case against the editors. IL's talk was supplemented by a handout, of which I was unable to secure a copy. This in itself signaled a happy turn of events: though he came prepared with a number more than ample for the usual turnout at sessions on electronic text, IL rapidly ran out of handouts in a crowd of over fifty people. The talk provided a usefully concrete supplement to the broad, sometimes vague, generalities of the other speakers. --- C. M. Sperberg-McQueen (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Thursday, January 7, 1993 Subject: THE PUBLIC DOMAIN SHAKESPEARE by Ian Lancashire THE PUBLIC DOMAIN SHAKESPEARE by Ian Lancashire Department of English University of Toronto Modern Language Association New York 29 December 1992, 10:15-11:30 a.m. Riverside Suite, Sheraton New York 1. What should a Public-Domain Shakespeare be? In his dedicatory poem to Shakespeare in the First Folio, Ben Jonson said, `He was not of an age, but for all time!' Despite this -- and after more than thirty years of electronic scholarship -- the 1623 and three later folio editions, and all the quarto versions, of Shakespeare's plays and poems are still not available in un-copy-protected electronic texts on the network. Instead, we have texts that either vary (without warning) from these early texts or that, although old-spelling copies, do not faithfully capture the bibliographical details of the originals. Shakespeare's works, altered silently or emended on explicit grounds, may be obtained commercially or freely in electronic form, but not the originals from which every one of these editions must flow. Trevor Howard-Hill's old-spelling versions in the Oxford Text Archive come closest to these originals, but a charge is still made for them, their copyright status is unclear, and they do not render the typography of the originals. See Appendix A for a list of these editions. For this reason, the editor of the SHAKSPER file-server, Hardy Cook, assisted by myself with encoding and proofing, is producing a prototype `public-domain' edition of Shakespeare's sonnets and `A Lover's Complaint' (1609). This edition records the fonts, including ligatures, of the original quarto and declines to introduce emendations, even of probable typos. We have encoded only non-interpretive features of the text such as signature, catchword, running-title, indentation, forme, sonnet number, rhyming scheme, etc. in both COCOA and SGML tagging syntax. We have not collated a variety of copies of the 1609 edition but rather just two quartos at the Folger Shakespeare Library, one as sold by Aspley and the other by Wright. Version 1.0 of `Shake- speares Sonnets' (1609) will be distributed from SHAKSPER and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at the University of Toronto. Anyone may copy, use, alter or store this public-domain edition anywhere in the world. The only restriction is that it be not sold commercially. The COCOA- and SGML-encoded files are being made available with some ancillary files: word-frequency lists (alphabetical, reverse alphabetical and descending frequency), tables of repeated phrases and of node-collocate pairs (with associational z-score), type-token statistics for word-and-letter frequency and length, and finally an interpretive dictionary of all word-forms that includes part-of-speech, lemmatized form, and normalized form. These ancillary files have been generated by the TACT system. With TACT, it is possible to obtain other displays with the COCOA-tagged version, as well as to tag words in the text by part-of-speech indicator, lemma and normalized form so as to produce other versions of the text for text analysis, for student editions, etc. 2. What Electronic Shakespeares are there? . . . 3. Why not to Trust Electronic Shakespeares . . . 4. Why Tag? and How? . . . 5. Conclusion A series of Shakespeare editions conceived along these lines should assist in the study of the language of Early Modern English by recording accurately the orthography, vocabulary and syntax of Shakespeare's works from the 1590s to the mid-17th century. This lexical database would contribute to the history of the language, specifically in light of the plans of Oxford University Press to issue a third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary within the next two decades. Each generation will make its own contribution to the study of Shakespeare. A carefully-prepared, conservative electronic series of texts, which is by no means an undoable task -- consider the work of Ted Brunner in his Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, or the astonishing Full-Text English Poetry Database from Chadwyck-Healey -- will provide a uniform foundation for new research, some of it hard to imagine at this time. I hope that the prototype electronic edition of the Shakespeare's sonnets and `Lover's Complaint' will be rigorously assessed by textual scholars of Shakespeare, because, like any electronic text, it will be `alive,' capable of being revised with relative ease, as long as the Internet or its successor networks are in place. Because corrections and additional encoding information may be added to an electronic text incrementally, and everyone contributing an improvement to the text is recorded in the TEI `history' of the file, these editions would increase in authority over the years. Hardy Cook will be undertaking further editions of Shakespeare's poems. We hope that other scholars will join us in this enjoyable, useful project. Appendix A. Draft List of Electronic Editions of Works by or Ascribed to Shakespeare Appendix B. Six Electronic Editions of Shakespeare's Sonnets 1-2: A Comparison ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 10:12:34 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0012 Ophelia and Hamlet Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 12. Thursday, 7 January 1993. From: Jean Peterson Date: Wednesday, 6 Jan 1993 15:27:59 -0500 Subject: hamlet/ophelia First a belated reply to Kevin Berland's comment on Jacobi's reading of the line "they HAVE made me mad"; I thought the point was his recognition of his brutal treatment of Ophelia, the horrified realization that he had been driven to behave with such viciousness to, yes, this nice and rather naive young woman he loves or at least thought he loved. "Strong" Ophelia's do indeed have to play very hard against the text-- although that's not impossible (I think Diane Venora--is that the name?--in the Kevin Kline production managed it effectively). Still, by the time the poor girl has been driven to mutter "I think nothing, my lord," I think she has little personal strength left in reserve. But her situation does parallel Hamlet's in ways that are significant. She succumbs to the demands of corrupted authority, while Hamlet agonizes over precisely that problem (what if the "father" asking him to kill is "a goblin damned"?); she goes mad in earnest, though he only pretends to, and, if the gravediggers are to be believed, she really kills herself, while Hamlet only talks about it... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 22:58:30 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0013 Q: Video Copyrights Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 13. Thursday, 7 January 1993. From: Luc Borot Date: Thursday, 07 Jan 93 14:41 Subject: Help for video copyright enquiries! From: Luc Borot Subject: Where to ask for copyright for video? Dear fellow SHAKSPEReans, I am sending a message in this bottle of ours about a problem my colleague Patricia Dorval in Montpellier is encountering. One of her papers on the semantics of representation was accepted by Theatre Research International. She managed to digitize stills from videos of Shakespeare's plays, and must get copyright to have the pictures included with the paper. The amount of time spent on the video-scanner is enormous, as one may guess. She discovered that the addresses given in the directory of producing companies published in the recent book *Shakespeare on Video* are wrong: several letters were returned to her undelivered. Now time is pressing and she must obtain a speedy answer. Could anyone on the screen help to find the real addresses of the following companies: RCA/Columbia for Brookes' King Lear, Polanski's Macbeth and Branagh's H5. FCM for Mankewicz Julius Caesar and Welles's Macbeth. BBC television for their productions of King Lear and Macbeth in the BBC Shakespeare series. Many thanks to those who will provide this information to this excellent young researcher. Please DO NOT use the aforesaid book published by Cassell's about a year ago: we dunnit and it's all WRONG (Pat even reports mistakes in the cast lists and directors for many, many films). There may be a flaming outburst in her review in n 43 of *Cahiers*. Cheers, Luc ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:47:31 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0014 Assorted Video Qs and a R Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 14. Friday, 8 January 1993. (1) From: Laurie E. Osborne Date: Friday, 8 Jan 93 10:50:41 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0013 Q: Video Copyrights (2) From: James Anderson Date: Friday, 08 Jan 1993 10:14:14 CST Subj: RE: SHK 3.0316 Taming of the Shrew in Film and Television (3) From: John Cox Date: Friday, 8 Jan 1993 14:29 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0013 Q: Video Copyrights (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Laurie E. Osborne Date: Friday, 8 Jan 93 10:50:41 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0013 Q: Video Copyrights A related question in a bottle. For those of you who have not heard about this yet, Home Box Office has been showing half hour animated Shakespeare plays made, I believe, in Russia. Since I am working on *Twelfth Night* on film, I would like to get hold of a copy of the *Twelfth Night* if anyone had the fores foresight to tape it. HBO informs me that they will not be showing TN again at least until they finish the sequence. Since I was unable to sign up for November and December I have missed MSND and TN. This month and next month they are playing *Hamlet* and *Romeo and Juliet*. We will probably get HBO for these two, so if anyone is interested, let me know. Laurie E. Osborne leosborn@colby.edu (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: James Anderson Date: Friday, 08 Jan 1993 10:14:14 CST Subject: RE: SHK 3.0316 Taming of the Shrew in Film and Television Did anyone find a source for a video of the "Moonlighting" rendition of Shrew? I would like to obtain one. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Cox Date: Friday, 8 Jan 1993 14:29 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0013 Q: Video Copyrights Luc, The latest edition of *Lingua Franca* has an article about a scholar of film who encountered the very problem you describe your colleague having. He simply assumed that the "fair use" rule applied in his case, implicitly chal- lenging the copyright owners to do anything about it. So far, as reported in *Lingua Franca*, he is getting away with it. Sorry I don't have the precise reference at hand, but let me know if you want it. John Cox ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 17:23:51 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0015 R: Ophelia and Hamlet Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 15. Saturaday, 9 January 1993. From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Saturday, 09 Jan 93 00:22:30 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0012 Ophelia and Hamlet As this discussion bent towards the enticing idea of an energetic Ophelia, I thought I might encourage SHAKSPER folks to look at Ophelia's role in the Q1 text. In her opening dialogue with Laertes and later in the same scene with poppa Corambis she seems to me bouncier, spunkier, resisting rather than resigned to the inevitability of male domination. Seeing her role in Q1 then throws the shadows of the "real" text drawn from Q2 into sharper relief. I was much taken by the helplessness of Ophelia's "I do not know, my lord, what I should think," a line only in Q2 and F, her response to her father's cynical spitting on Hamlet's tenders of affection. Then I happened to be reading Lyn Mikel Brown & Carol Gilligan MEETING AT THE CROSSROADS: WOMEN'S PSYCHOLOGY AND GIRLS' DEVELOPMENT, and they report the girls in their study went from a time of great confidence and certainty about their world, spinning into a time of deep uncertainty ("I just don't know what to say" appears repeatedly in the transcripts of the authors' conversations with the girls). Ah Hah! Q1 was the version revised by Shakespeare's company when they were playing to audiences of pre-adolescent girls . . . Q1 was the version based on Shakespeare's observation of pre-adolescent girls before he saw his own daughters enter the "time of insecurity" . . . The apprentice who pirated Q1 was a preadolescent girl . . . Ah, hypotheses. Forget for a bit what the sources of the texts might have been, and look at the role. As ever, Steve Ur-quarto-witz SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 17:28:55 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0016 Re: Cox's Response to Video Copyright Query Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 16. Saturaday, 9 January 1993. From: Luc Borot Date: Saturday, 09 Jan 93 12:17 Subject: R to John Cox From Luc Borot R. to John Cox on video copyrights Thanks to John Cox for his opinion. The paper you mention is interesting, but I would like to respond more realistically, if I may: producers don't see it this way and such a scholarly journal as OUP's *Theatre Research International* will not publish the stills if the producers don't permit! For *Cahiers Elisabethains* the policy is the same, though we sometimes lose good pictures for want of copyright: the threats these people throw at us are quite often substantialised by legal pursuit, which would completely drown any academic enterprise. I wish they did like publishers: when you or I quote one another in a scholarly paper, no one requests us to produce copyright, and I do not think there is much difference between 10 lines from an article and a still or a sequence of 4 or 5 stills from a film. I don't think the scholar, as end-user, should be the one to take the risk: he or she cannot afford to win --or certainly lose-- a trial against a major cinema company. Thanks for the reference, anyway, Luc ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 16:05:34 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0018 Re: R: Ophelia and Hamlet Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 18. Monday, 11 January 1993. From: William Proctor Williams Date: Saturday, 09 Jan 93 23:57 CSTU> Subject: Re: SHK 4.0015 R: Ophelia and Hamlet Well, Steve is, as always, RIGHT. Good on him for getting that reading right. William Proctor Williams TB0WPW1@NIU ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 23:19:23 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 19. Monday, 11 January 1993. From: John T. Aney Date: Monday, 11 Jan 93 16:22:19 EST Subject: Marriage quotes I had an interesting experience this last month I thought I might share with everyone here and, in so doing, try and resolve a dilemma. My fiancee and I are getting married in August. Two weeks ago, we ordered the invitations (needed to do things while we were home during vacation). I had wanted a quotation from Shakespeare on the invitiation, since the two of us are both Shakespeare fan, although in my case its an obsession. Anyway, I had not yet begun looking for a suitable quotation, but in one of the invitiation sample books you order from they had a quote you could choose that read: "And this our life, our beginning." Shakespeare I had no idea what the quote was from, and since I don't yet know the entire canon by heart, I figured I would look it up when I got back to my research library. Guess what? None of the concordances I checked had this quote, or anything similar, in either the plays or the poems. The electronic Riverside Shakespeare, which also includes the poems, also drew a total and utter blank. The closest thing I could find was "and this our life" from the poems in trees and books in running brooks speech in AYLI. If anyone . . . ANYONE recognizes this quote, please let me know. This kind of thing kills me. I will NOT have a quote on my wedding invitation that I cannot verify! (Can you blame me, I mean really!) In addition, if anyone knows of any SUITABLE short quotes that might be construed as having to do with marriage, and/or the beginning of a life together, please let me know. It's kinda silly, and non-scholarly, I know, but I think people should know if things are being passed off as Shakespeare to the general public, eh? jta ----Go Bill and Al!--- Finally, a President who _admits_ that there will be sax in the White House! -JANEY@UCS.INDIANA.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:06:40 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0020 Re: Marriage Quotations Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 20. Tuesday, 12 January 1993. From: Nikki Parker Date: Tueday, 12 Jan 1993 09:00:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations jta, For one, I loved your message! I have no idea about the quote you gave, but how about the one from Taming of the Shrew by Kate . . . with her hand under his foot. No, seriously...I was just kidding! I'll be sure to let you know if I find one. By the way, do you think (or does anyone think) Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy is about suicide, or the love of life? (long-standing argument with a friend). Best wishes from chilly Vermont (and my congratualations!) Nikki Parker St. Michael's College ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:11:45 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0021 NEH Summer Seminar Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 21. Tuesday, 12 January 1993. From: Jay L Halio Date: Tuesday, 12 Jan 1993 15:15:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: [NEH Summer Seminar] For the last decade or so, the National Endowment for the Humanities has sponsored summer seminars for school teachers as well as seminars for college teachers. The seminars may go for four, five, or six weeks, and directors are remunerated accordingly. Teachers also receive stipends, and funds are available for supplies, overhead, administrative assistance, etc. This summer, I shall direct my sixth seminar for school teachers, for the first time in collaboration with another scholar, Tom Clayton of Minnesota. But untypically, ours is the only Shakespeare seminar offered this year. Usually two or three seminars on Shakespeare are included among the more than fifty offered (this year there are--count 'em--69!). The current situation is unfortunate, and I'm writing to encourage all interested to send for information and application forms to: Division of Fellowships and Seminars National Endowment for the Humanities Washington, DC 20506 Deadline for applications is April 1, so there is still plenty of time to make inquiries, submit applications, and obtain the necessary letters of reference. These seminars really beat teaching summer school, I can attest. Limited to fifteen participants chosen from applicants all over the country, the seminars invariably attract highly-motivated, able school teachers who truly appreciate the opportunity to recharge their batteries by taking high-level, stimulating seminars with their peers. (Note: The seminars are, by design, not pedagogical but content-oriented.) Application forms are not terribly complicated or lengthy, and NEH offers help to prospective directors draft their proposals. Stipends range up to 2/9 base salary (plus fringes) for a six-weeks seminar, and up to $2,000 (plus fringes) is available for administrative assistance. Michael Hall at NEH is the program officer in charge. you can give or Jean Hughes a call for information. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 07:21:02 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0022 Rs: Marriage Quotations Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 22. Wednesday, 13 January 1993. (1) From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Tuesday, 12 Jan 93 21:26:28 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations (2) From: Mari S. Dillon Date: Tuesday, 12 Jan 1993 19:26:46 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0020 Re: Marriage Quotations (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Tuesday, 12 Jan 93 21:26:28 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations THESEUS: Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth. Joy, gentle friends! Joy and fresh days of love accompany your hearts! LYSANDER: More than to us Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed! MND 5.1 Another comes from a very early work by Shakespeare, in his less Greek phase: Odysseus to Nausikaa, And may the gods accomplish your desire: a home, a husband, and harmonious converse with him--the best thing in the world being a strong house held in serenity where man and wife agree. Woe to their enemies, joy to their friends! But all this they know best. trans. Robert Fitzgerald Don't know if either might go on an invitation, but they might work for a toast. Mazel tov! Steve Urkowitz SURCC@CUNYVM (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mari S. Dillon Date: Tuesday, 12 Jan 1993 19:26:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0020 Re: Marriage Quotations Nikki, I always was taught this: when he goes into the speech, he is questioning life. To be or not to be . . . should I live or should I die? If you go back and reread that particular piece, you'll see what I'm talking about. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 07:56:35 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0023 More Marriage Quotations Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 23. Thursday, 14 January 1993. (1) From: John S. Massa Date: Wednesday, 13 Jan 93 09:17 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations (2) From: Charles Crupi Date: Wednesday, 13 Jan 1993 10:29 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations (3) From: William Kemp Date: Wednesday, 13 Jan 93 22:39:00 EST Subj: re marriage quotations (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John S. Massa Date: Wednesday, 13 Jan 93 09:17 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations My favorite Shakespeare marriage quotation: KATHERINE:... Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee, And for thy manitenance commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe, And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience, Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband, And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel, And graceless rebel to her loving lord? The Taming of the Shrew, 5.2, 151 This should get your marriage off to a great start! :) Best Wishes! (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Charles Crupi Date: Wednesday, 13 Jan 1993 10:29 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0019 Marriage Quotations Have a look at JOHN 3.1.152ff. Good luck. (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Kemp Date: Wednesday, 13 Jan 93 22:39:00 EST Subject: re marriage quotations Journeys end in lovers' meeting. Bill Kemp Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Va. wkemp@s850.mwc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 09:46:07 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0024 Q: Theobald's Rowe Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 24. Thursday, 14 January 1993. From: Nick Clary Date: Thursday, 14 Jan 1993 09:22:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: Theobald's Rowe Does anyone know whether Theobald had Rowe's 1709 or 1714 text, or both? A colleague is certain that Seary would know. She believes that it may even be in his book on Theobald, but she didn't make a note of it. Thank you in advance for whatever assistance you can give. Nick Clary clary@smcvax.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1993 07:16:48 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0025 Rs: Marriage Quotations; Theobald's Rowe; "To be" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 25. Friday, 15 January 1993. (1) From: Nikki Parker Date: Thursday, 14 Jan 1993 13:01:34 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0023 More Marriage Quotations (2) From: William Proctor Williams Date: Thursday, 14 Jan 93 16:07 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0024 Q: Theobald's Rowe (3) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Thursday, 14 Jan 93 17:21:12 PST Subj: SHK 4.0020 Re: Marriage Quotations (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nikki Parker Date: Thursday, 14 Jan 1993 13:01:34 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0023 More Marriage Quotations I thought of one, but I think it's quoted wrong...... "Give us your hands, and now, your hearts." Best wishes, Nikki Parker St. Michael's College Colchester, Vt. n_parker@smcvax.smcvt.edu (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Proctor Williams Date: Thursday, 14 Jan 93 16:07 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0024 Q: Theobald's Rowe It is not at all clear. Seary notes that Pope used Rowe 1714 but in the list of works only 1709 is cited. I haven't had the time to work through Seary's index, but it would appear he doesn't say and/or implies Theobald had both. I think Seary is on this list so maybe he can clear this up. William Proctor Williams TB0WPW1@NIU (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Thursday, 14 Jan 93 17:21:12 PST Subject: SHK 4.0020 Re: Marriage Quotations I'm puzzled about thinking of "To be or not to be" as either about suicide or the love of life. Isn't it about both? I mean, isn't it about the fear of taking suicidal action, in view of the sweetness of life? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1993 09:24:27 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0026 Re: Theobald's Rowe Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 26. Saturday, 16 January 1993. From: Peter David Seary Date: Friday, 15 Jan 1993 11:18:05 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0025 Theobald's Rowe In his "TABLE OF The several EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS, Collected by the Editor," *Works of Shakespeare* (1733), vol. I, sigs. Ii3v-Ii4r, Theobald has both the 1709 and the 1714 editions of Rowe's *Shakespear*. There is some discussion of Theobald's use of Rowe in my *Lewis Theobald and the Editing of Shakespeare* (Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 56, 58-60, 70, 133-34. Peter Seary New College University of Toronto (pseary@epas.utoronto.ca) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1993 09:50:54 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0027 Re: "To be" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 27. Saturday, 16 January 1993. (1) From: Nikki Parker Date: Friday, 15 Jan 1993 09:07:12 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: Rs: Marriage Quotations; Theobald's Rowe; "To be" (2) From: Timothy Bowden Date: Friday, 15 Jan 93 06:19:08 PST Subj: Re: Rs: Marriage Quotations; Theobald's Rowe; "To be (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nikki Parker Date: Friday, 15 Jan 1993 09:07:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Rs: Marriage Quotations; Theobald's Rowe; "To be" In Hamlet's "to be or not to be", I'm inclined to think that is the *thought* of suicide, but then the pondering of the possibilities of what goes on after death..."aye, there's the rub" seems to be the turning point where Hamlet sees that no one knows what happens after one dies, and it could be worse than life itself. All in all, I find it a wonderful monologue. Nikki Parker St. Michael's College Colchester, VT (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Timothy Bowden Date: Friday, 15 Jan 93 06:19:08 PST Subject: Re: Rs: Marriage Quotations; Theobald's Rowe; "To be > From: Kay Stockholder > I'm puzzled about thinking of "To be or not to be" as either about > suicide or the love of life. Isn't it about both? I mean, isn't it about > the fear of taking suicidal action, in view of the sweetness of life? How can `the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' be sweet? And, if they are, why contemplate suicide at all? It was fear of the unknown, that `undiscovered country', which stayed his hand to Act V. I think it was clear our boy Hamlet was by no means a happy camper, and what's more he says so quite clearly and often. Manic depression seems the best diagnosis I've read, though reams of paper have been devoted to the topic... -Tim's Timid Topic Template ========================================================= tcbowden@clovis.felton.ca.us (Timothy Bowden) uunet!scruz.ucsc.edu!clovis.felton.ca.us!tcbowden Clovis in Felton, CA ========================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1993 17:18:02 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0028 More on "To be or not to be" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 28. Saturday, 16 January 1993. From: Barbara Fister Date: Saturday, 16 Jan 1993 15:21 CST Subject: to be or not to be It seems to me that the "to be or not to be" speech is an attempt to apply a rigorous logic to a big question--why DO people put up with life when it's so rotton? He calmly and rationally works through it, deciding that on the whole we don't see mass suicide because people are afraid of the unknown. I don't think the significance of the speech lies in the reasoning expressed so much as in the fact that Hamlet is using that particular approach at that particular time. He has recently taken a theatrical mode to unpack his mixed feelings ("O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!") dialogically arguing about what he should do, and right after his logical interlude debating suicide he falls apart with Ophelia--wondering again just what should we do, "crawling between heaven and earth?" I think the speech is an interesting attempt of Hamlet, the scholar, student, and rational man, to settle a question which we quickly see is not at all settled by logical means. As for diagnosing Hamlet's condition, some of my best friends are manic depressive; I don't believe for a moment he is. (Claudius would agree--"his speech, tho' it lacked form a little, was not like madness") On the other hand, Ophelia exhibits some symptoms that would interest any clinical psychologist. Barbara Fister fister@gacvx1.gac.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1993 08:40:55 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0029 "To be or not to be" (con't) Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 29. Sunday, 17 January 1993. (1) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Saturday, 16 Jan 93 15:30:34 PST Subj: SHK 4.0027 Re: "To be" (2) From: Timothy Bowden Date: Saturday, 16 Jan 93 15:22:36 PST Subj: Re: More on "To be or not to be (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Saturday, 16 Jan 93 15:30:34 PST Subject: SHK 4.0027 Re: "To be" During that soliloquy he thinks of life as painful, but when he contemplates Fortinbras' army he reflects on the worthlessness of the cause for which so many risk their lives, and blames himself for cowardice. The entire play can be seen as a process by bringing himself to accept death, a process that culminates when he both contemplates and smells Yorick's skull. He's clearly depressed, but even depressed people have to contend with the sweetness of life [as asserted by Edgar]. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Timothy Bowden Date: Saturday, 16 Jan 93 15:22:36 PST Subject: Re: More on "To be or not to be > From: Barbara Fister > As for diagnosing Hamlet's condition, some of my best friends are > manic depressive; I don't believe for a moment he is. (Claudius would > agree--"his speech, tho' it lacked form a little, was not like madness") I think maybe psychiatrists are overrated; we could do as well right here. For instance, Claudius was looking for thought disorder, which we might call schizophrenia and which Hamlet only feigned, as did Gloucester's kid Edmund in _Lear_, and did not contemplate melancholia, which was I think considered more a pastime of the serious man than a disability anyway (Antonio opens _Merchant of Venice_ musing on it and one cloistered cleric of the era wrote a classic treatise on the subject or something like it called _Anatomy of Melancholy_). A working hypothesis of our local psych counseling guild is that subjects who inertly brood on dark topics and break off promising romances (Hamlet as Woody Allen?) and go about running their rapiers into any old arras and end up wrestling with rivals in open graves and proclaiming loudly to skulls should routinely be treated with librium. I can't tell you how many we've helped that way. If this be error, and 'pon me proved I never pushed it, lest I was shoved -Tremonius ========================================================= tcbowden@clovis.felton.ca.us (Timothy Bowden) uunet!scruz.ucsc.edu!clovis.felton.ca.us!tcbowden Clovis in Felton, CA ========================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 09:12:32 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0030 "To be or not to be" (con't) Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 30. Tuesday, 19 January 1993. (1) From: Anthony Teague Date: Monday, 18 Jan 93 10:34:26 00900 Subj: To be or not to be (2) From: Luc Borot Date: Monday, 18 Jan 93 10:58 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0029 "To be or not to be" (con't) (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anthony Teague Date: Monday, 18 Jan 93 10:34:26 00900 Subject: To be or not to be I have always found the long note starting on page 484 of Harold Jenkins's Arden edition of "Hamlet" to be very helpful in getting students (and self) away from a too suicidal reading of the speech. Recalling that "the question" has a technical sense as the topic for discussion in an academic 'disputacio' helps, because in such debates there could be no right and wrong answers, only the quotation of authorities to support various responses. Jenkins also helps by reminding me that "To be or not to be" is a recognized abreviation of the full topic "Whether it be better to be alive though unhappy, or to be dead." I feel that the necessarily inconclusive nature of the debate is the main dramatic point (conscience making cowards of us all) because the speech is a dramatic representation of one of the play's main themes, the one about the way thinking makes life more complicated, while action devoid of thought makes beasts of us. "To think, or not to think?" There is no particular reason why the speech should represent a suicidal crisis, given the point in the play at which it comes. That it also reminds us and Hamlet that death is down the road waiting, whatever we do, is sure. I tend to tell my students that the speech is basically directed towards the question of "What to do, since suicide is not an option" and I suspect that it could equally well be paraphrased as "To act or not to act"! Anthony Teague, Sogang University, Seoul Korea (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Luc Borot Date: Monday, 18 Jan 93 10:58 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0029 "To be or not to be" (con't) From Luc Borot On: T Bowden's view on Renaissance melancholy Dear all, In the debate on "to be or not to be", I wonder if I got T. Bowden's opinion right. The point made seems to be that Melancholy was a pastime for the genteel. This is what we may think with hindsight, but the belief was that it was indeed a genuine disease, for which there were cures. As for Burton, he seems to look upon melancholy as a social threat (sometimes an ontological threat) for which social and medical cures must be found (there is a utopia in Democritus Junior's prologue). We are not 'better' because 'more advanced' than Elizabethans, high ly civilized creatures themselves, and we do not 'better' know what they saw than they did. The text we deal with is so full of things from those times that the debate so far has been a trifle lightish, I'm afraid. Cheers to all, and please BE... Luc ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 14:44:17 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0031 Rs: Theobald's Rowe; Marriage Quotations Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 31. Tuesday, 19 January 1993. (1) From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 1993 09:37 EDT Subj: THEOBALD AND ROWE (2) From: Zanne Westfall Pardee Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 93 14:06:22 EDT Subj: more marriages [quotations] (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bernice Kliman Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 1993 09:37 EDT Subject: THEOBALD AND ROWE Dear Professor Seary, Thanks for your references. I wonder if Theobald did anything more than list the Rowe. Is there any proof that he held the books in his hands, examined them, read them thoroughly? I know how difficult it was in the early 18th century to get books and while Theobald may have known of Rowe and even used Rowe indirectly through Pope, I wonder if he ever really looked at the text carefully. Any ideas? I will certainly look at your book again, which I read about a year ago with great pleasure. I agree with you that Theobald did some magnificent work that has been dismissed and belittled. The whole issue on competition interests me very much. All the best, Bernice W. Kliman (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Zanne Westfall Pardee Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 93 14:06:22 EDT Subject: more marriages [quotations] *As You Like It* 3.3 is rich with goodies. My personal favorite (for my wedding actually) is Touchstone's "Come, sweet Audrey: We must be married, or we must live in bawdry." Cheers. Suzanne Westfall ws#1@lafayacs.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 15:16:17 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0032 "To be or not to be"; Melancholy Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 32. Tuesday, 19 January 1993. (1) From: Timothy Pinnow Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 93 12:30:14 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0030 "To be or not to be" (con't) (2) From: Nikki Parker Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 1993 13:42:06 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0030 "To be or not to be" (con't) (3) From: Rick Jones Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 1993 13:16:47 -0600 (CST) Subj: Melancholy (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Timothy Pinnow Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 93 12:30:14 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0030 "To be or not to be" (con't) I find Anthony Teague's argument quite interesting. One of the problems actors have always found with playing Hamlet is that it is just darn hard to play something as passive as melancholia or indecisiveness for four and a half hours and have an audience bother listening. I agree that Hamlet really isn't talking about suicide--he goes to awfully great lengths to figure out his situation. That doesn't sound to me like someone who is so depressed that he is ready to give up on life. Nor do I think that a tragic hero in the definitional sense can be prone to giving up--we would lose the blind passion that inevitably creates the tragic flaw. What I would suggest is that Hamlet is not wondering whether to live or die, or whether to act or not, but HOW to act effectively. And I use the word "act" in its fullest theatrical sense. What if Hamlet realized he was being watched? Could this not then be an instance of "putting an antic disposition on"? We also have the advice to the players to suggest that Hamlet realizes the uses of good acting, Hamlet as feigned melodrama in "to be or not to be" would certainly seem plausible to me. And, it is eminently more playable for the actor. Those who wish to delve into this idea further may wish to consult David Ball's *Backwards and Forwards* So. Ill. Univ. Press. or my own article "Towards a new Hamlet:breathing new life into an old character" In *Text and Presentation* vol. 11, 1991. Timothy Pinnow St. Olaf College Northfield MN (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nikki Parker Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 1993 13:42:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0030 "To be or not to be" (con't) To all, Just wanted to say how impressed and enlightened I have been from the "To be or not to be" discussion, I think it would be benificial if students in high school got this kind of information! I blush to remember how long it first took me to realize that "wherefore" meant "why" and not "where" in *Romeo & Juliet* Warm wishes from a cold state! (must be at least 10 degrees today!) Nikki Parker St. Michael's College Colchester, Vermont "Aye, tis not what seems..." -Hamlet (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 1993 13:16:47 -0600 (CST) Subject: Melancholy A few further thoughts on the Renaissance conception of melancholy: Yes, it was a disease, with specific symptoms and cures. And yes, it was regarded as the particular province of the upper classes. There's a wonderful short scene in one of Lyly's plays in which a working-class character claims to be melancholic, but is roundly chewed out by a servant: working class people have the rheum, or catarrh, etc.; nobles have melancholy. I can look up the reference (I think it's either _Gallathea_ or _Midas_) if anyone's interested. A modern parallel might be the term "eccentric", which tends to be applied to rich folk; poor people who behave the same way are just weird. Also, there were a number of forms of melancholy. The most common was love melancholy, and male lovers were *expected* to show the symptoms: dishevelment, lack of focus, loss of appetite, etc. Shakespeare's comedies abound with examples, Orlando being the one that comes most readily to my mind at the moment. On the other hand, there was also a more pathological form, which generally manifested itself as jealousy or envy. This form shows up more often in the tragedies and histories (the Richards, for example). In between is the sort of mainstream version, the one which afflicts Hamlet (or, depending on the interpretation, which Hamlet affects). There have been a couple of quite good books on the subject of melancholy -- I don't have the references handy, but could look them up pretty quickly if anyone is interested. Rick Jones Cornell College rjones@cornell-iowa.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 11:43:43 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0033 Folger Library Awarded $2.5 Million Grant Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 33. Wednesday, 20 January 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Wednesday, January 20, 1993 Subject: Folger Library Grant FOLGER LIBRARY NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 13, 1993 CONTACT: Janet A. Griffin (202) 675-0343 Bruce Trachtenberg (212) 9S3-1200 Jerry Tyson (202) 466-8222 FOLGER LIBRARY AWARDED $2.5 MILLION GRANT Plans to Expand Public Programming WASHINGTON, DC--The Folger Shakespeare Library announced today receipt of a $2.5 million grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund for "Project Access" to expand public programming. This is the largest award received by the library since its founding 60 years ago. M. Christine DeVita, president of the Fund, said "Project Access will make it possible for the Folger Shakespeare Library to substantially improve the way it presents its collections and offer new educational and outreach programs. This will enable the library to develop fully its role as a public cultural institution." Funds for Project Access will be used to: o refurbish and upgrade the Folger's 250-seat Elizabethan Theatre o create a full schedule of varied cultural programs for the Theatre o create an expanded museum program with new exhibit spaces and a multilingual, interactive video center for programs on Shakespeare and his age o increase the number of public humanities programs and interpretative exhibitions which highlight the library's extensive collection of books, manuscripts, and artifacts o improve access to the building, its public spaces, and its programs for people with disabilities o enable the Folger's programs and exhibitions to reflect the diversity of the community According to Folger Director Werner Gundersheimer, Project Access is an integral part of the library's Jubilee Campaign, announced on its 60th anniversary last year with an overall goal of $20 million. Jubilee Campaign funds will enhance core collections, support operating costs, and improve scholarly and public access to the library's resources. One of a handful of private research libraries in this country originally established to support advanced research, the Folger, according to Gundersheimer, "has always explored new ways to make the cultural legacy of the Renaissance meaningful to everyone, and this new grant will help us intensify our efforts." Project Access has been initiated with seed funding from the Marpat Foundation of Washington, DC. To help create a vibrant and thriving cultural life that adds vitality to our nation and provides enriching experiences for people across the country, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund supports programs in performing, visual, literary, and folk arts; adult literacy, and urban parks. With annual grants of more than $30 million, the Fund is the largest private funder of art and culture in the United States. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 12:58:36 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0034 "To be or not to be"; Melancholy (con't) Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 34. Wednesday, 20 January 1993. (1) From: Ronald Dwelle Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 93 17:54:10 EST Subj: SHK 4.0032 "To be or not to be"; Melancholy (2) From: Hope Greenberg Date: Wednesday, 20 Jan 1993 09:12:24 -500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0032 "To be or not to be"; Melancholy (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ronald Dwelle Date: Tuesday, 19 Jan 93 17:54:10 EST Subject: SHK 4.0032 "To be or not to be"; Melancholy Regarding Timothy Pinnow's comment on Hamlet's question on how to "act" (in the "To be or not..." passage), I recall being shocked by the Richard Chamberlain production of Hamlet, in which the director made it obvious that Polonius and Claudius were overhearing Hamlet's soliloquy and that Hamlet became aware of their presence during the course of the speech. It changes the nature and import of the speech dramatically. I've always wondered if there was anything in the acting tradition to support this presentation of such a central speech. If Hamlet is not "speaking alone," the speech's meaning is very different! Ron Dwelle (dweller@gvsu.edu) GVSU, Allendale, MI (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hope Greenberg Date: Wednesday, 20 Jan 1993 09:12:24 -500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0032 "To be or not to be"; Melancholy Re: Melancholia: Has anyone ever made a connection between melancholy as an upper class disease and sugar as a staple (or as a new and exciting oft-served main course) of the upper class diet? H Greenberg, another north-country inhabitant (Hi Nikki) University of Vermont, Burlington ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 07:35:23 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0035 Re: "To be or not to be" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 35. Thursday, 21 January 1993. From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Wednesday, 20 Jan 1993 18:49 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0034 "To be or not to be"; Melancholy (con't) Re overhearing "to be": Derek Jacobi was convinced that Ophelia overhears him, an interpretation I saw also a few years ago in Boston. When Jacobi directed the play recently, he had Ophelia not only overhear but be an active listener, with Hamlet holding her hands and speaking directly to her. Re Chamberlain: the director moves the actor around during the speech so that he seems to be brooding about death and action for a long, long time. Only at the end does he enter the church where he will see Ophelia, far below him. I believe he notices the shadows of Pol and Claud only after he has begun speaking to her. The speech is internal during "to be". Since I am now coordinating the New Variorum Hamlet project, nicknamed the 2001 project, I would welcome any copies of published or unpublished papers on words, phrases, lines, whole speeches and the like. Send to me at 70 Glen Cove Drive, Glen Head, NY 11545. Thanks! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 21:40:47 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0036 Q: Electronic Access to the Folger Library Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 36. Thursday, 21 January 1993. From: Hope Greenberg Date: Thursday, 21 Jan 1993 10:13:15 -500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0033 Folger Library Awarded $2.5 Million Grant The news about Project Access (expanding the offerings at the Folger) is very interesting. Are there any plans to use some of that funding to establish ways to "reach out" electronically in some way? Hope Greenberg, not within commuting distance of DC.. University of Vermont [Editor's Note: The posting mentioned above consists entirely of the Press Release I obtained from the Folger Library last Friday. During my previous visit to the Folger, the week before, I learned that the Library is in the process of being "wired" to give staff members Internet access through Amherst College. Some of the Folger Library's staff, have expressed an interest in joining our electronic discussion group, but I have no knowledge of any plans at the moment for further electronic "outreach." I encourage any SHAKSPERean with additional knowledge to share it with us. In the meantime, I believe that it would be highly appropriate for members of our electronic conference who are so inclined to write to the Director, Dr. Werner Gundersheimer, The Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003-1094, expressing your interest in ways that the Folger Library could "reach out" electronically to the academic community. hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 21:48:32 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0037 Shakespeare in the Comics Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 37. Thursday, 21 January 1993. From: Chris Gladis Date: Thursday, 21 Jan 1993 09:59:59 -0500 (EST) Subject: A different angle As a new member to SHAKSPER, I thought I might make mention of something I found very interesting. In the comic book _Sandman_, published by DC Comics, a story was written about Shakespeare, contending that Dream had given Will what he thought he most wanted in return for two plays about dreams. The story centered around an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, of course, with the entire court of Faerie as the audience. It was quite a good story, involving Shakespeare's son as well. All in all it makes for good reading, with great art (which is standard for _Sandman_). If you're interested, I don't know the exact issue #, but it is included in the compilation entitled _Dream Country_, which is very good in and of itself. Chris Gladis Siena College S31647@SIENA.BITNET ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 14:40:14 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0038 Rs: Shakespeare in the Comics Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 38. Friday, 22 January 1993. (1) From: Nikki Parker Date: Friday, 22 Jan 1993 07:53:23 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0037 Shakespeare in the Comics (2) From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Friday, 22 Jan 1993 10:28 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0037 Shakespeare in the Comics (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nikki Parker Date: Friday, 22 Jan 1993 07:53:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0037 Shakespeare in the Comics Chris, Myself, I am *crazy* about the Sandman comics, and have seen the issue which you describe. It's a very intriguing story line, as well as being wonderfully drawn. I also saw a graphic novel about "Hamlet" which included all the lines, but I forget who it's done by... Nikki Parker St. Michael's College n_parker@smcvax.smcvt.edu (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Friday, 22 Jan 1993 10:28 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0037 Shakespeare in the Comics To Chris Gladis: I am very interested in all visualized Shakespeares. Please consider sending an analysis of the Sandman work and the Sandman resource list to me for consideration in the Shakespeare Bulletin. The Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, which concentrated on visual and aural interpretations of the plays, has now merged with the Bulletin, and Ken Rothwell and I, the former co-editors of SFNL, are now contributing editors of the Bulletin. I would appreciate any copy to be sent via US Mail-hard copy and disk please. Send to Bernice W. Kliman, 70 Glen Cove Drive, Glen Head, NY 11545. I can also be reached by E-MAIL at "IN%KlimanB@SNYFARVA.bitnet". Thanks! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 14:57:24 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0039 Q: 1992 Essays on Shakespeare's History Plays Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 39. Friday, 22 January 1993. From: Phyllis Rackin Date: Friday, 22 Jan 93 9:41:07 EST Subject: Re: history plays I'm trying to compile a list of everything published about Shakespeare's English history plays during the year 1992. Any citations will be much appreciated. Phyllis Rackin prackin@mail.sas.upenn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 17:34:55 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0040 Another R: "To be or not to be" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 40. Saturday, 23 January 1993. From: JOHN F. SULLIVAN Date: Friday, 22 Jan 93 21:09:43 EST Subject: To be or not to be Recent discussions of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" speech have centered on the melancholic humour and on whether the speech is overheard by Claudius and Polonius. With regard to melancholy, Rick Jones is generally right; Orlando in AYLI may be a good example of the melancholic lover, but Rosalind finds him wanting the proper characteristics (III.ii.391-404). Romeo, playing at being in love with Rosaline (see especially I.i.166-244), is another good example. But the melancholy lover is only one, probably the simplest instance of a melancholy character. Jones's reference to the Richards suggests another common type, the political malcontent. Possibly the most interesting type, to us, is the "intellectual" melancholic, whom I would identify with the modern neurotic. It is to this latter type that Hamlet belongs. A helpful note on the Humours and a treatment of "The Melancholic Humour" is provided in G. B. Harrison's edition of *The Complete Works*, pp. 1632-34. As for Claudius and Polonius overhearing the "To be or not to be" speech, John Dover Wilson, many years ago in *What Happens in Hamlet* argued for an earlier entry for Hamlet at II.ii.159, so that he overhears Polonius' plan to "loose my daughter to him" (II.ii.162). When Hamlet spots Ophelia at prayer after his soliloquy he eventually asks "Where's your father?" and when she lies by saying, "At home, my lord" Hamlet believes that she has readily taken part in the plot against him, and this explains the violence of his speech to her. John F. Sullivan Sulliv3@ucc.uwindsor.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 17:39:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0041 Barry Kyle's HENRY V Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 41. Saturday, 23 January 1993. From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Saturday, 23 Jan 93 08:47:18 EST Subject: Barry Kyle's HENRY V now Invent a reason to come to NYC so you can see the Henry V running now at the Theatre at St. Mark's Church, off-broadway (46th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue). "Subdued" but wonderful Henry, played by Mark Rylance, brillinat sets . . astounding musical invention. But above all, the chilling theatrical magic that (praise the mark) happens only when Dionysus hovers. It runs through February. I saw it last night, and I'm still trembling and effervescing. Though be warned, purists hoping for an ideal reader's production may be left cool and confused. As ever, Steve Urkowitz, SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 17:44:06 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0042 R: Electronic Access to the Folger Library Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 42. Saturday, 23 January 1993. From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Saturday, 23 Jan 93 11:45 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0036 Q: Electronic Access to the Folger Library Friends, My wife, Sigrid, and I are active participants at the Folger Library and are as excited as can be about their Project Access. In addition to the Folger's active involvement in the captioning of Shakespeare Videos which I wrote about some time ago in this news group, Dr. Gundersheimer and his staff are eager to make progress in the use of CD-ROM technology and networking technology to increase the utility and accessibility of their holdings. Let me encourage you to make your interests known directly to the Folger, but also invite you to send email to: vgchac@mcimail.com which is a "home" account I maintain for projects of this kind. I am deeply involved in the development and evolution of the Internet and, as president of the Internet Society, constantly alert to projects which can increase the utility of the Internet for the community of scholars who use it. Access to information in the Folger Library by way of Internet would be a great benefit, in my estimation. Happy networking! Vint Cerf ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 17:48:57 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0043 Shakespeare through Performance Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 43. Saturday, 23 January 1993. From: Milla Riggio Date: Thursday, 21 Jan 1993 19:12:00 EST Subject: Shakespeare through performance I am proposing an MLA volume on teaching Shakespeare through Performance; the MLA staff is interested, and I'm now working on a prospectus. I'd welcome any ideas about possible essay topics linking the teaching of Shakespeare to performance. Thanks, Milla Riggio P.S. Bibliography on Shakespeare through performance also welcome. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 15:45:24 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0044 Re: Barry Kyle's HENRY V Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 44. Sunday, 24 January 1993. (1) From: Milla Riggio Date: Sunday, 24 Jan 93 00:22 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0041 Barry Kyle's HENRY V (2) From: Stephen Orgel Date: Sunday, 24 Jan 93 10:44:11 PST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0041 Barry Kyle's HENRY V (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Milla Riggio Date: Sunday, 24 Jan 93 00:22 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0041 Barry Kyle's HENRY V Dear Steve: I'd like to run your announcement of the Henry V in our spring MRDS newsletter if that is all right with you. The letter won't come out until early April, so the production will be over. But it's worth advertising, anyway, or commemorating, I should say, and your praise is very high. May I run the announcement more or less as you posted it here? Best wishes, Milla Riggio (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephen Orgel Date: Sunday, 24 Jan 93 10:44:11 PST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0041 Barry Kyle's HENRY V Cool and confused is how HENRY V *always* leaves me. Is there something wrong in this? Stephen Orgel ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 16:01:28 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0045 Re: Shakespeare in Performance Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 45. Sunday, 24 January 1993. From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Sunday, 24 Jan 1993 14:59 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0043 Shakespeare through Performance I am interested in Shakespeare and performance and especially in teaching through performance. Please send me further information as the project develops. Yours truly, Bernice W. Kliman A continuation: soliciting items for New Variorum Hamlet: attempting to download Unsuccessful. Sorry. Does anyone know of a good program for the MAC for sorting? a phrase and word concordance? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 07:01:13 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0046 Rs: Shakespeare through Performance Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 46. Tuesday, 26 January 1993. (1) From: John Steven Paul Date: Monday, 25 Jan 1993 6:43:06 -0600 (CST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0043 Shakespeare through Performance (2) From: Karin Youngberg Date: Monday, 25 Jan 93 15:05:29 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0043 Shakespeare through Performance (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Steven Paul Date: Monday, 25 Jan 1993 6:43:06 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0043 Shakespeare through Performance It is the goal of the Young Actors Shakespeare Workshop, a program of Shakespearean acting and production for young people age 8 to 15, to teach one play by Shakespeare per summer, through the medium of performance. More details if you're interested: JPAUL@exodus.valpo.edu (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Karin Youngberg Date: Monday, 25 Jan 93 15:05:29 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0043 Shakespeare through Performance > Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 43. Saturday, 23 January 1993. > > From: Milla Riggio > Date: Thursday, 21 Jan 1993 19:12:00 EST > Subject: Shakespeare through performance > > I am proposing an MLA volume on teaching Shakespeare through > Performance; the MLA staff is interested, and I'm now working on a > prospectus. I'd welcome any ideas about possible essay topics > linking the teaching of Shakespeare to performance. > > Thanks, > > Milla Riggio > > P.S. Bibliography on Shakespeare through performance also welcome. I would like to suggest something that I have been working on in my classes for the past 5 years and am now trying to write about. I believe that students can best be introduced to the nature of theater and especially the nature of Elizabethan theater by making them aware of the metadramatic qualities of the plays, particularly TS, MND, and RII. In a course entitled Shakespeare: the Early Plays, I initially focus on the why and how of self-referential art through an examination of Velasquez' painting "Las Meninas." Then I use a phenomenological approach to the nature of play-going experience. This establishes a base for approaching the three plays metadramatically with special attention to onstage audiences and characters who are consciously feigning or role- playing. If your project goes forward and if you are interested in this approach to the plays which is intensely performance-aware, please let me know. I began to develop these methods several years ago in an NEH Summer Seminar on Performance Criticism directed by J.L. Styan. Karin Youngberg ENYOUNGBERG@AUGUSTANA.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 07:14:15 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0047 Shakespeare in the Comics Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 47. Tuesday, 26 January 1993. (1) From: PATRICIA E. GALLAGHER Date: Monday, 25 Jan 1993 18:24:52 -0600 (CST) Subj: Comic book Shakespeare (2) From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Monday, 25 Jan 1993 17:59 EDT Subj: Sandman (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: PATRICIA E. GALLAGHER Date: Monday, 25 Jan 1993 18:24:52 -0600 (CST) Subject: Comic book Shakespeare Workman Publishing has put out 3 of the plays in comic book form: *Othello*, *Macbeth*, and *King Lear*. I have seen all of them, and like *Othello* and *Macbeth* very much (and in fact, bought copies of them for my 10 year old godson. He is working on the *Macbeth* now, and his mother says he is enjoying it). I was NOT impressed with the *King Lear*, as I found the art work a little to surrealistic to get the story across to a young reader. I have seen them for sale at the Folger, and found copies of them in a children's bookstore in NYC (called Eeyores - if they are not in stock, the store will order them). One of the salespeople in Eeyores checked the available titles, and only these three were listed. She said she had no idea if they were planning to publish more of the plays. Patricia E. Gallagher PGALLAGH@LIFE.JSC.NASA.GOV (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Monday, 25 Jan 1993 17:59 EDT Subject: Sandman Dear Chris, Hmm. What I meant, I guess, was can you send an essay, an analysis, of Sandman. No, impressions would not do, I think. Why not look at the Shakespeare Bulletin and, if you can find them, copies of the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter to get an idea. I thought YOU had mentioned a resource list. My mistake. If you have trouble locating these journals, let me know and I'll xerox some stuff for you (but then I'll need your address). Yes, it's OK not to send hard copy. I tried to reply to your address, but my E-MAIL connection couldn't recognize you. Any clues? I'm new, too. This is like popcorn. I should be working. I called Jeff Horowitz to tell him about Steve's comments &c. He was pleased but had never heard of E-Mail. Jeff, as you probably do not know, is the Artistic Director of Theater for a New Audience. After getting a not so good review in the NYT he was delighted. Henry V did get good reviews in Newsday and the POst. Jeff would like to know if he can get on SHAKSPER. His address is 154 Christopher Street, Suite 3D, NYC 10014-2839. TFANA has done some wonderful things, in my opinion. They had one of the best Tempests I have ever seen. Bye Chris and others reading this. Hello, Steve U. [Editor's Note: To subscribe to SHAKSPER, one must first have an electronic address (Bitnet, Internet, or commercial account like Compuserve). Then inquiries can be made either directly to me (HMCook@boe00.minc.umd.edu) or to the list address (SHAKSPER@utoronto.bitnet). SHAKSPER is not open to automatic subscription; all such requests result in a form letter's being generated. This letter explains what one needs to do to become a member of SHAKSPER. hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 23:02:43 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0048 Interlude Q; Performance Crit; Text/Performance; Kyle H5 Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 48. Tuesday, 26 January 1993. (1) From: Nick Clary Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 1993 08:25:20 -0500 (EST) Subj: Wedding-night interludes (2) From: John Drakakis Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 93 15:38:48 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0046 Rs: Shakespeare through Performance (3) From: Jean Peterson Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 1993 15:30:54 -0500 Subj: text and performance (4) From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 93 19:48:32 EST Subj: [Kyle HENRY V] (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nick Clary Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 1993 08:25:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: Wedding-night interludes I am interested in historical information or bibliographical leads on the genesis and development of a sub-species of interlude that was included as part of the wedding festivities in England. Were particular kinds of plays especially suitable? Do we have any useful documentation on the way these interludes were played? As part of the wedding-night revelry, was there an appropriate audience decorum? Thanks, Nick Clary clary@smcvax.bitnet (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Drakakis Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 93 15:38:48 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0046 Rs: Shakespeare through Performance Dear Milla Riggio, One of the topics you might include in your volume is: Shakespeare and the impossibility of Performance Criticism Best wishes, John Drakakis University of Stirling (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jean Peterson Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 1993 15:30:54 -0500 Subject: text and performance Dear SHAKESPERians, I'd like to reopen a discussion from a few weeks back (I was away and am just catching up on the dialogue I missed) RE: directors altering texts to suit performance purposes. Not surprisingly, the response was split between directors/theatre people, who defended directorial changes, and more traditional academics, who responded with varying degrees of "horror" (quite a visceral response!) What interests me--and I pose this as a question to which I have no answer--is that we as scholars generally acknowledge an unreliability of textual transmission, an instability of the Shakespearean "text"; the examples of *Hamlet* and *Lear* especially indicate that the plays in Shakespeare's time were malleable, altered to suit particular performance circumstances. And yet "textually incorrect" productions strike such a raw nerve with 20th century scholars. Reasons? Speculations? I speak as one of the guilty (although I'm encouraged to examine my views, due to some very exciting experiments with "adaptations" I've seen recently). Best to all-- Jean Peterson (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 93 19:48:32 EST Subject: [Kyle HENRY V] More detail on the HENRY V directed by Barry Kyle: The production plays only on Thursday and Friday at 8pm, and on Saturdays at 2 and 8pm, with additional performances on 16 February at 8pm and 17th February at 2 and 8. Tickets are $30, with "rush" seats 1/2 hour before performances at half price. Tickets may be ordered over the phone at 212-279-4200 (a $3 service charge per order), and group sales are handled through the box office at 212 889-4300. The Theatre for a New Audience also has performances for school groups during the other days of the week. It doesn't surprise me that the NYTimes didn't enjoy this production; I often find that their reviewers are offended or threatened by any emotional response that a production might generate. Ah, well. Urk (SURCC@CUNYVM) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 21:40:14 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0049 Shakespeare through Performance; SAA in Atlanta Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 49. Wednesday, 27 January 1993. (1) From: Milla Riggio Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 93 23:58 EST Subj: [Shakespeare through Performance] (2) From: John Cox Date: Wednesday, 27 Jan 1993 10:46 EST Subj: SAA in Atlanta (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Milla Riggio Date: Tuesday, 26 Jan 93 23:58 EST Subject: [Shakespeare through Performance] Dear John Drakakis: If I include the topic "Shakespeare and the Impossibility of Performance Criticism," will you write the essay for that topic? Hello and best wishes, Milla Riggio (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Cox Date: Wednesday, 27 Jan 1993 10:46 EST Subject: SAA in Atlanta I will be the first to initiatie this year's round of inquiries about room-sharing at the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association--but I hope I won't be the last! Since double rooms are about half the cost of single rooms, I'd be glad to share with someone who, like me, is on a con- strained budget, doesn't smoke, and keeps reasonable hours. Please respond to COX@HOPE.BITNET or via Internet, COX@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU or by phone, 616- 394-7612. John Cox ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 07:22:38 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0050 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 50. Friday, 29 January 1993. From: Michael Friedman Date: Thursday, 28 Jan 1993 15:18:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Shakespeare through Performance I, for one, would be interested in hearing from John Drakakis (or anyone else, for that matter) why performance criticism is impossible. I have a list of reasons why I think it's difficult and very hard to theorize, but if it's impossible, I'd like to learn what it is that I thought I was doing all these years but failed to achieve. Michael Friedman Friedman@Scranton ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 21:50:28 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0051 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 51. Friday, 29 January 1993. From: David Richman Date: Friday, 29 Jan 1993 14:51:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0050 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism I doubt performance criticism is either more or less impossible than criticism in any other mode. Dialogue between performance criticism and other sorts of criticism is difficult and, as Michael Friedman points out, good performance criticism is difficult to write. Yet didn't Shakespeare intend his plays to be performed? (Pace, intentional fallacy.) If other critical modes can't accommodate performance criticism, might not the fault rest with the other modes? If we cannot devise a critical vocabulary for the precise, useful discussion, shouldn't we send out a warrant for a new vocabulary? The project of a book on teaching Shakespeare through performance is quite exciting. A couple suggestions: A nuts-and-bolts essay, early in the book, about an actor or actress thinking his or her way precisely through a speech or bit of dialogue. What are the various ways the line can be effectively delivered? What does the passage itself teach the potential performer about how it is to be delivered? With what movements, gestures (if any) and in what physical position is the speech delivered? In other words, survey the sometimes terrifying array of perfectly valid choices that suggest themselves to the performers of even an apparently simple sequence. I think Steve Urkowitz, who is on this list, has used performance to encourage students to think and feel their way through differences between Quarto and Folio texts. (Maybe you could talk about that, Steve.) A couple of fine books are J.L. Halio's book on Shakespeare in performance, and Robert Cohen's book on acting Shakespeare. I'm afraid I haven't got the bibliographical references, and I don't recall the exact titles. Also Robert Hapgood's book on Shakespeare the theatre poet is useful. I realize that much of the foregoing is basic stuff, but I sometimes fear that in our rush toward critical sophistication, we lose the essential joy. Cheers, David Richman University of New Hampshire ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 21:55:24 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0052 Re: Shakespeare and History Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 52. Friday, 29 January 1993. From: Roy Flannagan Date: Friday, 29 January 93, 15:49:54 EST Subject: Re: Shakespeare and History Re: 1992 books having to do with Shakespeare and history. Leo Damrosch, ed., {The Profession of Eighteenth-Century Literature: Reflections on an Institution} (Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1992). Richard F. Hardin. {Civil Idolatry: Desacralizing and Monarchy in Spenser, Shakepeare, and Milton}. Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 1992. H. R. Coursen. {Shakespearean Performance as Interpretation} Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 1992. F. David Hoeniger. {Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance}. Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 1992. Lowry Nelson, Jr. {Poetic Configurations: Essays in Literary History and Criticism}. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1992. Thomas Clayton, ed. {The Hamlet First Published (Q1, 1603): Origins, Forms, Intertextualities}. Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 1992. David Bradley. {From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre: Preparing the Play for the Stage}. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. David Quint, Margaret W. Ferguson, G. W. Pigman III, and Wayne A Rebhorn, eds. {Creative Imitation: New Essays on Renaissance Literature in Honor of Thomas M. Greene}. Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1992. These are books at least partly on Shakespeare that include "history" as a keyword in title or TOC. The list is obviously incomplete. Roy Flannagan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 14:07:52 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0053 Re: Impossibility of t Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 53. Sunday, 31 January 1993. From: Kay Stockholder Date: Sunday, 31 Jan 93 09:49:46 PST Subject: SHK 4.0051 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism I don't see any theoretical difference between performance criticism and any other kind. After all, any production of a play is based on a reading of a text, and if such a reading cannot be performed, then obviously it is a wrong reading. This applies to discussions of themes, emphases, and so forth in particular texts rather than to post modern forms of theoretical criticism. In a sense performance criticism is new criticism under another name. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 06:44:01 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0054 Young Actors Shakespeare Workshop, 1993 Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 54. Monday, 1 February 1993. From: John Stephen Paul Date: Sunday, 31 Jan 1993 22:32:41 -0600 (CST) Subject: Young Actors Shakespeare Workshop, 1993 The Young Actors Shakespeare Workshop, a program of Shakespearean acting and production for young people age 8 - 18 at Valparaiso University, will present Much Ado About Nothing on Saturday, July 31 and Sunday August 1. There will be two sessions of the workshop. A group for 8-13 year-olds will meet daily, Monday through Thursday from 8:30 to 10:30 am and a group for 14-18 year-olds will meet Monday through Friday from 1:00 - 3:00 pm. Both groups will use a shortened version of the play, but the edition will retain the original language; that is to say, no words will be "translated." Tuition is 100. The workshop begins on Wednesday, June 30. For more information inquire Prof. John Steven Paul, Dept. of Theatre and Television Arts, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN 46383 (219) 464-5092. Valparaiso University is located about 50 mi. SE of Chicago. Incidentally, the Young Actors Shakespeare Workshop serves as the laboratory for our summer course entitled Theatre for Children. It is a grad/undergrad course. All Best, JPAUL@EXODUS.VALPO.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 22:22:02 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0055 Q: Renaissance Theory of Birth Defects Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 55. Monday, 1 February 1993. From: Douglas Lanier Date: Monday, 1 Feb 1993 10:05:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: Renaissance theories about birth defects I would be interested in any references to Renaissance theories about the causes of birth defects, particularly the notion that what a parent sees, hears, or thinks about at the moment of conception will determine the physiology of the child. (Shylock's tale of the parti-colored lambs seems to spring from this theory, as does Henry V's remarks to Katherine about the "poor and untempering effect of my visage.") Folk references or discussions of the theory of this idea would be particularly useful. Many thanks. Sincerely, Douglas Lanier University of New Hampshire D_LANIER@unhh.unh.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 07:07:54 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0056 Re: Renaissance Theories about Birth Defects Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 56. Tuesay, 2 February 1993. From: Geoff Hargreaves Date: Monday, 1 Feb 93 19:37:19 PST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0055 Q: Renaissance Theory of Birth Defects Douglas-- You may find it of interest that Renaissance folk theories about attitudes during coition being reflected in the quality of the offspring is still being reflected in the romanticism of D.H. Lawrence in "Sons & Lovers". ---Geoff Hargreaves ghargrea@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 07:13:04 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0057 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 57. Tuesay, 2 February 1993. From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Monday, 01 Feb 93 23:15:19 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0051 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Leaping preposterously into the discussion about performance criticism and its impossibility (at David Richman's insistance) I'd just like to point people to look at Anthony B. Dawson's "The Impasse over the Stage" ELR 21 (1991), 309-27, for a laying out of the discontinuities between kinds of criticism looking at performance from differing points of view. And then there is David Richman's quite delicious LAUGHTER, PAIN, AND WONDER: SHAKESPEARE'S COMEDIES AND THE AUDIENCE IN THE THEATRE. I'm tempted to recall the bumblebee, flying in the face of its inability to fly, but David's book is so much more like a butterfly or a hummingbird, doing its tricks with grace and jeweled beauty. Both Dawson and Richman evoke the magic of those performances that indeed can't be talked about in the workaday languages of criticism. Okay. Who goes to a performance of criticism on a Saturday night, anyway? And yes I do show students how scripts work onstage with the help of textual variants. They seem to LIKE plays more once they see the gamesome possibilities of all that staging info. As ever, Steve Urkowitz (SURCC@CUNYVM) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 18:20:59 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0058 Re: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 58. Tuesday, 2 February 1993. (1) From: Ron Macdonald Date: Tuesday, 02 Feb 1993 09:41:00 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Renaissance theories about birth defects (2) From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Tuesday, 2 Feb 93 10:31:00 EST Subj: RE: SHK 4.0055 Q: Renaissance Theory of Birth Defects (3) From: Ed Pechter Date: Tuesday, 2 Feb 1993 10:35 EDT Subj: Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism (4) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Tuesday, 2 Feb 93 07:43:38 PST Subj: Re: Renaissance Theories about Birth Defects (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ron Macdonald Date: Tuesday, 02 Feb 1993 09:41:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Renaissance theories about birth defects Edmund the Bastard in _King Lear_ seems to imply that the quality of the sex act itself has some bearing on the quality of the results, at least he claims that his illegitimate kind "in the lusty stealth of nature, take / More composition, and fierce quality, / Than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed / Go to th' creating a whole tribe of fops, / Got 'tween asleep and wake" (I.ii.11-15). And let us remember with gratitude Mrs. Shandy's question about the clock, posed at an inopportune moment in the conjugal bed. --Ron Macdonald (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Tuesday, 2 Feb 93 10:31:00 EST Subject: RE: SHK 4.0055 Q: Renaissance Theory of Birth Defects Dear Douglas, You might want to have a look at 2 essays in the _Mississippi Folklore Register_ 10 (1976): one by Barry Gaines and Michael Lofaro, "What Did Caliban Look Like?" (75-86), and the other by Linwood E. Orange, "Despised Nativity: Unnatural Birth in Shakespeare" (163-174). Also Mary Douglas' _Purity and Danger_ (London: ARK, 1966) has a terrific anthropological discussion of anomalous births which can be extrapolated for application to Renaissance drama, though she doesn't discuss such literature directly. Best Wishes, Naomi Liebler Montclair State College (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Pechter Date: Tuesday, 2 Feb 1993 10:35 EDT Subject: Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism About performance criticism: a great essay by W. B. Worthen in *SQ* a couple of years ago. Like literary criticism, performance criticism understood not as referring to some stable prior event or phenomenon, but constituting it. Does away with the Harry Berger distinction between the slit-eyed textual critic and the wide eyed performance critic (Berger in *Imaginary Audition* had done away with it himself, though he may have recuperated it, some people think). But the two kinds of criticism are different in focusing on different kinds of things--performance criticism is interested in various historically determined acting styles and production conventions. About birth defects: "Middleton's characters, having been born, show an intense interest in the circumstances of their conception, together with a tendency to see themselves as wholly determined by it, and always for the worse." This from an R. V. Holdsworth essay in his Casebook on *3 Revenge Tragedies*, p. 97, followed by examples from Middleton. He connects it with the pretty plausible assumption of Middleton's Calvinism. On the other hand, in the hilarious scene where Sir Epicure Mammon tries to locate Dol Common's aristocratic nature, he comes, having failed to locate it in her behaviour and manners, to situate it in her father's procreative act--such a noble performance that, had the old gent done nothing more but lie there panting, it had been enough to guarantee genuine nobility to her and all her heirs, words to that effect. (Dol's mother, as I remember, was unsurprisingly absent from the scene.) Since Jonson wasn't a Calvinist, this may suggest other contexts for understanding the idea. I know, nothing, however, of the folk or scientific medical beliefs that may be relevant as well, and would like to. Having brought together two unrelated interests in the possibility of performance criticism and sexual acts, I wonder about the possibility of the theatrical performance of sexual acts. This probably reflects the fact that I am trying to write a paper on *Othello* for Atlanta, and not getting very far. (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Tuesday, 2 Feb 93 07:43:38 PST Subject: Re: Renaissance Theories about Birth Defects Yes, Edmund sees to hold that view about the "lusty stealth of nature" that prevailed on his own birth. It would seem, though, that Shakespeare did not. It must have been an issue at the time. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1993 15:58:03 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0059 More Rs: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 59. Wednesday, 3 February 1993. (1) From: Constance C. Relihan Date: Wednesday, 3 Feb 1993 07:28 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0058 Re: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism (2) From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Wednesday, 3 Feb 93 09:52:00 EST Subj: RE: SHK 4.0058 Re: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism (3) From: Bernice Kliman Date: Wednesday, 3 Feb 1993 14:48 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0058 Re: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Constance C. Relihan Date: Wednesday, 3 Feb 1993 07:28 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0058 Re: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism Re. Birth Defects There's a short ballad printed in *Ballads and Broadsides*, chiefly of the Elizabethan Period (ed. H.L. Collmann) on "The True Fourme and Shape of a Monsterous Chyld" which may be of interest. The child in question appears to have been actually a pair of Siamese twins who died within a few hours of their birth in 1565. The cause of the defect seems to be ascribed to the fact that its parents were unmarried and the strength of God's power. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Wednesday, 3 Feb 93 09:52:00 EST Subject: RE: SHK 4.0058 Re: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism Re: Ed Pechter's (offhand?) speculation: "Having brought together two unrelated interests in the possibility of performance criticism and sexual acts, I wonder about the possibility of the theatrical performance of sexual acts." Ed, you may have been lucky enough to miss Joanne Akalaitis's productions of 1 and 2 Henry IV a few years back at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theater, where the dominant stage image in 1H4 involved a great deal of simulated fucking during the tavern scenes (the parallel stage metaphor of 2H4 was the dysenteric evacuation of the tavern's residents). Taken together, the audience was treated to enough vicarious fornication/defecation to satisfy even the most pathologically voyeuristic. The point is that SOMEONE (not yours truly; I paid good money to see this stuff) must have reviewed these productions, and perhaps successfully bent his or her mind around "the possibility of the theatrical performance of sexual acts." If you really want to pursue this critical direction, *Shakespeare Bulletin* (inter alia) doubtless had a review. Happy hunting. Naomi Liebler (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bernice Kliman Date: Wednesday, 3 Feb 1993 14:48 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0058 Re: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism Thanks Steve for your references. I'd like to add an essay by Michael Goldman in Theatre Journal 44 (1992) 449-60, "Hamlet: Entering the Text." It's a wonderful essay on the actor's commitment to the script and the choices possible. Steve, he mentions you. And, with all due modesty, may I mention my own new book on Macbeth for the Manchester UP? It came out at the very end of 1992, but I just got my copies a few days ago. What I love best about performance criticism is the way what I do in the classroom is connected to what I do in my study, in the library, in the theater, and at my computer. I'm into FUN these days. All the best Bernice ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 10:06:44 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0060 Re: Renaissance Theories about Birth Defects Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 60. Thursday, 4 February 1993. From: Louis Schwartz Date: Thursday, 04 Feb 1993 09:15:31 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: More Rs: Birth Defects; Performance Criticism Shylock's bit about the parti-colored lambs has more to do with Genesis then with specifically renaissance ideas about imagination and birth (though the relationship of renaissance ideas to Gen. 27 and 30, was not lost on most people who thought about such things). You might, however, find this list from Ambroise Pare's *Des Monstres et prodiges* (1573) useful: "I: On the Causes of Monsters There are several things that cause monsters. The first is the glory of God. The second is his wrath. The third, too great a quantity of seed. The fourth, too little a quantity. The fifth, the imagination. The sixth, the narrowness of the womb. The seventh, the indecent posture of the mother, as when, being pregnant, she has sat too long with her legs crossed, or presses against the womb. The eighth, through a fall, or blows struck against the womb of the mother, being with child. The ninth, through hereditary or accidental illnesses. The tenth, through rotten or corrupt seed. The eleventh, through mixture or mingling of seed. The twelfth, through the artifice of wicked spital beggars. The thirteenth, through Demons or Devils. (There are other causes that I leave aside for the present because among all human reasons, one cannot give any that are sufficient or probable, such as why persons are made with only one eye in the middle of the forehead or navel, or a horn on the head, or the liver upside down. Others are born having griffin's feet, like birds, and certain monsters which are engendered in the sea; in short countless others which it would take too long to describe.)" from, *On Monsters and Marvels*, trans. by Janis Pallister (U. of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 3-4. Chapter Nine of the book details cases of monstrosity resulting from imagination. The complete works of Pare were translated into English in 1634 by T. Johnson. Happy reading! Other books that contain information about these things: 1) The Birth of Mankind. The most important and popular Midwifery handbook in England up to the 1620's. First published in England 1540, translated by Richard Jonas from *De partu hominis*, itself a translation of a German original. Revised and republished in England in 1545 by Thomas Raynald, it went into 13 editions, the last in 1654. 2) The midwives book, Mrs. Jane Sharp (1671). This is past Shakespeare, but contains ideas current during his career. Interesting as the only midwifery text by a woman based on reading in anatomy (she has read Pare and others), perhaps the *only* one by a woman. Reflects the experience of thirty odd years of practice (ca. 1640 to ca. 1671). There's a facsimile in the Garland Press series Marriage, Sex, and the Family in England 1660-1800, ed. Randolph Trumbach (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985). Louis Schwartz SCHWARTZ@URVAX.URICH.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 07:23:40 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0061 R: Impossibility of Performance Crit; Q: Quotation Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 61. Friday, 5 February 1993. (1) From: John Drakakis Date: Thursday, 4 Feb 93 20:10:37 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0049 Shakespeare through Performance (2) From: David Alan Grier Date: Thursday, 04 Feb 93 19:13:59 EDT Subj: Quotation (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Drakakis Date: Thursday, 4 Feb 93 20:10:37 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0049 Shakespeare through Performance Dear Milla Riggio, Yes, provided the whole thing can fit in with my already existing deadlines! Hello and best wishes to you too. John Drakakis (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Alan Grier Date: Thursday, 04 Feb 93 19:13:59 EDT Subject: Quotation An emailless friend had forwarded the following query to me and I forward it to you: In a book I am editing, one author wishes to use the quote "shrined in crystal" as an epigram and credit it to Shakespeare. I cannot find it in the concordance. Do you know the correct quote and its source? Thanks, David Grier ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 19:20:03 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 62. Friday, 5 February 1993. From: John Drakakis Date: Friday, 5 Feb 93 13:38:37 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0050 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Michael Friedman wants to know what it is that he has been doing all these years if it hasn't been "performance criticism". I'm afraid that I can't answer that since I don't know. Maybe David Richman, and Kay Stockholder in their own ways offer some indication of the kind of confusion to which my innocent suggestion originally referred. David Richman asks (29 January): "If other critical modes can't accommodate performance criticism, might not the fault rest with the other modes? and he concludes with the suggestion that in what he calls "the rush to critical sophistication we sometimes lose the essential joy" of performance. His practical suggestion is that we would need to "survey the sometimes terrifying array of perfectly valid choices that suggest themselves to the performance of even an appartently simple sequence". Kay Stockholder's solution (31 January) is simply to conflate performance criticism and "criticism": "In a sense performance criticism is new criticism under another name". Now if performance is dependent upon the "reading" of a text, then I am completely at a loss to see what the purpose of performance is. Also, I don't know what "essential joy" is, or if it IS essential then I can't see how it depends upon a performance. The real problem I have is in distinguishing between prescriptive accounts about how plays should be performed, and how audiences should respond, and inadequate accounts of particular performances. Neither seems to me to be satisfactory as a kind of performance criticism. The episemological difficulty which I confront concerns the hierarchy which places the "text" (and that is a problematical term in Renaissance drama generally) as the origin of performance. Added to that kind of essentialism is Richman's curious amalgam of essentialist and contingent response. If Kay Stockholder is right, and I think she may be in more ways than she thinks, the idea that performance criticism is new criticism writ large, then this simply compounds the confusion. I suppose that the issue here is the vexed issue of "meaning"- that is, the means available to the actor/actress to orchestrate some essential meaning that resides at the heart of the text, and which performance illuminates. Unless and until we confront that problem then the idea of a performance criticism which does something other than prescribe response, or simply offer reviews (necessarily inadequate because selective, with all that that implies) of specific performances is, I contend "impossible". In the light of what I've just said I really would be interested to know what Michael Friedman thinks he's been doing all these years! Best wishes John Drakakis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 19:23:04 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0063 Re: Quotation Query Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 63. Friday, 5 February 1993. From: Kay Stockholder Date: Friday, 5 Feb 93 08:23:14 PST Subject: Re: Q: Quotation Does it come from *The White Devil*? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1993 08:52:02 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0064 Re: The Impossibility of Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 64. Saturday, 6 February 1993. From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Friday, 05 Feb 93 22:39:36 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Ah, John Drakakis. It's Friday night, a little drunk, brimming with good wine and roast chicken and baked winter squash, and I do carry the guilt of the starving graduate students in China anyway, and I have a lot of trouble believing in the essential sinfulness of essentialism or in the impossibility of using my years of working with performers and with audiences to say wise or clever or even silly things about Shakespeaare's plays as performed events, events designed for performance, etc. Yes, we know that all audiences aren't the same. Nor are all critics. But we don't (or at least I don't, especially chicken-stuffed and wined) have to be afraid of speculating that the surprising detonation of a cannon in a theatre will make all but the brain-dead take notice that something has happened. And we can look at patterns of stage action that are scripted repeatedly and make reasonable guesses at their effects on any number of audiences. Eyes wide open at lots of performances, maybe one can make predictions. Maybe. Sure, the ascription of "meaning" may be troubling. But, hey, ain't that why Shakespeare spent all that time writing plays rather than philosophical tracts? As bearers of meaning, plays rank right up there with hockey games, fine cooking, and tulips. Surprise, surprise. Maybe we all choose our own areas to mystify and our own areas to debunk. I grew up in a dense union neighborhood singing IWW songs on the way to nursery school. Loved 'em, still do. But I'm not all that impressed or moved by folks claiming that those shibboleths will solve the worlds ills. But I am swept up by the experience of plays, the EXPERIENCE of plays, and I write trying to "express" that experience, however mysterious, however indeed impossible. Sorry, Jack. That's what I do. I also teach people to cook. Same ethos. Go know. G'night, Gracie. Steve Urkowitz SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1993 18:10:05 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0065 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism (con't) Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 65. Saturday, 6 February 1993. (1) From: David Richman Date: Saturday, 6 Feb 1993 14:56:32 -0500 (EST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism (2) From: William Proctor Williams Date: Saturday, 06 Feb 93 14:03 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism (3) From: Skip Shand Date: Saturday, 6 Feb 1993 15:25 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism (4) From: Milla Riggio Date: Saturday, 6 Feb 93 17:23 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0061 R: Impossibility of Performance Crit (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Richman Date: Saturday, 6 Feb 1993 14:56:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism In reply to John Drakakis's stimulating piece, I would say that I find epistemological problems and various other sorts of inadequacies in all the critical writings I have read on Shakespeare, or on any other playwright for that matter--and I emphatically include my own responses in this category. I don't understand how to divorce performance from the text (granted, text is indeed a highly problematic term.) Some directors try to get away from the text (witness the extravaganza of copulation and defecation described in a previous posting), but I freely admit that the performances I am responsible for do derive from the texts with all their problems. Bernard Shaw was keen to the inadequacies that John Drakakis is addressing. The language of theater, Shaw insisted, is madeningly imprecise, and it is virtually impossible for even the most gifted and most talented performers to give an adequate rendering of an author's words, even if those words are intended (as Shaw insisted his words were) for performance. It would seem, then, that performance, as well as performance criticism, is impossible. Why engage in either, then? Performance can give pleasure and enlightenment, and so can good performance criticism. I'm not sure there is a single essential meaning to be got from a text (problematic and imprecise), but I do think a spirited speaking of a speech or acting of an action can add its small grain to the world's joy. When I used the phrase "essential joy," I was trying to refer to the proposition that performance can be a source of joy, and in view of the notion (to which I naively subscribe) that one should not deprive oneself of joy if one doesn't have to, we should keep muddling on with our imperfect tools and inadequate responses. For some with superior imaginations, performance is (like age) unnecessary. Brahms hated to go to the opera, because he could always create a better performance in his head when he read the score. Since I am not Brahms, I still like to go occasionally to the theater, and even to read inadequate critical responses to accounts of performance. Cheers, David Richman University of New Hampshire (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Proctor Williams Date: Saturday, 06 Feb 93 14:03 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism John Drakakis draws the most important point in this discussion out to its full length. The +only+ thing we have to study for almost all of the English Renaissance dramas are +printed+ texts. We can not make-up non-extant fake acting versions. We cannot invent things which do not now exist, even if they once did. How long will this strange notion of performance criticism which knows nothing of the original performance persist? Should not our focus be turned to those periods about which we do have information (+ca+. 1750+) and stop our idle speculation about earlier eras. Not even Orrell, Gurr and Hildey can agree about the measurements of the Globe (see +Shakespeare Bulletin+ last issue). I am just sick and tired of mindless and factless speculation by boffins who think they can teach us to walk on our hind legs. William Proctor Williams TB0WPW1@NIU English/Northern Illinois Univeristy (3)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Skip Shand Date: Saturday, 6 Feb 1993 15:25 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0062 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism I don't know whether John Drakakis is really talking about the impossibility of performance criticism, or whether he's talking about the impossibility of definitive criticism, the difficulties with validity inherent in all acts of criticism. But I do know that performance criticism, or performance-based criticism, can offer more than the options he suggests, namely prescriptive readings or inadequate reviews. My undergraduates spend a great deal of time on what is now a pedagogical commonplace, acted scene studies which they prepare on their own time and present to their classmates. They spend time as well observing as many film and video and stage versions of the scripts we are studying as they can get their hands on. They pay closer and closer attention to the state of the texts they read, learning an awareness of the various interventions in transmission and the ways such interventions may close down on signifying potentials. And they learn, bless them, that the essentialist and unitary readings which many of them were required to master in high school are not, after all, obligatory, but, rather, optional. We try to enter the text as actorly readers, to sit inside individual characters and their moments, to observe the range of performable options available at any given moment, to understand the signifying implications of choosing one option over another. We do not imagine that we are neutral conduits for textual intention--we understand that we bring all manner of baggage with us which conditions our interactions with the scripts, and we try to keep track of what that baggage might be and how it helps determine our readings. I like to think that quite a few of these students are learning to be performance-based critics. They are learning that Shakespeare's scripts can invite a variety of equally valid performance options--not indeterminacy spinning out of control, certainly, but a considerably broader version of determinacy than they might otherwise have predicted. And they are learning a healthy mistrust of critical/editorial intervention which closes down scripted openness. They are learning about the special quality of aliveness which inheres in texts made to be performed by speaking feeling thinking bodies. And yes (thanks Bernice, thanks Steve), they too are having FUN. (4)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Milla Riggio Date: Saturday, 6 Feb 93 17:23 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0061 R: Impossibility of Performance Crit Dear John Drakakis and Steve Urkowitz: First, to John: Welcome back! You see what a storm your wry, if serious, comment about performance criticism unleashed? Of course, I have no idea that this book proposal will be accepted by the MLA, though there is a fair chance of it, I think. But if it is, it seems to me something like this controversy should be reflected in any serious volume about approaches through performance that aspires, as this one does, to any degree of theoretical sophistication. So: I'm going to include this as one of the topics, and it occurs to me that a pair of essays, posing the problem theoretically (John) and answering, with some practical implications to the answer, could have a place there. There's certainly no rush. All kinds of apparatus would have to be set up to get to the essay-writing stage, and the essays for a volume like this range in length widely, so there's a lot of room for negotiation. But I take John's first response as a very guarded "maybe," and Steve obviously has some things to say. So let's take it from here. I do think we'll omit "cooking criticism," however -- good wine and duck, notwithstanding. I was wishing I'd been invited to the dinner, but perhaps we'll stick with performance here! Hi, Steve, sorry I missed you when I was in New York at Christmas. I've given you the opening section of the RORD review of the Toronto 25+ play festival. And had nothing but good things to say about your Four PP. I'm getting into performance material myself this year at the Folger, where I'll be teaching for a few weeks this summer. Your use of Cicely Berry is another possibility for a volume like the MLA. Best to both, hope to keep the controversy stirring, Love, Milla Riggio ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 21:07:27 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0066 Shakespeare is where? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 66. Sunday, 7 February 1993. From: Kevin Berland Date: Saturday, 6 Feb 93 22:05 EST Subject: Where is Shakespeare? Okay. Imagine a geographical grid something like this: |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Toronto | | | | Cleveland Erie Buffalo | | | | x | | | | Pittsburgh | | | | | | Washington | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| The "x" is me, a sojourner in Sharon, Pennsylvania, just where Interstate 80 crosses the Pennsylvania/Ohio border. I'm looking for Shakespeare in per- formance for a small class of 1st-year university students, in busing range, some time between next week and the end of April. I know the Shakespeare Theatre at the Lansberg is doing Comedy of Errors until early March, but they follow this with Brecht's Mother Courage, which is a fine play, but not on my syllabus. Can anybody provide some information? We can get to Pittsburgh or Cleveland in 1-1.5 hours, to Washington in 6, to Toronto in 5. We'd go to Stratford Ontario, but their early season begins just when our semester is over. New York is 8 hours away. Philadelphia 8.5-9 hours. That's probably too far. But I'd love to hear from you if you have sugges- tions. Kevin Berland Penn State (Shenango) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 22:02:34 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0067 LFQ's Special Issue: Shakespeare -- Film & Television Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 67. Sunday, 7 February 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Sunday, February 7, 1993 Subject: LFQ's Special Issue: Shakespeare -- Film & Television *Literature/Film Quarterly*'s latest issue (20.4), dedicated exclusively to Shakespeare on Film and Television, is now available. Below is a listing of its Table of Contents. Michael Pursell (Gedling English Faculty, Nottingham) Playing the Game: Branagh's *Henry V* Patricia E. Tatspaugh (American Heritage, London) Theatrical Influences on Kenneth Branagh's Film of *Henry V* Sara Munson Deats (University of South Florida) Rabbits and Ducks: Olivier, Branagh, and *Henry V* Todd Gilman (University of Toronto) The Textual Fabric of Peter Brook's *King Lear*: "Holes" in Cinema, Screenplay, and Playtext Mary Z. Maher (University of Arizona) At Last, An American Hamlet for Television William Van Watson (Washington University in St. Louis) Shakespeare, Zeffirelli, and the Homosexual Gaze Hardy M. Cook (Bowie State University) Jane Howell's BBC First Tetralogy: Theatrical and Televisual Manipulation ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 07:11:00 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0068 Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 68. Monday, 8 February 1993. From: Sean Kevin Lawrence Date: Sunday, 07 Feb 1993 23:18:50 -0400 (AST) Subject: Performance Criticism Dear SHAKSPERians, I've only posted to this list once before, so I hope that my message gets through. I am, incidentally, only an undergraduate, so if you think I'm wrong, you're probably right. In any case, finding out where I'm wrong will help me to at least see the issue in a more informed light. It seems to me that accusations of performance criticism being essentialist are *themselves* essentialist. I'm not absolutely sure of the term "performance criticism," but if it means viewing individual performances as valid interpretations, their exclusion would be the exclusion of one of the world's most valid interpretational tools. If, as Aristotle averred, a play (usually broadened by his appreciators to include all sorts of art) is "the mimesis of an action" one can only assess it by at least *imagining* a performance. This does not, of course, mean that the approach should be realist in any reductionist sense, but that the verisimilitude of a passage can best be confronted by seeing it on stage or in the (metaphorical) stage of the mind. Take, for instance, a production of Hamlet 1.1 that I've been fantasizing about for a while. Some day I might put it on, but if not, I don't care. All the characters (except Horatio) are dressed in winter-weight combat fatigues or watch jackets. Francisco is discovered on stage, warming his gloved hands over a brazier. When he hears Barnardo's "Who's there?" he grabs a business-like machine-gun and hits the ground, shouting "Stand and unfold yourself," obviously meaning to kill anyone who doesn't. Now, this has almost nothing to do with some sort of "pure" production we have grown to expect, with period costuming and so on. It does (I flatter myself to think) tell us something about the text itself (whatever that means). The play opens with people obviously preparing for war, full of suspicion and living in a very cold place, both physically and (the level of suspicion would imply) metaphorically. There is a quality of verisimilitude in how the characters react to their situation, which realistically builds the atmosphere needed for Hamlet (senior) to enter the picture. I've been running on somewhat longer than is perhaps appropriate, but my point (finally) is that all criticism involves some sort of reference to the "real world." We compare Picasso's *Guernica* to what we know of "real" suffering, and Richard III's motivation to what we know of "real" bitterness, ambition, and joyous cruelty. The difference is that, in criticizing dramatic texts, we have a chance to try out various possibilities, to compare them to productions we've seen or can imagine. If this is "performance criticism" and the same is impossible, I too wonder what I have been up to. Sincerely, Sean Kevin Lawrence MAFEKING@AC.DAL.CA ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 21:26:17 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0069 Re: Shakespeare is where?: Where is Shakespeare? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 69. Monday, 8 February 1993. From: Thomas G. Bishop Date: Monday, 8 Feb 93 20:16:04 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0066 Shakespeare is where? Well now, over here in Cleveland we have several Shakespeares and a Ben Jonson in your time frame. :-) The Great Lakes Theater Festival will have Claire Bloom doing her one-woman show of "Shakespeare's women" in late March, and will be presenting Othello throughout May, beginning, as I recall, on the 6th May. GTLF did "Mother Courage" last year (*Sniff*). Details: (216) 241-6000. Also at the end of March in Cleveland, Case Western Reserve Univ will be having a fully vamped and ready showing of Jonson/Jones court masque "Oberon" originally given 1611. This will be complete with period music and costumes (ever seen the satyrs from Orgel/Strong "Theater of the Stuart Court"? 8-0 ). The show runs from March 24-27 and co-incides with this year's Ohio Shakespeare Conference. Details: (216) 368-2400 I am advised that a bi-racial production of The Tempest will also open at Cleveland's Karamu House that same weekend. Now that would probably go quite well with "Oberon" given the "homme sauvage" etc stuff in both. Details: (216) 795-7070 Wanna make a weekend of it? You can even go to a Mahler program at the Cleveland orchestra with Vladimir Ashkenazy. Where did I learn to sound so much like a travel agent? Anyone else interested out there can just get in touch with me and I'll offer directions. I'm at (216) 368-2371 or the email address below. Cheers, Tom -- Tom Bishop Dept of English Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH 44106. (tgb2@po.cwru.edu) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 07:22:02 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0070 Re: Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 70. Tuesday, 9 February 1993. From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Monday, 08 Feb 93 21:36:31 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0068 Performance Criticism Sean Kevin Lawrence's imagined production of HAMLET 1.1 jarred a memory of a production I saw in a NYC storefront theatre three or four years ago. The opening watch patrolled the "ramparts" with WW II rifles, walking SCARED. His reaction to the next actor's entry was an eruption of "Agh-this-might-be-that ghost-again" terror. A chilling enactment, vivid after several years. Alas, everything after was sharply downhill from there, and we snuck out somewhere after Polonius was blurbling incoherently to his son. Unfulfilled performances have as much guilt to bear as unfulflled performance criticism. Ah, but THEORY . . . or POLITICS . . . As ever, Steve Urkowitz SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 17:32:46 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0071 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 71. Tuesday, 9 February 1993. From: David Bank Date: Tuesday, 9 Feb 93 20:41:59 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0064 Re: The Impossibility of Performance Criticism RE: Steve Urkowitz, John Drakakis and Friday nights. A few years ago, a large group of English Department colleagues used to gather at an insalubrious tavern in order to salute the departure of yet another week of lectures, tutorials etc etc. A U.K. brewery had put out one of those scratch-card games where the prize for getting all the questions right was a free drink. The questions all related to moral situations easily mapped on to Renaissance drama ("You are having an affair at the office. Your wife is suspicious. Do you lie to her?"). The "right" answers were those which tallied with the results of an attitudes survey conducted in Britain among three different age groups, and the questions each had three parts, one for each group. So one was being asked to anticipate the responses of fellow-citizens (a) young, (b) middle-aged, (c) old, to questions as above. Naturally, the quiz was somewhat more sophisticated than I have so far managed to suggest; for the results of the survey were *percentages* of each group answering Yes, and what one had to do in the quiz was pick the right percentage from a range offered offered on the card. Now, part of the point of this little story is that we *weren't* judging situations in Renaissance plays. Another part is that *no individual* among us was able to get every question right in all its parts. And (finally) we didn't do very well as a group either, though the odd pint was won to roars of vindication. Of course a quiz is neither a text or a performance in the usual senses. What was upset was one's far too casual notions about audiences, moral and other consensuses and convergences. Does anyone in the current debate want to claim the story as support? My own view is that Performance Criticism doesn't even get near the starting blocks, but there are other grounds for this which shouldn't lengthen this EM. David Bank University of Glasgow ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 07:25:32 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0072 Sex Acts and Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 72. Wednesday, 10 February 1993. From: Cliff Ronan Date: Tuesday, 09 Feb 1993 21:23:25 -0600 (CST) Subject: Sex Acts and Performance Criticism CC: Ed Pechter and Naomi Liebler When the serious and fascinating debate on Performance Criticism dies down, perhaps you, Ed, might check reviews of Barry Kyle's *Measure for Measure*, which opened on June 21, 1978, at the RSC in Stratford. My memories of it (which I saw at the very start of the run) are a little dim, and I am not positive that I got my seat before the play began. At any rate, the audience gasped at the first sight of the Overdone establishment (which might have been the first set seen onstage): there was one or more bare backed males, prone and grinding on cots behind a low balcony. I thought it worked all right. Naomi, would the dates and staging suggest that Kyle inspired the onstage fornication at Quickly's in the Joanne Akalaitis production of *1H4*? Another, and I think less successful, feature of the Kyle production was having the escaped prisoner Barnardine (played by Conrad Asquith) streak onto the stage in his birthday suit. He stood effectivelly awkwardly midstage, frontally naked while he manically explained something or other -- presumably why at that moment he was unprepared to meet his Maker. Did anyone else in SHAKSPER see this? Was it a veiled allusion to the prison of the flesh? Or a structure-enhancing bilingual attack on the disorder at the jail, where everything seemed/seems *commed un bordel*? Cliff Ronan Southwest Texas SU ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 19:04:38 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0073 Assorted Rs Re: Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 73. Wednesday, 10 February 1993. (1) From: David Richman Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 1993 10:35:26 -0500 (EST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0071 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism (2) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 93 08:21:08 PST Subj: SHK 4.0068 Performance Criticism (3) From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 93 09:47:00 EST Subj: RE: SHK 4.0072 Sex Acts and Performance Criticism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Richman Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 1993 10:35:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0071 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism David Bank's delicious story supports, and refutes, all sides in this dust-up. All criticism, in all modes, is impossible, if one is responding to enormous inadequacies and imperfections. We have a meagre body of fact, and imperfect tools. (By "we" I mean all those who try to respond with spoken or written words to other people's spoken or written words. We are all trying to lift up Olympus, or roll the ceaseless stone. The alternative is to fall silent. Why one set of people, trying to do the impossible, wants to throw nasturtiums at another set of people, also trying to do the impossible, continues to baffle me. Cheers, David Richman University of New Hampshire (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 93 08:21:08 PST Subject: SHK 4.0068 Performance Criticism If what you have described is performance criticism, it is hardly impossible, but is rather a slightly different version of trying out ideas. It is no different from having an idea about the significance of a scene, such as the opening one of Hamlet, and then seeing how that version of it fits in with one's idea of the rest of the play. And of course any idea about the scene, whether articulated in terms of one's imagination of its performance, or of critical articles about it is related to what aspect of the reality we know we find represented in it. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 93 09:47:00 EST Subject: RE: SHK 4.0072 Sex Acts and Performance Criticism To Cliff Ronan: Re: whether Barry Kyle's staging of *Measure* influenced Akalaitis's production of *1H4*--I have no clue. If your recollection of a 1978 date for the performance you saw is correct, chances are that it didn't. The Akalaitis thing happened sometime within the last 2 years. There wasn't much nudity in the latter event: the image received suggested (to me at least) that Quickly's tenants were too hurried, or perhaps too ill, or perhaps too bored, to bother removing their clothes altogether. Only the necessary apparata. You get the point. In any case, the audience watched a simulation, not necessarily a stimulation. As Steve Urkowitz would say--and HAS said--Go know. Perhaps someone who is more of a performa than I can elevate this event to some intelligent critical interpretation. I thought it was just tacky--memorable, but tacky. Made me want to run home and take a bath, and perhaps some precautionary penicillin as well. On that lovely note--best wishes, Naomi Liebler ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 07:38:58 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0074 Re: Performance Criticism Issues Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 74. Thursday, 11 February 1993. (1) From: Bernice Kliman Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 1993 19:15 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0073 Assorted Rs Re: Performance Criticism (2) From: Steven Urkowitz Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 93 23:22:31 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0071 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bernice Kliman Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 1993 19:15 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0073 Assorted Rs Re: Performance Criticism Without the nudity, the television version of MM, 1979, had a brothel scene out of the wild west, as I am sure everyone recalls. Nudity -- no. David Richman says it so well that I think I'd like to quote him again: Why one set of people, trying to do the impossible, wants to throw nasturtiums at another set of people, also trying to do the impossible, continues to baffle me, says David. Me too. Cheers, Bernice (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steven Urkowitz Date: Wednesday, 10 Feb 93 23:22:31 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0071 Re: Impossibility of Performance Criticism For David Banks and the differences between performance criticism and performance research: Yes, yes, yes. The protocols of empiric research are vastly different from the self-consciously individualistic interpretive acts described by theatre historians or script readers or folks who interview actors or decipher the annotations of stage managers or directors. For a while in the 1970s I used to read through American journals from various "speech" organizations; some gave results of close surveys of audience responses in performances. Unexpected spectra, inexplicable null responses, swarths of data and charts. But we need not grant sole title to "performance criticism" to them. Need we? (Or as we said in the bars in the Bronx, "Do we gotta?") Thanks for bringing in the gamesome dimension of how we define and use data and nomenclature. Steve (shut-up-already) Urkowitz SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 07:30:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0075 Re: Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 75. Friday, 12 February 1993. From: Tom Loughlin Date: Thursday, 11 Feb 1993 10:08 pm EST Subject: Performance Criticism Is it just me, or do I get the feeling that those people who are distrust- ful of performance criticism feel that way because they do not trust the performing artist to come to a work of theatre without a critical sense? without any ideas or concepts? If so, it is a sad comment on the nature of how we are currently viewing performance artists in our culture. I have read the many postings on the matter, and I think I don't quite undertand the kernel of the argument. I do know that, as an actor, when I approach a Shakespearean role I am fully conscious of the notion that I am making not only a critical statement about how I feel the role should be interpreted from the viewpoint of human behavior, but also from the viewpoint of critical interpretation. It's just that, unlike the scholar who writes her critical interpretation on paper and gets it published, I perform mine under a different set of rules in real time at a specific location, and invite a critique of my "critical commentary." For all the debunking of J. Akalitis' 1HIV, one cannot deny that there was an idea, a viewpoint at work, a "critical judgement" at work, with which one can either agree or disagree. The paucity of authentic text AS WELL AS authentic per- formance notes, it seems to me, leaves the field pretty wide open. Perhaps that's the fun of it all (?). --------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Loughlin * BITNET Dept. of Theatre Arts * loughlin@fredonia SUNY College at Fredonia * INTERNET Fredonia NY 14063 * loughlin@jane.cs.fredonia.edu Voice: 716.673.3597 * Fax: 716.673.3397 * "Hail, hail Freedonia, land of * the brave and free." G. Marx --------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 15:44:33 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0076 Re: Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 76. Friday, 12 February 1993. (1) From: Timothy Bowden Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 06:08:05 PST Subj: Re: Performance Criticism (2) From: Michael Friedman Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 13:43 EST Subj: Performance Criticism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Timothy Bowden Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 06:08:05 PST Subject: Re: Performance Criticism > From: Tom Loughlin > I do know that, as an actor, when I approach a Shakespearean role I > am fully conscious of the notion that I am making not only a critical > statement about how I feel the role should be interpreted from the > viewpoint of human behavior, but also from the viewpoint of critical > interpretation. Also from the viewpoint of four hundred years of the dust of actors who went before. I suspect that effect is underestimated, if even considered. Edwin Booth did Hamlet as straight drama; every actor who followed him must bring some native blend onto the scene, else they only be mimes. You will see a musing Hamlet, a neurotic Hamlet, an antic driven Hamlet, not because with pure reason and the text one actor has determined that is the nature of the role, but because the other choices have been taken. I suspect the pride of the actor, and the need to interest a modern audience, is more the impetus behind some bizarre stagings and readings today than any new insights into the Bard. ========================================================= tcbowden@clovis.felton.ca.us (Timothy Bowden) uunet!scruz.ucsc.edu!clovis.felton.ca.us!tcbowden Clovis in Felton, CA ========================================================= (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Friedman Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 13:43 EST Subject: Performance Criticism Being right in the middle of a run of *The Two Gentlemen of Verona* at the University of Scranton, I've finally found a moment to try to respond to John Drakakis on the question of what I've been doing all these years. In the meantime, most of what I would have said has already been phrased eloquently, particularly by David Richman and Steven Urkowitz, but I'll try to add my two cents without simply repeating their comments. In my mind, performance criticism views a Shakespearean text as an incomplete entity that achieves more complete embodiment whenever it is performed. Theatrical personnel collaborate with Shakespeare through his text to produce an event that affects individual spectators. For me, performance criticism is interested in two steps in this process: the movement from text to peformance, with all the inherent choices that must be made, and the effects that those choices have on the reception of the performed text by audience members. By studying performance choices that have been made in the past, by speculating on the possible effects of untested options, or by experimenting on stage with unorthodox alternatives, the performance critic can gain some sense of the range of significance the text allows. There will always be, within this range, an infinite number of possible "meanings" that can be derived from a written text, but I also believe that this range does not include all possible meanings of all plays; so, for example, no production of *The Comedy of Errors* could ever say the exact same thing to any spectator that a production of *King Lear* could. What good performance criticism does *not* try to do, in my opinion, is to describe a definitive production of a particular play or to re-create the original staging on Shakespeare's own platform. I also acknowledge, however, that the practice of performance criticism is plagued with various difficulties. First of all, it tends to invite overgeneralizations about audience response to any particular moment of stage activity. It also tends to collapse an entire run of a production, with all its inevitable development and inconsistencies from night to night into a neat phrase like "Gielgud's 1949 revival of *Much Ado*." The practitioners of performance criticism, myself included, often tend to rely on the eyewitness accounts of others or to draw conclusions from ambiguous evidence in promptbooks, particularly when investigating productions from the distant past. There are those who argue that one ought not even to attempt to write about a production that one has not seen him- or herself several times, but even with such experience, one cannot hope to account for the entire spectrum of responses such a performance might have provoked. Finally, given the infinite range of possible performance choices, is there ever any way of determining relative value among them, or are we forever consigned to an infinite number of equally legitimate options? These are only a few of the many limitations of performance criticism, but even in the face of these obstacles, I still do not find the practice of performance criticism itself impossible, and I certainly do it find valuable as a tool for understanding something important about Shakespeare. Michael Friedman Friedman@Scranton ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1993 21:20:24 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0077 More on Performance Criticism (Whatever That Is) Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 77. Friday, 12 February 1993. (1) From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 17:20:00 EST Subj: RE: SHK 4.0076 Re: Performance Criticism (2) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 17:29:34 PSTZ Subj: SHK 4.0076 Re: Performance Criticism (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 17:20:00 EST Subject: RE: SHK 4.0076 Re: Performance Criticism In the recent avalanche of e-mails regarding "performance criticism," it seems to me that several distinctions that need to be made have been completely neglected, and it's no wonder that people are couching their comments in an array of parenthetical phrases like "whatever that means." This confused and confusing conflation of distinctions has become more apparent with recent postings from actors and directors who discuss what they do under the umbrella-heading of "performance criticism," when what they really do is "performance," while other people who watch those performances do "criticism." That's one kind of distinction: I've done a bunch of that kind of "criticism" -- it was called "reviewing," and was published as such (mostly in *Shakespeare Bulletin* issues over the last 7 years or so). Then there's another kind of thing that is also referred to as "performance criticism," that is probably more clearly called "performance theory," and it concerns itself with various approaches to the activity called "performance." I'm thinking of folks like Schechner and his disciples, or Susan and David Cole, inter alia. I think what we're all playing around with here is not "criticism" so much as it is "interpretation," a term we all (justifiably?) shy away from because it implies something ad hoc and individual and does not carry the clout we'd all like our personal interpretations to carry. Actors interpret; directors interpret; reviewers evaluate those interpretations against some idea they themselves have of the way the "text" (which text?) OUGHT TO BE performed (i.e., interpreted); and those we mean by the term "critic" do something else again, and do it so variously that it may defy any attempt to describe it in a pithy phrase or two. The main distinction that occurs to me is one Peter Brook inspired long ago (in the 60's) in *The Empty Space.* He said "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage," and ever since then, directors and actors have answered mostly to themselves and their paying patrons and whined about why their work was not taken as seriously as they wanted it to be taken by academics and review-writing critics, while at the same time decrying those same academics and critics because the latter did not participate in "performances." The point is that actors, directors, academics, and review-writers do different things in regard to performance. We are not engaged in the same enterprise, nor in the same discourse, nor does what we do spring from the same sources -- and that's true even without considering the headachy question of "text." We even speak and write to different populations: audiences generally, newsletter readers, editorial boards, publishers' selection committees. So I don't know what y'all mean by "performance criticism: possibilities or impossibilities thereof." It's difficult to debate the "possibility" of something whose parameters we have yet to (and may not ever) agree on. And if you all want to see how truly bizarre this conversation can get, subscribe to the "PERFORM-L" list operating out of NYU. I did for a while, and then resigned from the list. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I can't recall the mechanism for subscribing, but if any SHAKSPERians are interested, I'm sure that someone on THIS list also can help with access to THAT one. It's probably something like "Sub PERFORM-L" followed by your name. To be continued?.... Cheers, Naomi C. Liebler (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 17:29:34 PSTZ Subject: SHK 4.0076 Re: Performance Criticism I doubt that there are infinite performance choices. Usually there are two or three ways in which a charater can be seen, more often two, just as there are in thinking or writing about a play critically. Once having decided on what kind of person a character is like, then of course, there are many different ways to convey that on the stage, through intonation, gesture, props, setting etc. But those myriad devices will still be in the service of conveying the what kind of person the director wants the audience to see the character as. The test of the enactment of any particular scene will be how well it integrates with the rest of the play, and the test of seeing a character as this or that kind of person will be how well it intgrates with other characters, or makes sense of the play as a whole. Once again, the kind of thinking that goes into these judgments does not differ from the thinking that goes into writing, agreeing or disagreeing with critical articles. Cheers. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1993 08:50:38 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0078 Another Subject? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 78. Saturday, 13 February 1993. From: Kelly Caldwell Date: Friday, 12 Feb 93 22:15:53 EST Subject: another subject????? Although I have found the veritable plethora of comments re: performance criticism interesting, I'm desperate for some new and exciting subject-matter. Unfortunately, my brain hurts, and I'm unable to offer a new topic myself, but I'm hoping that somebody out there has something that has been on the tip of their tongue for a while ....... Hoping we can talk about performance criticism, and more more more! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 11:41:47 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0079 Re: Another Subject? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 79. Monday, 15 February 1993. (1) From: Judy Boss Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 7:44:30 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0078 Another Subject? (2) From: Christoppher Johnston Date: Saturday, 13 Feb 93 19:32:49 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0078 Another Subject? (3) From: Ronald Dwelle Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 09:31:51 EST Subj: Another subject? (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Judy Boss Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 7:44:30 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0078 Another Subject? I've noticed that several HyperCard "editions" of Shakespeare's plays are available at FTP sites archiving MAC programs. Has anyone looked at these? Is anyone commenting on the phenomenon? My instant reaction is that this would be a great tool for students, but then I'm not really a Shakespearean, just a follower. Judy Boss boss@cwis.unomaha.edu (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Christoppher Johnston Date: Saturday, 13 Feb 93 19:32:49 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0078 Another Subject? Well, yes, actually there is something I've been thinking about: Someone mentioned to me not long ago that lately there has been a certain resurgence of interest in the Harrison/Cornford/Murray type of drama interpretation. It was certainly a facinating approach -- Gilbert Murray's lecture on Hamlet and Orestes showed how it could be also applied to Shakespearean tragedy. But even with Northrop Frye's brilliant writing along these lines (as in Anat. of Crit.), I am still not quite convinced of the relevancy it has to texts far removed from the antique origins of drama. Perhaps someone thinks otherwise. Todd Johnston (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ronald Dwelle Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 09:31:51 EST Subject: Another subject? A possible subject change... I've had a most interesting two weeks in my undergraduate Shaxpr class, on Merchant of Venice. The question of anti-Semitism/Racism occupied the students' attention, almost exclusively. I wonder how (or even if) members of this list would defend Shakespeare against the student charge, based on MofV, that he is a racist and an anti-Semite. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 13:05:37 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0080 Re: More on Performance Criticism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 80. Monday, 15 February 1993. From: Timothy Dayne Pinnow Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 10:35:51 CST Subject: Re: More on Performance Criticism >I doubt that there are infinite performance choices. Usually there are two or >three ways in which a charater can be seen, more often two, just as there are >in thinking or writing about a play critically. Following Kay Stockholders posting, I find the actor in me screaming to respond. The suggestion that there are only two or three basic ways to play a character is akin to the suggestion that a composer ought to be able to write a masterful symphony with two or three notes. The same idea goes for Timothy Bowden's suggestion that actors stray because they are always looking for something new. OF COURSE WE ARE!!!! Theatre is a performing ART (I'd add more emphasis to that last word is I could get it through on e-mail) by definition that means that we are engaged in the business of communicating an artist's intentions. For the theatre, that means not only old Will himself, but also the director, designers, actors, costumers, and so on down to the person who pulls the curtain. As actors, our choices are bound not only by what the text seems to say, but also by the rules of the director's world as established in his/her concept. Within those rules, we are able to do OUR art, finding things that the text only intimates and that we find to be reasonable and communicable in a meaningful way. Sometimes we succeed and are called competent, sometimes we fail and are called incompetent(or worse). The point being, none of us in the theatre would be doing art if there were limits on the possibilities before the adventure begins. End of Sermon Timothy Dayne Pinnow Ass't. Prof. of Theatre St. Olaf College 1520 St. Olaf Ave Northfield MN 55057 ph. 507/646-3327 Internet: pinnow@stolaf.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 17:31:23 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0081 Re: HyperCard; Qs: Folklore & Shakespeare; CBC Parodies Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 81. Monday, 15 February 1993. (1) From: Steve Schrum Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 14:01 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0079 Re: Another Subject? (2) From: Tom Horton Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 13:04:10 -0500 Subj: Basic refs on folklore & Shakespeare (3) From: Wendy Woytasik Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 14:31:02 EST Subj: The Noblest (Canadian) Parody.... (1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Schrum Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 14:01 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0079 Re: Another Subject? Regarding the HyperCard versions of the plays--I haven't looked at them in depth, but I was impressed with the brief playing-around I gave Macbeth. I plan to download them and set them up into a "library " section of my own creation, a HyperCard TheatreTour. Over the weekend I began creating icons to represent each of the plays, but soon hit a brick wall. Anyone have suggestions for easy-to-recognize visual symbols for each of the plays? (For example, for Two Gentlemen of Verona, two small figures turn toward and away each other at the mouse click.) Please send any suggestions to: sas14@psuvm. Thanks, Steve Schrum Penn State Hazleton (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tom Horton Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 13:04:10 -0500 Subject: Basic refs on folklore & Shakespeare Can someone supply a list of "basic" references on the topic of folklore and Shakespeare? A student in one of my computer science classes came looking for advice for a research paper she's doing in her sophomore-level Shakespeare class. (That should help tell you the level of reference we need.) She has found *Folk-lore of Shakespeare* by the Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, but doesn't seem too excited by it. Since I don't have too many of my computer science undergrads asking for books on Shakespeare, I'd like to be able give this student a helpful response! We should encourage this kind of thing, no? :-) Thanks. Tom ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Thomas B. Horton, Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL 33431 USA Phone: 407/367-2674 FAX: 407/367-2800 Internet: tom@cse.fau.edu Bitnet: HortonT@fauvax (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Wendy Woytasik Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 14:31:02 EST Subject: The Noblest (Canadian) Parody.... Greetings, all! I hope this fits in the parameters of discussion..... While discussing pending term papers, it was observed that some will be due on the Ides of March....I was instantly reminded of that bit from Wayne & Shuster, in which Calphurnia says "I told him, Julie, don't go, it's the Ides of March, beware already".... Does anyone know if CBC is planning on releasing some or all of the "timeless" parodies (ie. Julius Caesar {Rinse the Blood off my Toga?}, Shakespearean baseball)?? I found them wonderfully intelligent parodies, and miss having weekly reruns..... Thanks!! ./ . Wendy Woytasik [a/k/a "The Historical Hacker"] _| | |/|_ Department of History, University of Windsor / Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4 >______< INTERNET: wendy@ucc.uwindsor.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 07:00:48 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0082 Re: HyperCard Shakespeare Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 82. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. (1) From: Michael Best Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 16:24:44 PST Subj: Shakespeare "Editions" on HyperCard (2) From: Robert F. O'Connor Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 16:09:24 +1000 Subj: Re: HyperCard (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Best Date: Monday, 15 Feb 93 16:24:44 PST Subject: Shakespeare "Editions" on HyperCard The editions that Judy Boss asks about are transcriptions into HyperCard of the Globe text (1864, rev 1911), long out of copyright, of course. They are nicely presented with each scene on a separate card, and the layout of the original preserved and easy to read. The designer offers the text in the public domain, and allows all users to distribute the stacks as they wish. There are no notes, but they can be used to provide a basic electronic text. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert F. O'Connor Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 16:09:24 +1000 Subject: Re: HyperCard I, too, have managed to dig up (some) of the Hypercard Shakespeare, and I corresponded (briefly) with the man responsible - who is not, by the way, a Shakespearean scholar, just a fellow addict. He is more than happy to receive advice suggestions etc, as his blurb accompanying each text says. I have found them very useful, if only for one reason - they beat the hell out of paying (currently) A$80 per play for a concordance. It's a little time consuming to use them in this way but I have been told that anyone who knows how to program Hypercard (not me) can work a 'count' facility into them (if that's what you need). Would it be possible for these texts to be added to the list of SHAKSPER resources? ROC [It would clearly be possible to add these texts to the SHAKSPER Fileserver; I simply need more information about their availability. Perhaps you could contact me privately with the appropriate information. --hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 07:05:36 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 83. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. From: Kelly Caldwell Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 00:01:02 EST Subject: Shakespeare & Anti-semitism Somebody raised an interesting point re: anti-semitic Shakespeare in MofV. It reminded me of an experience I had as an undergrad. Certain unlucky members of a class I was taking were asked to take sides in a debate re: Shylock in MofV -- as soon as my prof saw me hiding behind my notebook, he enlisted me in the "Poor Shylock" side. Needless to say, consensus was that "our side" won. There is a VERY strong case supporting the thesis that Shakespeare depicted Shylock as the tragic hero/victim of the play. Aside from the fact that I "shy" away from making personal statements about authors (ie: the play is racist; therefore, Bill was too!), IMHO Shylock's mistreatment by other characters in the play whose racism is indisputable, is not praised or given merit to any extent. Let's face it, Shylock isn't the *only* unlikable character in the work. Rather a long way of saying that I think the "MofV is an anti-semitic play, and Shakespeare was a racist" statements are the results of over-simplification. I wonder what Bill would say? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 22:24:34 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0084 Re:Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 84. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. (1) From: Germaine Warkentin Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 08:46:19 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (2) From: Nikki Parker Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 09:04:47 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (3) From: John Massa Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 09:22 CST Subj: Shakespeare as Racist, Bigot, Anti-Semite etc. (4) From: Jay L Halio Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 14:16:00 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (5) From: David Knauer Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 17:50 CST Subj: bigot will? (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Germaine Warkentin Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 08:46:19 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism I wonder if it wouldn't be more helpful to begin with the repudiation of the Jew in Shakspeare's own society -- a social norm in Shakespeare's day, though working relationships as usual must have been somewhat different -- and then discuss the way in which Shakespeare, without, I suspect, much of an ideological position, simply moves away from the norm and sees what its limitations are, who supports it and why, and what it does to people. He does not seem to carry this interrogation much farther than the portrayal of Shylock, and that's a problem. Certainly, having accepted the Shylock Shakespeare gives us, I find it very difficult to deal with Portia's famous speech. I rarely teach Renaissance drama, so my contact with Shakespeare is through the poems, but there are several examples of this kind of lateral thinking there. I could write a book on the Petrarchism of the sonnets (Petrarch as re-written by a Martian), but I'll confine myself to the example of _The Rape of Lucrece_, which I have recently been teaching. Shakespeare gives us a Lucrece who involuntarily responds to Tarquin (a modification of the source) but then kills herself (in submission to the source), a knotty problem with students, who would like to see Shakespeare change the ending along lines they would approve. Is an exploration of the same kind going on in MofV? Perhaps my friends on the drama side will tell me this has all been said before! ******************************************************************************* Germaine Warkentin warkent@epas.utoronto.ca English, Victoria College, University of Toronto ******************************************************************************* (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nikki Parker Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 09:04:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism When my Shakespeare class read the Merchant of Venice, the question of whether or not it was anti-semitic was also brought up. A class presentation did another version of Shylock's trial, where they presented evidence that Shylock was suffering discrimination. The rest of the class was the jury, and voted, based on the "new" evidence, whether or not he was still guilty. Over half the class (if I remember correctly) still found him guilty. The interesting fact of the play that I discovered, was Shylock's sentancing. Making him convert to Christianity seems to me a far worse punishment than jail, or death. Not that I have anything against Christianity personally, but making a person be something that they do not believe in seems cruel and heartless. I think "Bill" used this ending because his audience was mostly Christian, and Shylock's conversion to Christianity is the correct punishment. Yes, MofV is racist, but the question is...should we care? Is Taming of the Shrew misogynist? Lots of questions... Nikki Parker St. Michael's College (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Massa Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 09:22 CST Subject: Shakespeare as Racist, Bigot, Anti-Semite etc. An interesting point was raised concerning class discussion of how Shakespeare would defend himself against charges of racism, anti-semitism (and lets add sexism, warmongering, general bigotry, elitism, pornography, murder, rape, deceit, adultery, mutilation and any other bad thing in his plays.) Although student discussion of Shakespeare is a good thing, I think it's sad to see what the ravages of "Politically Correct" thinking have wrought: students picking through Shakespeare (and let's not forget Mark Twain) looking for "bad words" and "bad ideas" and reaching momentous conclusions like "Hey everybody! These guys were RACISTS!" If I were in the class discussion I would suggest the following: (1) We are all racists, sexists, bigots etc. Take a look around. That's what the world is like. Shakespeare would probably "defend himself" by saying "Defend yourself first." (2) Writing about a bad thing, ESPECIALLY IN FICTION, does not mean that the author thinks the bad thing is good. (Is it really necessary to point this out?) (3) Shakespeare held up a mirror to nature, and I happen to think he did a pretty good job of it. Rather than making his characters potically correct straw men, his bad guys are believable because they usually have some rationalization for what they do. We see them from their own point of view. (4) We know nothing about Shakespeare, really. He taunts us from across the centuries, leaving us wondering "Was that Shakespeare talking, or was it just one of his characters?" Frankly, I prefer it that way. Let his work, via all its interpretations, speak for itself. (5) Whether Shakespeare was a racist or not, within the context of his own times, is irrelevant. What's one more dead racist, more or less? What we should be looking at are these politically correct witch hunts which resulted in students at one institution rejecting "Mark Twain" as the name of their school because he was a racist and a writer of CHILDREN'S FICTION! Yikes! Racism is deplorable, but so is ignorance, and narrow tests of ideological purity. John Massa John-Massa@uiowa.edu (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay L Halio Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 14:16:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism On Tue, 16 Feb 1993, Kelly Caldwell wrote: > Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 83. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. > > From: Kelly Caldwell > Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 00:01:02 EST > Subject: Shakespeare & Anti-semitism > > Somebody raised an interesting point re: anti-semitic Shakespeare in MofV. > It reminded me of an experience I had as an undergrad. Certain unlucky members > of a class I was taking were asked to take sides in a debate re: Shylock in > MofV -- as soon as my prof saw me hiding behind my notebook, he enlisted me in > the "Poor Shylock" side. Needless to say, consensus was that "our side" won. > > There is a VERY strong case supporting the thesis that Shakespeare depicted > Shylock as the tragic hero/victim of the play. Aside from the fact that I > "shy" away from making personal statements about authors (ie: the play is > racist; therefore, Bill was too!), IMHO Shylock's mistreatment by other > characters in the play whose racism is indisputable, is not praised or given > merit to any extent. Let's face it, Shylock isn't the *only* unlikable > character in the work. Rather a long way of saying that I think the "MofV is > an anti-semitic play, and Shakespeare was a racist" statements are the results > of over-simplification. > > I wonder what Bill would say? For a useful discussion of Shakespeare's view and the backgrounds lying behind it, see my forthcoming edition of MV (Oxford UP). The Introduction begins with an essay, "Shakespeare and Semitism," which has many references to the literature on the subject. Meanwhile, interested persons should consult M.M. Mahood's Cambridge UP edition, which also includes an invaluable discussion and references. Jay L. Halio (5)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Knauer Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 17:50 CST Subject: bigot will? I'd agree that the reactions of Ronald Dwelle's students to *Merchant of Venice*--namely, that both the play and Shakespeare are anti-Semitic/racist--are very reductive. I had a similar experience teaching Wm. Faulkner's "Dry September" (I know, wrong era, wrong continent) in an undergrad class. The story is about a brutal lynching and "nigger" and other such epithets get tossed around a lot. The students made a similar determination that both Faulkner and the story were necessarily racist. Although I didn't say they were wrong (biting my tongue helped), I tried to make clear the potentially wide gulf between what an author might purposefully represent and what he might personally endorse. This led, thankfully, to a lot more fruitful discussion of the problems of authorial intention and figurative language. I give Will the benefit of the figurative language. I give Will (both of them) the benefit of the doubt. Good luck, David Knauer Northern Illinois University ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 22:33:49 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0085 Re: HyperCard Shakespeare Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 85. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. (1) From: Tad Davis Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 09:31:01 -0500 Subj: RE: SHK 4.0082 Re: HyperCard Shakespeare (2) From: Nate Johnson Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 16:30:37 EST Subj: Review of Michael Best's Hypercard Shakespeare's Life and Times (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tad Davis Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 09:31:01 -0500 Subject: RE: SHK 4.0082 Re: HyperCard Shakespeare >I have found them very useful, if only for one reason - they beat the hell >out of paying (currently) A$80 per play for a concordance. It's a little >time consuming to use them in this way but I have been told that anyone who >knows how to program Hypercard (not me) can work a 'count' facility into >them (if that's what you need). Building a "count" facility into HyperCard WOULD be pretty simple to do, but the results wouldn't be fast. The slowness results from the programming language built into HyperCard, HyperTalk. HyperTalk is faster than BASIC but slower than just about anything else. Despite the sluggishness, though, if you're interested in dabbling in programming, HyperTalk is one of the absolute BEST places to start. I highly recommend it. You can amaze your friends and dismay your enemies with only modest effort. Another interesting project would be to include notes, and then in some unobtrusive way tag the annotated text. Double-clicking on the tagged text could then open a small window containing the annotation. That kind of thing is, after all, one of the promises that "hypertext" holds out. It sure beats jumping from the text to the notes at the bottom of the page and losing your place in both -- something I always end up doing, because I'm an annotation addict, and to this day I can't pass up an opportunity to learn once again that "presently" means "immediately." Tad Davis davist@a1.relay.upenn.edu (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nate Johnson Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 16:30:37 EST Subject: Review of Michael Best's Hypercard Shakespeare's Life and Times The following review of Michael Best's Hypercard stack may be suggestive in light of the recent discussion on Hypercard Shakespeare texts. Michael Best's Hypercard *Shakespeare's Life and Times* (reviewed by Nate Johnson) Fifteen years ago, we would all have been spending the evening watching television or reading a book. But this last December, when I visited my family for Christmas, my two brothers were riveted to the latest Nintendo game, my mother was playing Tetris on her old IBM XT, while I sat at a new Macintosh Performa 400 running Michael Best's hypercard stack and taking notes on a borrowed IBM notebook. Before anyone gets too nostalgic for the days when "computer" didn't modify "literate," take a look at Michael Best's Hypercard treasure trove, Shakespeare's Life and Times. Best shows us that, paradoxically, cutting edge 20th century technology may be the best way yet to convey a sense of the richly textured world of Shakespeare's England. The bizarre combination of antique and modern--Hypercard and Huswifery--goes a long way towards bridging the gap between the two worlds. Best's program will turn devoted Shakespeareans on to the computer age while computer-addicts will find a vivid introduction to Shakespeare in their own "language." Avoiding the twin extremes of oversimplification and chaos, Best gives Macintosh users more than a MacShakespeare. He takes full advantage of Hypercard's potential to convey a worldview that is as deep as it is wide. The nine stacks (around 12 Mb) range from biography of Shakespeare to social, political, and intellectual background to discussions of eight of the most widely read plays. Yet the intricately networked connections between stacks are what give the program its unique value as a learning tool. Best's application shows that, unlike books, well-designed hypercard stacks can function almost as extensions of the user's memory. Starting in the stack on Shakespeare's life, for example, I can either read from start to finish, "Childhood" through "Retirement," or, as I am often wont to do, let myself be distracted by associations to an entirely different stack. Reading that Shakespeare's family may narrowly have escaped the plague, I can click on the word "plague," immediately taking me to the appropriate section of "social background" on life in London. From there I can call up the card on London's sewer system, where I find out that Fleet river was basically an open sewer and that Ben Jonson wrote a mock-heroic poem about a voyage up the Fleet. From there, I can either call up a passage from the poem, return to the biographical stack, or explore further aspects of English city life. Although the same information may be available in printed form, the Hypercard format allows an ease and speed of access that printed media can't match. Although still too introductory for in-depth research, Best's program is a terrific place to find leads for undergraduate papers. In addition to the wealth of historical and literary information, Best provides hundreds of definitions, quotations, and thumbnail biographies of contemporary figures, as well as a number of well- chosen and up-to-date bibliographies available simply by clicking on "Further Reading" at just about any point in the program. The most striking feature of Shakespeare's Life and Times may be its vast array of illustrations, with 500 graphic images taken mostly from Renaissance sources--maps, portraits, woodcuts, illustrations of dress, architecture, and stage properties--lending a visual dimension to almost every card. The black-and-white woodcuts and engravings of the period make ideal material for scanned-in graphics. The program also gestures towards the integration of audio and animated material. While later versions will include a wider range of brief audio clips, the sound effects in the version I reviewed are limited to the "Music" section of the stack on "The literary background." This sequence is the most effective combination of textual, visual, and audio media in the program. Click on the name or picture of an instrument at any point in the sequence and you'll hear that instrument. In later versions, you'll be able to hear actors reading from the plays. In a sequence entitled "Staging a scene from Hamlet," Best uses limited animation to show how the stage in an Elizabethan outdoor theater works. Here, however, is one area where the execution doesn't quite live up to the idea. While the fixed pictures of the stage and the actors positions and the choice of scene (Hamlet's encounter with the ghost) are appropriate, the primitive animation itself adds little to the overall effect. Later versions of the program may include more sophisticated graphics, possibly including scenes from actual productions. Shakespeare's Life and Times demonstrates the increasing potential for combining state-of-the-art computer technology with scholarship in the humanities. In the context of the recent discussions on Hypercard versions of Shakespeare and the possibility and impossibility of performance criticism, we might ask ourselves what impact technology can or will have on our notions of critical concepts such as "text," "performance," "publication," "reading," "writing," "criticism." As processors and storage technologies become bigger and faster, it may not be too long before a Hypercard Shakespeare could include background written and visual information such as Best provides, as well as several complete, fully indexed texts of each play, facsimiles, concordances, and textually indexed versions of a wide variety of videotaped performances. I highly recommend Shakespeare's Life and Times to anyone with an interest in Shakespeare and computers and especially to instructors who might be interested in integrating computers with a classroom- based approach to texts. I'm sure Michael Best, a SHAKSPER participant, would appreciate any comments or speculation this review might provoke. Shakespeare's Life and Times can be ordered ($79.00) from: Intellimation Library for the Macintosh P.O. Box 1922 Santa Barbara, CA 93116-1922 USA (1-800-3-INTELL) (N.B. Version 2.1 includes more sound resources than the version I reviewed, including passages read in Shakespeare's dialect and more Renaissance music.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 22:36:59 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0086 Shakespeare and Folklore Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 86. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. From: Luc Borot Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 93 20:13 Subject: Shakespeare and Folklore From Luc Borot On: Tom Horton's query on Shakespeare and folklore One of the very best books on this topic is Francois Laroque's Shakespeare's Festive World, trans. from the French, Cambridge UP, 1990 or 1991. The author has just told me that CUP was printing a paperback version of this work of his. Other critics of great talent and knowledge on this issue are David Wiles (Bedford New College, London), Michael Hattaway, Michael Bristol, who recently published a book on carnival which I do not have by hand just now. Hattaway edited the Henry VI-s for the New Cambridge Shakespeare. I would not like this to sound like advertising, but I remember interesting articles by Laroque in numbers 32 (on Othello) and 35 (on Macbeth) of Cahiers Elisabethains, whose index is on the SHAKSPER file- server, and others by Hattaway and Wiles of excellent quality in other issues of the same Montpellier publication. Will that do? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 22:41:23 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0087 Relationship Between Playtext and Performance Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 87. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. From: Nick Clary Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 09:47:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Relationship Between Playtext and Performance] While recent contributors to the performance criticism conversation remind me that actors and directors are as intent on doing a play "new" as others are in establishing the historical occasion for a particular performance. Should more of us be wondering about the relationship between reading a playtext and attending a performance of it. Were Elizabethan's only able to read a playtext after the play had been performed? When a play was revived, are we to assume that it must have been different from all versions of the play that had been previously performed (to make it "new") or like only one of the published versions? And if it were revived soon after a version of the playtext was published, would it necessarily follow this particular version or could it be expected to vary not only from this version but from all prior ones? What about the publishing of HAMLET Q1 and Q2 in consecutive years and of OTHELLO Q1 and F1 in consecutive years? Who read which versions? Why? Beyond issues of commercialism or censorship, is there a way to think about such things in a fresh way? Some certainly attended performances without ever reading a published play. Others must certainly have read playtexts without ever attending a performance. Is there anyone out there who is developing a theory about play reading or about play publishing in Elizabethan England? Nick Clary clary@smcvax.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 22:44:55 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0088 E-Text Information via Gopher and FTP Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 88. Tuesday, 16 February 1993. From: Paul Mangiafico Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 16:29 EST Subject: E-Text Information via Gopher and FTP We thought this announcement might be of interest to your community. It is also being sent to a number of other discussion groups in the library and humanities communities. Paul Mangiafico, project assistant Center for Text & Technology pmangiafico@guvax.bitnet Academic Computer Center, 238 Reiss pmangiafico@guvax.georgetown.edu Georgetown University tel: 202-687-6096 Washington, DC 20057 USA fax: 202-687-6003 CPET DIGESTS NOW AVAILABLE VIA GOPHER AND FTP For the past four years, Georgetown University's Center for Text & Technology (CTT), under the aegis of the Academic Computer Center, has been compiling a directory of projects that create and analyze electronic text in the humanities. A relational database accessible via the Internet, Georgetown's Catalogue of Projects in Electronic Text (CPET) includes information on more than 350 projects throughout the world. Now digests of project information -- organized by humanities discipline and by language of the electronic text -- can be read, searched, and retrieved by means of the Internet's protocols for Gopher and anonymous FTP. There are digests for 40 different languages, as well as for linguistics, literature, philosophy, biblical studies, and a variety of others, ranging from Medieval and Renaissance studies to Archaeology, African studies, and Buddhism. GOPHER - INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACCESS The CPET digests are organized into subdirectories on Georgetown University's Gopher server. If you have never used Gopher, you may wish to consult your local Internet expert to determine whether you have access to Gopher client software or to obtain for instructions for using it. At many locations, one simply types the word GOPHER at the system prompt of the networked mainframe. Once inside the main Gopher directory, look for CPET files under: Other Gopher and Information Servers North America USA Washington, DC Georgetown University Please note that the menu item for Washington, DC, appears alphabetically after Washington state and not after Delaware. On the Georgetown server look into the directory CPET_PROJECTS_IN_ELECTRONIC_TEXT, where you will find the following files and subdirectories: 1. CPET_DIGESTS_INTRODUCTION.TXT (information on the digests) 2. CPET_INTRODUCTION.TXT (information on the CPET database) 3. CPET_USER_GUIDE.TXT (how to access the on-line database) 4. DIGESTS_DISCIPLINES.DIR (digests organized by discipline) 5. DIGESTS_LANGUAGES.DIR (digests organized by language) The filenames of the digests have as extensions the approximate size in kilobytes of each file; filesize will determine the length of time needed to acquire the file. Before retrieving any of the digests, please read the introductory file (CPET_DIGESTS_INTRODUCTION.TXT). FTP - INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACCESS The digests are arranged in a similar structure in Georgetown's FTP server. To survey the digests, first enter the following command from your system prompt: ftp guvax.georgetown.edu (or ftp 141.161.1.2) When requested, login with the username ANONYMOUS and a password according to the formula YOURNAME@YOURSITE. Once within GUVAX, at the ftp prompt ( often either ftp> or * ), change directories as follows: ftp> cd cpet_projects_in_electronic_text Then if you then enter a directory command -- DIR -- you will find the same files and subdirectories that are described in the preceding section of these directions on gopher. To inspect the other directories in a subdirectory, change directories again. Do not enter the .DIR extension or the version number, and distinguish between hyphens and underscores when typing the filenames. For example, at the prompt enter a command such as the following: ftp>cd digests_disciplines To explore further the directory structure and the file contents, enter the commands to show the directory (DIR) or to change the directory (CD) as often as necessary. Note: some subdirectories contain more than one complete screen of filenames, so when you enter a dir command, the initial contents of the subdirectory may scroll off the screen. To stop the scrolling, use whatever device your system permits. For example, with VAX VMS one would use CTRL-S (that is, hold down the CTRL key and press the S key) to stop scrolling and CTRL-Q to continue scrolling. To retrieve a file, type at the ftp prompt the command GET followed by the name of the file (with the filename extension) that you wish to retrieve. For example, ftp> get finnish.17K A system message will confirm that the file has been transferred to your computer (more specifically, to the directory from which you invoked ftp). To leave FTP, enter at the prompt the command BYE. ftp> bye If you have any questions or comments on this service, or would like to learn more about CPET and Georgetown's Center for Text and Technology, please contact us at the address below. Georgetown Catalogue of Projects in Electronic Text (CPET) Center for Text & Technology Academic Computer Center, Reiss 238 Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 USA tel: 202-687-6096 fax: 202-687-6003 Contacts: Paul Mangiafico, CPET Project Assistant pmangiafico@guvax.georgetown.edu Dr. Michael Neuman, Director, Center for Text & Technology neuman@guvax.georgetown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1993 06:51:40 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0089 Library Lecture Series Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 89. Wednesday, 17 February 1993. From: Daniel Traister Date: Tuesday, 16 Feb 1993 12:53:01 -0500 Subject: Library Lecture Series 1993 ROSENBACH AND GATES LECTURES In March, the University of Pennsylvania Library sponsors two lecture series. Both are free and open to the public. ROSENBACH LECTURES IN BIBLIOGRAPHY The first announcement repeats an announcement already made. JAMES N. GREEN, Curator of Printed Books at The Library Company of Philadelphia, will present the 1993 ROSENBACH LECTURES IN BIBLIOGRAPHY on Tuesday, March 16, Thursday, March 18, and Tuesday, March 23. Speaking about "BOOK PUBLISHING IN EARLY AMERICA," Mr. Green first discusses "Colonial Beginnings: Benjamin Franklin and Robert Bell." His second lecture concerns "The Transformation of the 1790s: Mathew Carey and Mason Locke Weems." His third, en- titled "Charvat Reconsidered: Literary Publishing to 1825," looks anew at the views on this subject of an older Rosenbach Fellow. Lectures will be held in the Lessing J. Rosenwald Gallery on the sixth floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library (3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106-6206; enter the Library from Locust Walk). They will start at 5:30 P.M. Receptions will follow. Mr. Green has published widely on the early American book trade. He is both a contributor and an advisor to the collaborat- ive history of the book in America, in progress at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, and to the history of the book in Britain, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. He has served two terms as President of the American Printing History Association and is a Member of the Council of the Bibliographical Society of America. He has also served the American Library Asso- ciation and The New-York Historical Society. A graduate of Oberlin College, his advanced degrees come from Columbia and Yale Univer- sities. In addition to his duties at The Library Company, Mr. Green teaches courses in the art and history of the book at the University of the Arts. GATES LECTURES At almost exactly the same time, ALAN SINFIELD, Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton, Eng- land, will deliver the 1993 GATES LECTURES. Professor Sinfield's lectures, intended (like the Rosen- bach Lectures) for eventual publication, are on the general topic of "CULTURAL POLITICS." He will speak on Monday, March 15 ("Shakespeare and Subordinate Reading"), Wednesday, March 17 ("Art as Cultural Production"), Friday, March 19 ("Un-American Activit- ies: Tennessee Williams and Manliness"), and Monday, March 22 ("Lesbian and Gay Subcultures: Reading the Truest Poetry"). His lectures will also be presented at 5:30 P.M. in the Rosenwald Gal- lery (6th floor) of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. A pioneer in the field of cultural studies, Mr. Sinfield is a prominent literary scholar. He works mainly on Shakespeare and the modern institutions that help produce him; post-1945 Brit- ish politics and culture; early modern culture, especially Protes- tantism; lesbian and gay cultures; and Tennyson and poetic lan- guage. He has been involved in controversy around "cultural materialism," a movement in English studies that stresses the political implications of literary writing; and as convenor of an M.A. program featuring lesbian and gay studies, "Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change." His most recent book, *Faultlines* (pub- lished last year in the United States by the University of Califor- nia Press) deals with many of the themes, literary and political, which have occupied his attention during his enormously productive scholarly and public life. It elicited a review in the *Sunday Telegraph* by an Oxford don asking "Why should public money pay for Professor Sinfield?" The Gates Lectures honor the memory of Thomas Sovereign Gates, Jr. Mr. Gates was Secretary of the Navy and later of Defense during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. He later served President Gerald Ford as Liaison (with the rank of Ambassador) to the People's Republic of China. His papers are held by the Department of Special Collections. Previous speakers in this series have included President Ford and David Eisenhower. Like the Rosenbach Lectures, the Gates Lectures are administered by the University of Pennsylvania Library. For additional information, please call 215 898 7088. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1993 07:03:21 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0090 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism; HyperCard Shakespeare Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 90. Thursday, 18 February 1993. (1) From: Piers Lewis Date: Wednesday, 17 Feb 1993 08:56 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0084 Re:Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (2) From: Kevin Berland Date: Wednesday, 17 Feb 93 16:44 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (3) From: Robert F. O'Connor Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 1993 09:19:16 +1000 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0085 Re: HyperCard Shakespeare (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Piers Lewis Date: Wednesday, 17 Feb 1993 08:56 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0084 Re:Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism So, is it now a truth universally acknowledged that a single Jewish moneylender in pursuit of a monstrous revenge proves Shakespeare to be antisemitic? Since when does a single instance prove any general truth? Shakespeare's imaginary garden has a real toad in it, and a poisonous toad at that whose name is 'money.' Instead of relishing the fact, we turn it into political allegory--as with everything else that makes us uneasy. Piers Lewis (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Berland Date: Wednesday, 17 Feb 93 16:44 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0083 Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism When Jonathan Miller visited us at McMaster (where he was doing something medical over at the hospital), he talked about Olivier showing up already costumed and made up -- huge putty hooked nose, yellowish skin, ghetto clothing -- and, Miller said, he knew it would be hard to talk him out of all the traditional Jew-trappings, but he had to do something, or his (Miller's) ancestors would spin in their graves... Historically speaking, it would have been difficult (or impossible) for Shakespeare *not* to have been antisemitic. Of course it's different now... Kevin Berland (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert F. O'Connor Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 1993 09:19:16 +1000 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0085 Re: HyperCard Shakespeare In response to Tad Davis: it is possible to 'tag' the Hypercard texts, to leave notes or even bookmarks (at which the text will automatically open next time) - I have already profusely 'scribbled' over a text of Macbeth and this has been extraordinarily useful, especially in pulling blocks of text out of the play for inclusion in other stuff. ROC ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1993 20:38:17 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0092 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 92. Thursday, 18 February 1993. (1) From: Mike Newman Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 1993 15:17 EST Subj: Shakespeare and the Evidence of the Text (2) From: Stephen Orgel Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 93 16:02:12 PST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0090 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism; (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Newman Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 1993 15:17 EST Subject: Shakespeare and the Evidence of the Text Those who have recently posted comments on the matter of anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice have not seen fit to adduce much evidence from the text (such as Shylock's citing Jacob as a model or the parodic deprecating of Jacob in Lancelot Gobbo's Esau-like trick on his blind father). Is this disregard for textual evidence based on the fact that it is difficult to gather such evidence and construe it carefully (so that off-the-cuff comments like my own will necessarily characterize the level of discourse on discussion groups), or is the disregard a reflection of the disrepute into which New Criticism has fallen? Mike Neuman Georgetown (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephen Orgel Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 93 16:02:12 PST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0090 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism; Re the hooked nose, etc., Jews were Spanish/Mediterranean in Shakespeare's time, and had names like Lopez or Soncino, or alternatively Dutch, and had names like Abraham or Solomon (or Tubal). Shylock is an ENGLISH name. Sam Schoenbaum cites an action Shakespeare brought against one of his Stratford neighbors, for repayment of a debt with interest. So it looks as if Shylock wasn't an outsider at all... Stephen Orgel ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1993 20:32:04 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0091 Re: Relationship Between Playtext and Performance Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 91. Thursday, 18 February 1993. (1) From: Nick Clary Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 1993 11:02:22 -0500 (EST) Subj: [Relationship Between Playtext and Performance] (2) From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 93 19:08:05 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0087 Relationship Between Playtext and Performance (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nick Clary Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 1993 11:02:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Relationship Between Playtext and Performance] In an e-mail response to my question about playtext reading, Doug Lanier noted that David Bergeron is preparing a volume of essays under the title WRITING AND READING IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. Doug and I have shared thoughts on the difficulties we have found in locating evidence of real readers at work, rather than the ideal readers assumed by dedicatory matter. He asks in this most recent posting, "Other than the texts themselves (which also posit "ideal" rather than "real" readers, or at least combine the two in uncertain ways) and marginalia (hard to find, never easy to interpret), what sort of evidence would you counsel one interested in this problem to focus on?" Any ideas? Nick Clary clary@smcvax.bitnet (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 93 19:08:05 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0087 Relationship Between Playtext and Performance Oooh, what a nice question about reading and observing plays . . . Alas, too often the bibliographic-textual-editorial gang seem to be the only ones thinking about those playbooks floating around London, but their vision seems painfully tunnelled. You can come upon theories about the "bad" quartos as memorial reconstructions of texts revised after initial performances, followed by later texts which represented earlier versions but somehow untouched by the revising process. The theories tangle deliciously, as theories are wont to do. But readers of texts don't leave very deep tracks on the texts, though I've argued that Q2 Romeo and Juliet, for instance, may be seen as the track left by a particularly authorial reader as he plowed the Q1 version. The memorial reconstruction arguments would seem to be proposing that we can observe the mis-reading of the "genuine" texts by the pirates or the actors or the unknown scribes. Whatever those multiple texts represent, they reveal some kinds of imaginative engagement with scripts and performances, real or fantasized. As ever, Steve Ur-quarto-witz SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1993 22:04:21 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0093 Pseudonym? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 93. Thursday, 18 February 1993. From: Doris Smith Date: Thursday, 18 Feb 1993 15:23:59 -0600 (CST) Subject: Pseudonym? I've know for years of the question many people have regarding the authorship of Shakespeare's works. However, today for the first time I heard that some scholars say that there was no such person as William Shakespeare, and that it was a pseudonym used by some nobleman whose coat of arms showed an arm and fist shaking a spear. Is this one of the theories floating about? doris smith (dorisann@tenet.edu) [Doris, I think someone must be pulling your leg. Shakespeare's biography is not a speciality of mine, but I felt the necessity of posting an immediate reply to your query. I have gleaned the following from Samuel Schoenbaum's *William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life* with the proviso that all factual mistakes are my own. In 1568, Master John Shakespeare, William's father, was elected as Stratford's high bailiff (justice of the peace, presider over the town Council, and the town's highest elected office -- the equivalent of being mayor). After being elected bailiff, Master Shakespeare made preliminary inquiries to the College of Heralds to receive a grant of arms, conferring on him the status of gentleman. The grant was not pursued, seemingly because of financial difficulties. In 1596, John's application was renewed, probably by his now prosperous son William. There still exist two drafts of a document granting John's request; they are dated 20 October 1596 and were prepared by Sir William Dethick, Garter King-of-Arms. John Shakespeare's shield is described thus: "Gould. on A Bend Sables. a Speare of the first steeled argent. And for his Creast or Cognizance a falcon. his winges displayed Argent. standing on a wrethe of his Coullors. supporting a Speare Gould. steeled as aforesaid sett uppon a helmett with mantelles & tasselles as hathe ben accustomed and dothe more playnely appeare depicted on this margent." Accompanying the shield and crest is the motto "NON SANZ DROICT," not without right. As you can see, the coat of arms was William's father's. I hope that the above answers your question. If you would care to read further, I would recommend Schoenbaum's *A Documentary Life* and his *Shakespeare's Lives*. Frank Wadsworth's *The Poacher from Stratford* is also highly recommended. --hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 06:22:53 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0094 Review: NTD *Hamlet* Adaptation Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 94. Friday, 19 February 1993. From: Tony Naturale Date: Wednesday, 17 Feb 1993 08:52:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Review: NTD *Hamlet* Adaptation To Be or Not To Be Ophelia (by Tony Naturale) In its 26th season, National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) presented a unique adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, allowing a fuller expression of actions and passions in ASL. The play was held in the Panara Theatre at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (Rochester, NY). In the original Shakespeare's version of Hamlet, Ophelia had been viewed as an overly sensitive, poetically oriented tragic figure; cursed by crazed Hamlet, her lover, Ophelia sought to make things right when things only became worse. Grieving over the death of her father, Ophelia lost her mind; in her "lunatic" state, Ophelia eventually drowned in a river. Later, Hamlet became despondent after receiving the news of her death. As the play turned darker, Hamlet came face to face with a crisis in his life, his existential crisis; "To be or not to be, that is the question," Hamlet wondered. Hamlet (and Shakespeare) left many of us wondering about his true answer. Hamlet remained as one of the most challenging, puzzling, and yet rewarding plays. In this adaptation of Hamlet, the playwright Jeff Wanshel worked closely with NTD to develop further the role of Ophelia. Ostensibly to present a woman's point of view in this "rotten kingdom" of Denmark, the play became an experiment with mixed results. To keep the action rolling, plot was changed, scenes borrowed from other Shakespeare's plays were included, and conflicts between Ophelia and Hamlet were highlightened further. Wanshel also rearranged the series of death scenes, ending with Ophelia's. In this way, it was Ophelia who witnessed all the traumatic deaths of Polonius, the Queen, the King, Laertes and finally, Hamlet. In her own death scene, we all grieved deeply with her at all the tragic events; yet we were also introduced to the poetic world of Ophelia, in which flowers talked with and consoled her, the river cradled her to nurturing comfort, and Nature welcomed Ophelia in a womblike embrace. (Her death scene was definitely eco-feminist, in this reviewer's opinion.) In the title role of Ophelia, Camille Jeter was at once delicate and yet brutally frank; she appeared more cerebral, more reserved, and more in control. Unlike Hamlet who had already "gone beserk", Ophelia went through a major change. Earlier, Ophelia had "juggled" the dual but conflicting roles: a submissive daughter for her father while becoming a passionate lover for Hamlet. This constant juggling, however, came crashing down when Hamlet killed Polonius, her father. Here, Jeter delivered a heart-wrenching judgement against the male sex; Jeter's anger flared through in her outrage against men who have dominated and ruined her life; in her, the tension crackled and flashed between her love for Hamlet and the duty for her father. Here, Jeter presented a feminist view of her existence in this patriarchical society ruled by deceits and naked "will to power"; Jeter shared with us her anguish, her struggle to find a meaning in life, in which pain dominated pleasure, insanity overruled reason, and lies were easier to face than truth. At the funeral procession to the graveyard for Polonius, Ophelia expressed, in a painfully clear way, the absurdity of her existence. In this funereal context, Jeter asked for a reason to live. "To be or not to be? that is the question." In her hands, Camille Jeter performed one of the most compelling interpretations of this speech. The role of Hamlet, while stripped of the speech, was still powerful. Played by a veteran actor, Troy Kotsur, Hamlet was very passionate and determined to get what he wanted. As a crazed Hamlet, Kotsur displayed a wide range of emotions through his animate facial expressions, body postures, physical movements and of course, his visceral delivery of sign language. This Hamlet was very much alive, wrestling with dark emotions and dangerous ideas. As the ideas grew more unreconcilable, Hamlet struggled to confront his mother, the Queen. Hamlet could not for long remain silent with the foreboding knowledge of the Queen's involvement in the conspiracy to kill his father, the King of Denmark. The rest of the cast did well in maintaining the Shakespearean pageantry in the background. The Player-King (Joseph Sarpy) demonstrated his skills as a poet-creator. He helped express the morbid thoughts of Hamlet in a unique theatrical technique of "thought-balooning"; while Hamlet sat, brooding in soliptic manner, the Player-King revealed the thoughts through signs. There was an aiery movements of thoughts, floating above Hamlet. This was a powerfully creative use of supporting cast, to engage in the magic recreation of thoughts through ASL. Polonius, acted by Robert DeMayo, was a perfect example of a money-obsessed, sexually repressed, and overprotective father of his "virgin" daughter. Instead of seeing Ophelia as a human being, Polonius viewed her as valuable commodity. And with a prospect of her marriage to Hamlet becoming stronger, Ophelia would give Polonius a profitable access to the royal court of Denmark. All in all, this show was a fine performance of Ophelia. Jeter should be proud of having made "herstory" in this unique adaptation of Hamlet. The National Theatre of the Deaf should continue to explore adapting more plays by Shakespeare in order to explore the beauty of Signs as Visual-Gestural Thoughts of the Renaissance and the Restoration Cultures. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 22:39:31 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0095 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism; Pseudonym? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 95. Friday, 19 February 1993. (1) From: Rick Jones Date: Friday, 19 Feb 1993 13:14:23 -0600 (CST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0092 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (2) From: Tad Davis Date: Friday, 19 Feb 93 08:58:01 -0500 Subj: RE: SHK 4.0093 Pseudonym? (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones Date: Friday, 19 Feb 1993 13:14:23 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0092 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Two thoughts on the Shylock/anti-Semitism theme: First, if Macklin's 18th century performance was revolutionary (as I, at least, have been led to believe) because it presented a sympathetic Shylock, it seems reasonable to conjecture that many/most/all previous portrayals took a more negative view of his character -- he was either villain or fool. Presumably Shakespeare had something to say about the way the role was played -- so it was not his intent to create a particularly sympathetic character (that he may have done so despite his intentions is of course a different matter). Second, OF COURSE, judged by the standards of the late 20th century, Shakespeare was anti-Semitic, sexist, racist, anti-democratic, and a whole lot of other nasty things. So was everyone else. So are we all, though the list might be different. I am often reminded of Ogden Nash's comments on looking at a hippopotamus: "But then, in moments dark and grim, Imagine how WE look to HIM." Shakespeare transcended his age in many ways, but he was still a product of it. The question, then, is not whether he had this or that prejudice, but whether these prejudices (relative to our own mythologies) so interfere with our understanding of the work(s) as a whole that we can see nothing else. Sometimes the answer is going to be yes -- there is some Jacobean tragedy that is so offensively sexist that I can't bring myself to re-read it, let alone assign it to my students with a clear conscience. But there is little in Shakespeare _per se_ that crosses over that line for me. -- Rick Jones Cornell College (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tad Davis Date: Friday, 19 Feb 93 08:58:01 -0500 Subject: RE: SHK 4.0093 Pseudonym? To which I would add that several years later, a faction within the Heralds' College challenged the Shakespeare grant. Over a rough sketch of the Shakespeare coat of arms, someone wrote, apparently contemptuously, "Shakespeare ye player." Tad Davis davist@a1.relay.upenn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1993 20:44:57 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0096 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 96. Saturday, 20 February 1993. From: Robert F. O'Connor Date: Saturday, 20 Feb 1993 16:56:27 +1000 Subject: Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism I think that one of the reasons contemporary audiences and readers of Shakespeare find the overt anti-Semitism of 'Merchant of Venice' so disturbing is its intensity. Shylock is so identifiably 'other' -- despite the apparent Englishness of his name -- and the feelings against him so strong and so obvious that we find we have to apologise for them. Perhaps some (like me) brought up to believe in the essential 'greatness' of Shakespeare find the anti-Semitism expressed here, or the sexism in 'Taming of the Shrew', so distressing that we have to pretend that this not in fact what they are, hence readings of the plays involving the recentering of the marginalised etc. We are used to villains in Shakespeare, certainly, but where is there a level of loathing expressed about one even comparable to the sentiments in 'Merchant'? No one else comes in for this kind of serve. I think it is reductive to try and defend the anti-Semitism represented in 'Merchant', or to pretend it isn't there, or that it is in fact something else -- a reading of the Homilies would soon show exactly what was thought of the Jews in Elizabethan England. The question is not 'what is it?', or even 'why is it here?' Perhaps, in view of the discussion going on about performance criticism, a more useful question would be 'what can we do with it?' ROC ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 19:22:25 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0097 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 97. Sunday, 21 February 1993. From: Jay L Halio Date: Sunday, 21 Feb 1993 17:13:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Robert O'Connor asks the right question, at least as regards contemporary approaches to *Merchant*, whether in class or in the theater. Clearly, there is plenty of anti-semitism in the play, as expressed by almost all of the Venetians who stand opposite Shylock. Even the RSC admit this when they try to stage the play, while at the same time insisting that the play itself is not anti-semitic. The latter point is much more difficult to defend, as most critics sooner or later discover. Some years ago the RSC tried to demonstrate what they meant by staging Merlowe's *Jew of Malta* back to back with *Merchant*--the one at the Swan, the other (with Antony Sher) at the main house, but in my view it badly backfired. The fact is that the play is so full of inconsistencies and contradictions that no simple, reductive statement can be made. I suggest people seriously interested in the problem read Norman Rabkin's illuminating essay in *Meaning and Shakespeare* as well as Mahood's brief survey of the stage history and the play's background in her NCS edition. But to return to ROC's question, I believe actors have to try to incorporate in their renditions of Shakespeare these very contradictions, and we as critics and teachers have to reveal the ambivalences within the text. These, I think, will reflect our ambivalences, which we may or (more likely) may not be fully aware of, especially as we approach this play or others like it. Jay Halio P.S. Whoever informed Professor Jones at Cornell College that Macklin was a tragic Shylock misinformed him, I believe, at least if the implication was that he anticipated the *tragic* Shylock of Henry Irving. Macklin was a deadly serious Shylock, but none the less a villain--as opposed to the comic villains of his predecessors on the stage. That Shakespeare may have initially conceived Shylock as a comic figure is very likely, and I have seen the character portrayed that way quite successfully--much to my astonishment, having been brought up as I was on the Irving conception. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 06:25:46 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0098 *MV* and Usury Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 98. Monday, 22 February 1993. From: Tom Loughlin Date: Sunday, 21 Feb 1993 8:07 pm EST Subject: MOV AND USURY Speaking as one who has played the role of Shylock, there is one point I would like to make regarding the anti-semitism of the play. Without lessening in the least the fact that all the characters in the play dislike Shylock because he is Jewish, the central antagonism between Shylock and Antonio is far more focused on the question of usury that it is on simple Jew- or gentile-hating. Antonio is quite ready to be friends with Shylock the minute Shylock makes his (false) offer to lend money without interest ("...and say there is much kindness in the Jew"). Shylock himself, in the same scene (i.iii), states readily that he hates Antonio "because he is a Christian, *but more*, for that he lends out money gratis, and brings the rate of usance down with us here in Venice." These two men are clearly business enemies. True, the usury argument does split down religious lines, but by Shakespeare's day gaining interest from money lended out was a recognized practice. It's a point in playing the play that is hard to get audiences to focus on because of all the religious baggage attached to it. And of course, why would an anti-semite even bother to write that beautiful monologue "Hath not a Jew eyes?"? --------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Loughlin * BITNET Dept. of Theatre Arts * loughlin@fredonia SUNY College at Fredonia * INTERNET Fredonia NY 14063 * loughlin@jane.cs.fredonia.edu Voice: 716.673.3597 * Fax: 716.673.3397 * "Hail, hail Freedonia, land of * the brave and free." G. Marx --------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 18:35:01 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0099 *MV*: Usury and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 99. Monday, 22 February 1993. (1) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Monday, 22 Feb 93 07:40:36 PST Subj: SHK 4.0098 *MV* and Usury (2) From: Rick Jones Date: Monday, 22 Feb 1993 11:42:24 -0600 (CST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0098 *MV* and Usury (3) From: David Richman Date: Monday, 22 Feb 1993 14:13:30 -0500 (EST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0097 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Monday, 22 Feb 93 07:40:36 PST Subject: SHK 4.0098 *MV* and Usury The way the play is anti-semitic is that it uses the image of the Jew to signify a greed for money that infects the whole society. In that sense Shylock as a Jew functions as a scapegoat for Shakespeare's efforts to separate money from commerce, or to find a good version of money involvement. I don't think that anyone doubts that in the process he penetrated to the troublesome humanity within figures who are cast as scapegoats, but that doesn't prevent the play from being anti-semitic. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones Date: Monday, 22 Feb 1993 11:42:24 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0098 *MV* and Usury Thanks to Tom Loughlin for an important distinction. It strikes me that there are a couple of points to be made here. First, someone suggested a while back (during the "performance criticism" debate) that actors, directors, scholars and teachers are engaged in different jobs with different audiences in mind. True enough, but we're often the same people: using what we learn wearing one hat to perform our other jobs better would seem to be only sensible. Second, I didn't [mean to] suggest that Macklin's Shylock was tragic, only that it was relatively more sympathetic than his predecessors' had been. I think this is a variation on Tom's idea: Macklin's Shylock was determined by his actions, not predetermined from his first entrance: this is a major advance in an era of fright wigs. Finally, I've never seen what I would call a good production of _MV_, let alone a successful one with a predominately comic Shylock. So here's a plea to Jay Halio (and anyone else) for more information... Rick Jones Cornell College (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Richman Date: Monday, 22 Feb 1993 14:13:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0097 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism I try to grapple with questions of anti-Semitism and modern and contemporary performance in chapters two and four of my *Laughter, Pain, and Wonder*. I found Hume Cronin's disturbingly comic Shylock at Stratford Ontario in the mid-'seventies surprisingly effective. David Richman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 09:56:24 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0100 Shakespeare's Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 100. Tuesday, 23 February 1993. (1) From: Herbert S. Donow Date: Monday, 22 Feb 93 17:00:20 CST Subj: Shakespeare's Anti-Semitism (2) From: Robert O'Connor Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 1993 11:46:13 +1000 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0099 *MV*: Usury and Anti-Semitism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Herbert S. Donow Date: Monday, 22 Feb 93 17:00:20 CST Subject: Shakespeare's Anti-Semitism The following are three paragraphs from a longer paper, and my remarks about Tubal need, probably, to be in the fuller context, but the issue of Shakespeare's anti-Semitism really should be seen in the appropriate Elizabethan context. I have always believed the issue of anti-Semitism to be something of a red herring. During the period of Shakespeare's life, there were a number of portrayals, both on the stage and page, of greedy moneylenders. Although there were plays or other works in addition to Marlowe's and Shakespeare's with Jewish characters, there were plenty whose usurers were clearly not Jews: Robert Greene's Old Gorinius in A Groatsworth of Wit, Massinger's Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Middleton's Pecunius Lucre in A Trick to Catch the Old One are but a few of the better known characters of this ilk. Shylock's behavior, like the rest of them, is attributable essentially to his materialistic and exploitative occupa- tion rather than to his religion. His Jewishness was more of an atten- tion-getter, playing on a popular theme of the day, than a significant issue in the play. Thomas Nashe, in Christs Teares Over Jerusalem, makes essentially this point when he writes, "Let us leave of the Proverbe which we use to a cruell dealer, saying, Goe thy waies, thou art a Jewe; and say, Goe thy waies, thou art a Londoner. For then Londoners, are none more hard harted and cruell" (II, p. 159). Furthermore, there is an important moment in the play--at the conclusion of Act III, scene i, when Shylock is alone with Tubal, a fellow Jew and moneylender--in which the issue of anti-Semitism may arguably be laid to rest. If Shakespeare's audience saw Shylock as a figure to be condemned, at least in part, because he is a Jew, we must recognize that there are two other Jews in the play--his daughter and Tubal. We tend to dismiss Jessica as a Jew because she appears to repudiate her religion by marrying Lorenzo, but that may not exactly be the case. Remember she says "Though I am a daughter to his blood,/ I am not to his manners." One reading of those lines would suggest that she is acknowledging her Jewish blood but repudi- ating her father's behavior and mean-spiritedness. However, it is the other Jew in the play, Tubal, that may provide us with a normative image of the Jew, one which is not linked to the traditional biases of medieval and renaissance thought. Tubal is Shakespeare's instrument to ensure that Shylock's twisted character, his greed and unpalatable economic theory, are not linked to the issue of his Jewishness. In this brief passage of fifty lines (III.i.72- 120), Tubal emerges as a character of some depth, capable of amusing himself at Shylock's expense while still acting as a friend. Solanio and Salerio, earlier in the scene, maliciously remind Shylock of his fugitive daughter, a refrain that Tubal echoes, only in a more benevolent style and tone. Tubal--and perhaps the others of his community--does not share Shy- lock's single-minded hatred of the Christian nor his obsession with revenge against Antonio. (In this, Tubal may have a moral ancestor in the charac- ter of Gerontus, a Jewish moneylender in Robert Wilson's interlude, The Three Ladies of London. When Mercator sought to evade his debt to Gerontus by forsaking Christianity, the appalled Gerontus forgoes collection so that the unprincipled Mercator's act of apostasy will not be on his conscience.) Shylock's misanthropy is a consequence of individual experience, and despite Shylock's darker nature, he is, nevertheless, a comic figure. It is this scene which separates Tubal (and the Jewish community) from Shylock's sociopathic behavior and which emphatically displays Shylock's comic side. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert O'Connor Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 1993 11:46:13 +1000 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0099 *MV*: Usury and Anti-Semitism Tom Loughlin has, I think, bought up a good point about Shakespearean anti-Semitism by referring us to The "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech -- I am surprised it hasn't come up before now. I also have to agree with the points that have been made about usury -- I have always felt in my own reading of the play that Shylock's religious grudge against Antonio is entirely secondary to his finacial ones. In the productions I have seen it is often Shylock's bewailing of his lost ring and jewels and ducats that elicits the laughter from the audience. But would it not be true to say that even this is derived from a stereotypical view of Jews at the time? one that had little or nothing to do with religion, perhaps, and more to do with their putative 'control' of finance. ROC ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 10:04:08 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0101 Q: Folger Library and Theatre Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 101. Tuesday, 23 February 1993. From: John T. Aney Date: Monday, 22 Feb 93 21:45:33 EST Subject: The Folger Theatre and Library Having been given a week off for good behavior in March, my fiancee intend on traveling to Washington, DC for a little break (Florida seemed too traditional). I was wondering, if there is anyone in the DC area on the SHAKSPER network, if they could fill me in on some things; A) What is playing at the Folger the 12th through the 18th of March. B) How much are tix...is there a student rate, and how do I go about obtaining them. C) What the admittance policy is at the Folger Library. Are all areas open to the general public, or do you need special permission like the Library of Congress for some areas. Thanks ahead for your response. ----Go Blahzers!--- The best penetrating team in the league!!! (smirk) -JANEY@UCS.INDIANA.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 10:10:50 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0102 Jonson's *Oberon* in Cleveland Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 102. Tuesday, 23 February 1993. From: Thomas G. Bishop Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 93 09:07:06 -0500 Subject: Production of Ben Jonson's "Oberon" in Cleveland Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University are pleased to announce four fully-staged performances of the Jacobean court masque Oberon, the Fairy Prince (First performed New Year's, 1611 before King James) by Ben Jonson design by E. Guy Hare after the sketches of Inigo Jones music by Alfonso Ferrabosco, John Dowland, William Byrd et al dances choreographed and led from original materials by Ken Pierce Stage direction by Barrie Rutter of RSC and Northern Broadsides Music direction by David Douglass of "The Kings Noyse" This unique production will be performed, danced and sung according to period practices in the Ballroom of Thwing Center at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland OH at 8 pm on March 24 thru 27 1993. Ticket information and reservations, including by credit card, can be had by calling the Music Dept. Case Western Reserve University, at (216) 368- 2400. Or you can email me back and I'll send you the details. -- Tom Bishop "I saw the danger, yet I walked Dept of English Along the enchanted way, Case Western Reserve University And I said let grief be a fallen leaf Cleveland, OH 44106.(tgb2@po.cwru.edu) At the dawning of the day." P.K. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 22:43:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0103 Re: Folger Library and Theatre Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 103. Tuesday, 23 February 1993. From: Milla Riggio Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 93 10:34 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0101 Q: Folger Library and Theatre Dear John Aney: To catch you up to date as much as I can: There is NOTHING at the Folger, as far as I know, during the weeks you will be in Washington. The Folger Shakespeare Theatre is now The Shakespeare Theatre and has a wonderful new theatre called the Lansburgh. Its address slips my mind, but it isn't hard to find. Right now, there's a great production of THE COMEDY OF ERRORS there. I don't know when it ends but by mid-March the show will be Brecht's MOTHER COURAGE. Call the Lansburgh to ask about student rates; I don't know about them. At the moment, the Arena Theatre (more expensively) is doing a fine play by Carlyle Brown called something like "The African Company Presents Richard III." I don't know when that ends, either. But a Washington paper will tell the tale. About the library: any scholar can use it, but you have to apply for a reader's card and you will require, I think, a letter from your college librarian and perhaps a reference or two. I've forgotten now what the precise requirements are, but again, it's worth a call to find out. You can get the card and use the library on the same trip. There are open stacks with modern books and a lot of material you can only call up and use in a protected reading room. You can take a computer if you happen to have one. But you can't CALL FOR rare materials on Saturday. You can use them then if you have called them up on Friday. The other rules you can learn in the library. Best wishes and good luck on your trip, Milla Riggio [Comedy of Errors runs through March 14; for ticket information call (202) 628-5770. --hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 22:59:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0104 *MV*: Anti-Semitism and Usury Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 104. Tuesday, 23 February 1993. (1) From: Tad Davis Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 93 10:27:01 -0500 Subj: RE: SHK 4.0100 Shakespeare's Anti-Semitism (2) From: David A. Bank Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 93 20:52:21 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0095 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism; Pseudonym? (3) From: Jay L Halio Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 1993 14:34:37 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0099 *MV*: Usury and Anti-Semitism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tad Davis Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 93 10:27:01 -0500 Subject: RE: SHK 4.0100 Shakespeare's Anti-Semitism Herbert S. Donow writes: > During the period of Shakespeare's life, there were a number of > portrayals, both on the stage and page, of greedy moneylenders. Although > there were plays or other works in addition to Marlowe's and > Shakespeare's with Jewish characters, there were plenty whose usurers > were clearly not Jews... Stage portrayals aside... the nearest usurious moneylender Shakespeare encountered was his own father. I realize there is no reputable critical approach that would consider that the least bit relevant. But as a sometime playwright myself, I find it intensely fascinating. The discussion of antisemitism, either in the play or in Shakespeare himself, is also endlessly fascinating, and I found Mr. Donow's comments especially interesting. I'm not sure the issue could ever be resolved. If Shakespeare includes an unsympathetic Jewish character in one of his plays, that doesn't necessarily make him antisemitic; if he includes a sympathetic Jewish character in the same play, it doesn't necessarily free him of suspicion. (It's not as if the Christians in the play are shown as sympathetic embodiments of THEIR faith. What an awful crew of yuppies!) Part of the difficulty, I think, is that Shakespeare himself didn't know what to make of Shylock. (More unjustifiable speculation follows...) I think he had a conception of the character that lifted him above the stereotype to something approaching tragic dignity; yet when he needed a cheap laugh, the stereotype was there and proved irresistable. Mark Twain, I think, had the same problem with Jim in "Huckleberry Finn." Tad Davis davist@a1.relay.upenn.edu (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David A. Bank Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 93 20:52:21 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0095 Re: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism; Pseudonym? There can't have been too many Jews around in late 16th c. London. They had been proscribed by Edward II and weren't readmitted until Cromwell's Protectorate. One that *is* known about is Dr Lopez, who was notorious for a (supposed) attempt on the life of Queen Elizabeth. There are a few others kicking around in books, but of *real* Jews in the London of the time who knows of any others? Isn't the point somewhat more than marginal to the discussion? -- about "racism" I mean. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay L Halio Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 1993 14:34:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0099 *MV*: Usury and Anti-Semitism For R. Jones: The comic Shylock I refer to was way back in the 1950s at Ashland, OR, with Angus Bowmer in the role. He wore a red wig, red beard, and putty nose as many eighteenth-century Shylocks did, and spoke with a "Jewish" accent, i.e. middle-European or Yiddish. He was in every sense a comic butt, as probably Shakespeare intended him to be initially. I don't recall much more of the production, I'm afraid, but I'm sure you can find some account of it in reviews. I suspect the period was 1956-60, or thereabouts. In any case, it was not the first time Bowmer acted in the role and, as founding director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he usually tried to make his productions as authentically "Elizabethan" as possible. Ashland now, of course, has somewhat departed from that tradition. Jay Halio ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 09:30:07 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0105 More on Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 105. Thursday, 25, February 1993. (1) From: Fritz Levy Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 1993 23:38:02 -0800 (PST) Subj: Jews (2) From: John Mucci Date: Tuesday, 24 Feb 93 18:18:00 UT Subj: RE: Real Anti-Semitism (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Fritz Levy Date: Tuesday, 23 Feb 1993 23:38:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: Jews If you'd like to find out more about Jews in Elizabethan England, the person to ask is Jim Shapiro at Columbia U. (English Dept.), who is writing a book on the whole subject. Is Jim on the list? Fritz Levy History, University of Washington [Jim Shapiro is not a member of SHAKSPER. --hmc] (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Mucci Date: Tuesday, 24 Feb 93 18:18:00 UT Subject: RE: Real Anti-Semitism Mr Cook: I showed some of the comments made on Anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice to the editor of the *Elizabethan Review* and I think his comments are of such a nature that those on SHAKSPER might well consider them: ---------------------------------------- I think the only real way to determine if the author of _The Merchant of Venice_ was anti-Semitic is to check his other work for references to Jews and the context in which these references are made. For instance, in _Much Ado About Nothing_ the hero (Benedick) is wooing the heroine, Beatrice, and closes Act II scene iii with these remarks: "If I do not take pity of her [Beatrice], I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew." To put these words in the mouth of Benedick is wholly gratuitous and tells us that the author was deliberately playing to the audience's prejudices and probably revealing his own -- or being amoral in allowing the dictates of commercial success to shape his work. There are other references to Jews in the canon. For instance, in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, yet another "comedy" of Shakespeare's Lance speaks of his parting from his family thus: "I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest- natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands... yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone... and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting." I could continue in this vein, but others can check out a good concordance to see how Shakespeare uses phrases such as "icony Jew" and "Hebrew Christian." I think it conclusive that Shakespeare was an anti-Semite, and wrote *MV* as an anti-Semitic tract. What makes this so interesting is that Jews, after being kicked out of England in 1290, had been forbidden from returning until 1658 by Oliver Cromwell. So Shakespeare--and the English-- didn't have any Jews to hate. Why, then, have anti-Semitic references in popular drama? Good question. ---------------------------------------------------- Gary Goldstein, Editor, The Elizabethan Review ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 09:34:50 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0106 Shakespeare Test Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 106. Thursday, 25, February 1993. From: David Knauer Date: Wednesday, 24 Feb 93 17:39 CST Subject: Shakespeare Test In light of the ongoing discussion of whether Shakespeare is entrapped by or escapes from his (and our) dominant cultural conceptions of differences racial, religious, economic, etc., the following passages demonstrate how partisan this debate appears to have become, at least in England. They are extracted from an article in the *Chicago Tribune*, 24 Feb., 1993 (sec. 7, pp. 13-14). Britain's government has decreed that 14-year-olds must take a standardized test on a Shakespeare play. That has enraged teachers and brought on a skirmish between Old Guard and avante- garde over the true meaning of Shakespeare's work. "Shakespeare was a subversive," claims director Michael Bogdanov, who has gone into the breach with left- wing forces. "Anarchists need to reclaim him from the establishment, which has hijacked his words to shore up the status quo." "Shakespeare was an upwardly mobile fellow who knew the value of money," says Brian John, an English teacher who recently challanged Bogdanov at a public debate. "There's no doubt that he was a man of the political right." Directors and academics have joined the fray, which has grown so hot that most teachers now say they will boycott the tests. Sheila Lawlor, an education specialist at a right-wing London think-tank, says she stands by old methods such as memorizing soliloquies "because you carry Shakespeare through life." As a 12-year-old, she says, the "quality of mercy" speech in "The Merchant of Venice" meant nothing to her. But in middle age, "it comes back to me often as a wise bit of poetry that I'm glad to know." Those on the left dismiss such notions as elitist. Alan Sinfield, an English professor at Sussex University, says the tests are a way "to re-create a prole class" by making poor students feel that "they don't even have what it takes when it comes to an icon of our national culture." Bogdanov, for his part, is something of a nihilist. "There should be a moratorium on Shakespeare," he concludes. "Close the shows, burn all the theses. Then people can start fresh in 20 years and we can see what a rebel he really is." Does anyone out there still doubt that this is just as much a debate about the *uses* we want Shakespeare to serve as about the truth value or historicity of his texts? David Knauer Northern Illinois University ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 09:39:06 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0107 Journal of Undergraduate Research Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 107. Thursday, 25, February 1993. From: BIRKS NEIL BRENDAN Date: Wednesday, 24 Feb 1993 10:49:38 -0700 (MST) Subject: GET PUBLISHED You are invited to submit original undergraduate writing to the JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH a forum for undergraduate writing concerning liberal arts. The Journal's purpose is to allow ideas to be communicated to a large audience and to provide students with the opportunity to be recognized for superior academic achievement. To reach these goals, all submissions must be clearly written and deal with subjects that require little technical knowledge. Chosen submissions will be published in an electronic archive (ftp zone), where they may be read by anyone who can gain access to a computer, modem, and telephone jack. This facility will increase the availability of quality undergraduate research and allow one's work to be read by thousands. All interested undergraduates should submit one page, via email, containing the following information: 1) name 2) class standing (FR, SO, JR, SR, SR5) 3) school's name 4) paper's subject 5) summary of paper 6) total page number (between 5 and 15 single spaced) The summary is the most important element at this stage. It will be used to determine whether the full paper is appropriate for the Journal. The admission deadline for the May 1993 publication is April 1, 1993. Summaries will not be accepted after this date. Below are the names and email addresses of the editors who will receive and review your work. Please send an electronic copy of the one page form to the editor that reviews material from your school's state or country. Adam Fox email address: foxa@ucsu.Colorado.EDU accepting material from students in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Canada. Kyle Brinkman email address: brinkmak@Carleton.EDU accepting material from students in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, the District of Columbia, and European countries. Naveen Chopra email address: chopra@leland.Stanford.EDU accepting material from students in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Asian countries. Jason Bowman email address: jbowman@casbah.acns.NWU.EDU accepting material from North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, African countries, and Australia. Neil Birks email address: birks@ucsu.Colorado.EDU accepting material from Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, and all countries in the western hemisphere besides the U.S. and Canada. If you have any questions about the journal or emailing copies of papers to the regional editors please email your questions to the following address: foxa@spot.Colorado.EDU Thank you and good luck. We will acknowledge you when we have received and read your work. Adam Fox Managing Editor University of Colorado ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 20:57:32 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0108 Shakespeare, Jews, and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 108. Thursday, 25, February 1993. (1) From: Stephen Orgel Date: Thursday, 25 Feb 93 9:35:39 PST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0105 More on Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (2) From: Jay L Halio Date: Thursday, 25 Feb 1993 14:52:54 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0104 *MV*: Anti-Semitism and Usury (3) From: John Dorenkamp Date: Thursday, 25 Feb 1993 13:57:06 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism (1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephen Orgel Date: Thursday, 25 Feb 93 9:35:39 PST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0105 More on Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism How about the equally gratuitous "most lovely Jew" in MND?? Stephen Orgel (2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay L Halio Date: Thursday, 25 Feb 1993 14:52:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0104 *MV*: Anti-Semitism and Usury For David Bank: Yes, there were Jews in Elizabethan England and London in particular, as C.J. Sisson long ago discovered. They were not allowed to practice their religion openly, but otherwise were permitted to engage in trade, professions, etc. They were *marranos* from Spain and Portugal, usually, but other Jews visited from time to time during the period of Exclusion, including one Joachim Gaunse, who helped found the mining industry in Wales. But whether Shakespeare and Marlowe actually knew Jews personally or not is quite irrelvant, or so it seems to me. They were mainly drawing on literary tradition and other sources for their portraits. Jay Halio (3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Dorenkamp Date: Thursday, 25 Feb 1993 13:57:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Shakespeare and Anti-Semitism Gary Goldstein (via John Mucci) wisely suggests that we not limit ourselves to _The Merchant of Venice_ in efforts to determine Shakespeare's attitude toward Jews. Surprisingly (perhaps) references to Jews in the other works are hard to come by. Here's the count (via the Riverside Shakespeare and WordCruncher): In the Tragedies 1 In the Histories 2 (and these are both in the same line: Falstaff's "I am a Jew else, an Ebrew Jew") In the other Comedies 4 Of these 7 references not all are derogatory. When we come to _Merchant of Venice_ we find, not surprisingly, 57 uses of "Jew" (this does not include Dramatis Personae, Stage Directions, or Speech Prefixes.) In addition, "Jews" appears 1 time, "Jewish" 2 times, "Jew's" 10 times, and "Jewess" 1 time. In addition, the term "Jewry" occurs 7 times as follows: Merry Wives of Windsor 1 Richard II 1 Henry V 1 Antony & Cleopatra 4 Here in all instances but one ("stubborn Jewry" in RII), the use of the term is neutral, identifying a place, e.g., "Herod of Jewry," "went to Jewry." Any judgment concerning Shakespeare's anti-semitism must, then, be made on the basis of _Merchant of Venice_. Gary Goldstein's other observation that "Shakespeare--and the English--didn't have any Jews to hate" because Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 and were not permitted to return until 1658 is not quite accurate. Witness the celebrated execution of Lopez, the Queen's physician. But whatever the "physical" presence of Jews in England was, they were certainly present in other ways. They were much in evidence in the Bible, perhaps even to that boy driving the plough who was Tyndale's audience. They were evident in sermons and in the liturgy. They were evident in the cycle plays, some of which were still alive in Shakespeare's day. In short, they were very much a part of the culture of Shakespeare's time. What anti-Semitism is, is perhaps impossible to determine. Maybe the perennial question "What (or who) is a Jew?" can provide an approach to anti-Semitism as well. A late friend, a psychologist preferred this answer. "A Jew is a person who considers him- or herself to be a Jew or whom others consider to be a Jew." John Dorenkamp Holy Cross College dorenkamp@hcacad.holycross.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 21:02:40 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0109 Folger Library: General Information Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 109. Thursday, 25, February 1993. From: Georgianna Ziegler Date: Wednesday, 24 Feb 1993 17:20:46 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0103 Re: Folger Library and Theatre Most of the readers at the Folger Library are professors or post-MA graduate students working on their dissertations. We also get actors/ actresses, directors, and independent writers. Graduate students under dissertation level can apply for short-term access. Basically, everyone needs two letters of reference (usually from academic or theater colleagues) and a photo I.D. New readers can no longer register on Saturdays, and we also no longer page rare materials on Saturdays (but you can put in your request Mon. through Fri. and the items will be held for Sat.). Anyone interested in becoming a reader can write to our Registrar, David Ressa, at The Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol St., SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. His phone number is 202-675-0306. If you think you may need special permission, write to Dr. Philip Knachel, Associate Director at the same address. The Folger does have accommodation in the form of single rooms or apartments, but they are limited and are already full for much of May and June. Mr. Ressa can advise about alternative housing in the Capitol Hill area. It seemed useful to get this general information onto SHAKSPER, thanks to John Aney's request, which I have already answered personally. Georgianna Ziegler, Reference Librarian The Folger Shakespeare Library ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 14:10:44 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0110 *Shakespeare Survey 44* Now Available Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 110. Friday, 26 February 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Friday, 26 February 1993 Subject: *Shakespeare Survey 44* Now Available *Shakespeare Survey 44*, "Shakespeare and Politics," is now available from the Cambridge University Press. Below is the volume's Table of Contents: SHAKESPEARE SURVEY 44, "Shakespeare and Politics" List of Illustrations Shakespeare and Politics by BLAIR WORDEN Language, Politics, and Poverty in Shakespearian Drama by WILLIAM C. CARROLL Some Versions of Coup d'etat, Rebellion and Revolution by PIERRE SAHEL Woman, Language, and History in The Rape of Lucrece by PHILIPPA BERRY Love in Venice by CATHERINE BELSEY Two Kingdoms for Half-a-Crown by DOMINIQUE GOY-BLANQUET 'Fashion it thus':Julius Caesar and the Politics of Theatrical Representation by JOHN DRAKAKIS Demystifying the Mystery of State: King Lear and the World Upside Down by MARGOT HEINEMANN Tragedy, King Lear, and the Politics of the Heart by TOM McALINDON The Politics of Shakespeare Production by JOHN RUSSELL BROWN Shakespeare in the Trenches by BALZ ENGLER Shakespeare's Earliest Editor, Ralph Crane by T. H. HOWARD-HILL Shakespeare's Falconry by MAURICE POPE Telling the Story of Shakespeare's Playhouse World by ROSLYN L. KNUTSON Shakespeare Performances in England, 1989-90 by PETER HOLLAND Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles, January-December 1989 compiled by NIKY RATHBONE The Year's Contributions to Shakespeare Studies 1 Critical Studies reviewed by R. S. WHITE 2 Shakespeare's Life, Times, and Stage reviewed by RICHARD DUTTON 3 Editions and Textual Studies reviewed by H. R. WOUDHUYSEN Books Received Index ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 20:34:24 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0111 Re: Shakespeare, Jews, and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 111. Friday, 26 February 1993. From: David A. Bank Date: Friday, 26 Feb 93 21:34:28 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0108 Shakespeare, Jews, and Anti-Semitism For Jay Halio and John Dorenkamp: As I tried to explain, I have difficulty attaching terms like "racist" or "anti-semitic" to types existing only (or almost only) in books, and there can be little doubt (C.J. Sisson notwithstanding) that Jews in 16th century London were very few. The stereotypes of the period - as Jay Halio concedes - are derived from tradition, and they include Turks and Mohammedans as well as Jews. No one has suggested that, in MV, Shakespeare tries to excite (or exploit) an antipathy in his audience to *real* Jews; to Jews that is as a community in England. They were marginal almost to the point of invisibility. My question is this: should we be using terms like "racist" and "anti-semitic" of MV or whatever in these circumstances? I really don't see how it helps our understanding of the mentality/ies of the period. Obviously one accepts John Dorenkamp's point that Jews in literature - including the Bible - were "very much part of the culture of Shakespeare's time". Yet not *so* very much. The *Short Title Catalogue* of British printed books (1475 to 1640) lists 22 first editions, 20 second editions, issues etc. with "Jew", "Jews" or "Jewes" as part of the title. I offer this as indicative information merely. The proportion of titles on a *per annum* basis is between 0.15% (the lowest, in 1635) and 0.77% (1611), as a percentage of all British books published in the period. One's impression of most of these books is that their references to Jews have the purpose of Christian amendment *of Christians*. May this be an important part of MV too? David Bank Univ. Glasgow ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1993 21:39:32 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0112 Ohio Shakespeare Conference Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 112. Saturday, 27 February 1993. From: Thomas G. Bishop Date: Saturday, 27 Feb 93 17:06:14 -0500 Subject: Ohio Shakespeare Conference 1993 The Ohio Shakespeare Conference for 1993 will take as its title "There the Whole Palace Open'd": Court and Society in Jacobean England The conference will be held in Cleveland under the joint sponsorship of Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University. The proceedings will open 8 pm Thursday March 25th with a welcome and Plenary Address by Prof. Stephen Orgel and close after the Conference Banquet on Saturday March 27th. The conference proceedings will be conducted at the Marriott-Society Center Hotel in downtown Cleveland. The title expresses the conference's intent, which is to open up all the relationships between the Jacobean court and the rest of Jacobean culture to inquiry in all the relevant disciplines, by both scholars and practitioners. Ben Jonson's masque "Oberon, the Fairy Prince" will be presented in CWRU's elegant Excelsior Ballroom, and will provide a rich opportunity for conference participants to experience a significant work in a genre almost never realized on stage, in a production that will place equal emphasis on all the elements of scene, dance, music, costume, speech and action. The program surrounding the production will include plenary addresses by leading scholars in various departments of early modern cultural history. Invited speakers are to be: Prof. Leeds Barroll, "Queen Anna and the Appropriation of the Masque" Prof. Peter Holman, "Jacobean Dance Music" Prof. Fritz Levy, "The Return to Italy" Prof. Stephen Orgel, "The Dream, the State, the Stage" Prof. Annabel Patterson "Bevis was Believed" Thirty papers and presentations besides will be offered, together with a plenary discussion of the production of "Oberon" with the artists-professional team responsible for the staging, including: Mr. Barrie Rutter (Stage Director) Mr. Ken Pierce (Choreographer and Lead Dancer) Mr. David Douglass (Music Director) Mr. E. Guy Hare (Designer, after Inigo Jones) During the conferecne weekend Claire Bloom will be appearing in a one-woman show on Shakespeare's women at the Great Lakes Theater Festival (216-241-6000) and a biracial production of "The Tempest" will open at Karamu House (216-795-7070). Interested parties should call the CSU Department of English (216) 687-3955 or detach and return the form below. Hotel reservations (@ a special rate of $75 per night) should be made soon at 1-800-228-9290, specifying Marriott-Society Center and Ohio Shakespeare. Conferees who plan to fly to Cleveland should consider taking advantage of the cheap travel arrangement the Conference has with USAir: to arrange low fares to the conference, call 1-800-334-8644 (8am-9pm EST) and obtain reservations under Gold File Number 36940036 "Oberon" conference. The conference acknowledges sponsorship from USAir, the Cleveland Foundation, John Carroll University and Baldwin-Wallace College, as well as Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University. We look forward to seeing you in March. _____________________________________________________________________________ Name________________________________ Institution__________________________ Address______________________________________________________________________ I/We will attend the 1993 Ohio Shakespeare Conference. Number of persons____ I enclose the conference registration fee of $75 per person (Graduate students $25) Fee includes tickets and transportation to "Oberon" admission to all conference sessions. Amount ___________ I wish to reserve_____places at the Conference Banquet @$15 Amount ___________ I wish to pay by __ check (payable to Cleveland State University) __ Visa no.___________________________ Expires______ __ Mastercard no._____________________ Expires __________ Signature __________________ -- Tom Bishop "I saw the danger, yet I walked Dept of English Along the enchanted way, Case Western Reserve University And I said let grief be a fallen leaf Cleveland, OH 44106.(tgb2@po.cwru.edu) At the dawning of the day." P.K. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1993 21:58:08 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0113 Re: The Folger Theatre (SSE) Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 113. Saturday, 27 February 1993. From: Bernice Kliman Date: Saturday, 27 Feb 1993 19:39 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0101 Q: Folger Library and Theatre The Shenandoah Shakespeare Express will be at the Folger Theatre on March 20. I know because I am in a workshop that weekend. This is a great group, and if you can see them, you're in for a treat. Call them at 1-800-SAY-PUCK to get information about their DC plans. Steven Booth wrote a wonderful review of their work in a recent SQ. 1/2 price tickets are usually pretty easy to get at Landsburgh and at Arena. Call and ask if you should arrive early. They are both good at telling you your chances. I also know a great B&B if you need a fairly inexpensive place to stay. Let me know. Have fun in DC--a great place, but be careful. Yours, Bernice W. Kliman 516-671-1301 [Editor's Note: I too would encourage you to see The Shenandoah Shakespeare Express and to read Stephen Booth's piece in SQ (43: 479-483). Let me quote the second paragraph for you: "I first saw The Shenandoah Shakespeare Express perform in Washington, D.C., in July of 1991. I haven't thought the same since about Shakespeare or the theater." Let me also put in a plug for The Shakespeare Theatre's *Comedy of Errors*. In particular, I thought that Philip Goodwin did a stunning, an unforgetable job as the Antipholi and the set -- oh the set . . . -hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1993 10:43:30 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0114 What Playwrights Do Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 114. Sunday, 28 February 1993. From: Tom Loughlin Date: Saturday, 27 Feb 1993 11:13 pm EST Subject: What Playwrights Do Gary Goldstein's comments via John Mucci have such an elementary logical fallacy that I wonder if he knows what exactly it is that a playwright does. He makes the argument that because several of Shakespeare's characters use language which is unflattering to Jews (and blacks and many other types of people) that therefore Shakespeare himself is, nay, must be, a racist. That kind of a statement is not only logically incorrect, it betrays that Mr. Goldstein has little understanding of the creative process of playwrighting. Playwrights write characters which attempt to reflect people as they live in the real world; reflecting what they say, how they speak, what their basic attitudes towards life and their surroundings are. To my knowledge, Shake- speare wrote next to nothing which is unquestionably reflective of his own personal ideas or prejudices, nothing which did not contain the mask of the theatre. Shakespeare was a master at creating character, but I don't think anybody has the right to state categorically that because any certain character speaks or acts a certain way that therefore this is a clear reflec- tion of the playwright's mind. It's simply an illogical conclusion. It is not the playwright's job to judge the moral or ethical qualities of the characters she or he creates; it is simply the playwright's job to write them honestly and truthfully, present them to us, and let us view their actions and behaviors and reflect accordingly. The effort to demonstrate that Shakespeare "was a (fill in the blank)" by pointing to his characters and what they say is *ipso facto* a false and misleading argument, for it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the art form and the medium which is theatre. As clear as it is that he was capable of putting slanderous speech into the mouths of his characters, he was also quite capable of putting wisdom, truth and beauty into the mouths of many others, yet I would not nor could not say that this makes Shakespeare a wise and truthful man. Any speculation as to his personal beliefs are simply that -- speculation. His very genius lies in the awareness that he came at every question from every angle he could find, and asked every question he could think of, while providing few answers. The pitiful attempts to reduce his genius to this or that single point of view are disingenuous, and almost always point to the writer's own personal limitations. --------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Loughlin * BITNET Dept. of Theatre Arts * loughlin@fredonia SUNY College at Fredonia * INTERNET Fredonia NY 14063 * loughlin@jane.cs.fredonia.edu Voice: 716.673.3597 * Fax: 716.673.3397 * "Hail, hail Freedonia, land of * the brave and free." G. Marx --------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 20:41:49 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0115 Re: Shakespeare, Jews, and Anti-Semitism Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 115. Monday, 1 March 1993. From: Jay L Halio Date: Monday, 1 Mar 1993 14:34:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0108 Shakespeare, Jews, and Anti-Semitism For John Dorenkamp: You did not include the sonnets and poems in your tally, or references to obvious Jewish figures, e.g. Judas Iscariot. I did all that for my Oxford edition and found no references to Jews in the Sonnets at all, surely the most "personal" of Shakespeare's writings. So I don't think the subject quite obsessed him, and the most of the other allusions or references, as you say, are mixed. Derek Cohen has an essay on the whole issue in *SQ* (ca. 1980) and infers from the specific references in *MV* that Shakespeare was an anti-Semite. He makes a very cogent argument, e.g. by noting the number of times Shylock is referred to not by name but as "Jew," but I still can't go quite the whole way with him. Like the Ghost in *Hamlet,* Shylock seems to me an essentially ambiguous figure. Can we let the arguments rest there? Jay Halio ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 20:45:03 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0117 Q: Online Shakespeare Periodicals Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 116. Monday, 1 March 1993. From: David Richman Date: Monday, 1 Mar 1993 9:33:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: Query About Online Shakespeare Periodicals A query to anyone on this list associated with *Shakespeare Bulletin* or *Shakespeare Quarterly*. Any chance of either of these periodicals becoming available electronically, perhaps through GOPHER or some other electronic service. Being blind, I and my speech synthesizer take delight in online material. I would be willing to pay up to twice the normal subscription rate for either of these journals in electronic form. Thanks. David Richman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 20:51:29 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0116 Audition Monologues Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 116. Monday, 1 March 1993. From: Chris Gladis Date: Monday, 01 Mar 1993 10:17:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: Audition Monologues I will be auditioning (I hope) for a summer Shakespeare company here in Albany soon for 12 weeks of performance. Whether I make it or not, I don't know. It would be nice.... In any case. For auditions, thy would like two monologues, at least one by Shakespeare. So my question is for those of you who have acted in summer ensembles and other Shakespearean productions: what would you recommend I use for a monologue? Send replies privately please, unless there are a whole lot of people besides myself who want to know. BTW, in case you're curious, they'll be doing _Richard III_ and _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ as well as an original commedia, _Holy Matrimony!_ Thank you for your help.... "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophies." -Hamlet ****Chris Gladis ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 21:02:11 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0118 Re: SSE at the Folger Theatre Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 118. Monday, 1 March 1993. From: Milla Riggio Date: Monday, 1 Mar 93 16:55 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0113 Re: The Folger Theatre (SSE) With reference to the Shenandoah Express and the Folger Theatre: A quick warning, which I will try to confirm later, with regard to the Shenandoah Express at the Folger on March 20. They are, indeed, coming to the Folger for a workshop on that weekend. I, too, am in the workshop, but it is my understanding that there is no public performance during that period. If there is, we have not been informed of it. We were told, quite to the contrary, that we would be working through the evening on the workshop material. So -- I'll check and perhaps Bernice can do the same thing, but my guess right now is that the troup is leading a workshop but not itself giving a full performance. At least, that is a possibility. Don't make plans to go to Washington until further notice. --Milla Riggio ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 21:12:01 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0119 ACH-ALLC 93 Conference Announcement Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 119. Monday, 1 March 1993. From: Paul Mangiafico Date: Monday, 1 Mar 1993 11:02 EST Subject: ACH-ALLC 93 Conference Announcement THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES THE ASSOCIATION FOR LITERARY AND LINGUISTIC COMPUTING 1993 JOINT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE JUNE 16-19, 1993 GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON, DC On behalf of the Executive Committees of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, we cordially invite you to attend the fifth annual joint international conference, to be held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., June 16-19, 1993. This conference is the major forum for discussion of the preparation, encoding, and use of character-based electronic text and for computer-based research in literature, linguistics, and related humanities disciplines. It will feature presenters from fourteen countries and include eighty papers on the development of new computing methodologies for research and teaching in the humanities, on the development of significant new materials and tools for humanities research, and on the application and evaluation of computing techniques in humanities subjects. Keynote addresses will be delivered by Hugh Kenner, Franklin and Calloway Professor of English at the University of Georgia, and Clifford Lynch, Director of Library Automation at the Office of the President, University of California. A special feature will be a series of sessions, organized by the library community, on electronic resources for the humanities. Other attractions include a forum on the Text Encoding Initiative and encoding with SGML, a software fair, banquet, vendor display, and optional text-analysis workshop. Georgetown University, situated along the Potomac River in an historic district that predates our Nation's Capital, is the site for the conference. Domestic flights arrive at Washington National Airport, and taxi service (approximately $12) is recommended for the short ride to your accommodations in Georgetown. International flights arrive at Dulles Airport (40 miles away), and a shuttle service ($16 one-way, $26 round-trip) provides transportation into downtown Washington. In the city you will find that taxi service is reasonably priced; a ride to Georgetown from downtown will cost approximately $7. Parking in Washington is prohibitively expensive, so participants are urged to take public transportation to the conference. American Airlines will offer domestic-flight discounts of 5% off all relevant fares for conference participants flying to and from Washington, DC between June 12th and June 22nd. To obtain this discount, call the American Airlines Meeting Services Desk at 1- 800-433-1790 and specify the Star Number S1463FS for ACH-ALLC93. The Association for Computers and the Humanities is a professional society for scholars working in computer-related research in literature and language studies, history, philosophy, and other disciplines of the humanities. Individual membership is $60 US a year and includes a subscription to Computers and the Humanities (six issues a year) and the ACH Newsletter (four issues a year). The Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing was founded in 1973 as an international association to promote the development of literary and linguistic computing. Membership is by personal subscription to the journal Literary and Linguistic Computing, which is published by Oxford University Press, Pinkhill House, Southfield Road, Eynsham, Oxford, OX8 1JJ. Subscription rates for 1992 are L30 (UK) or $57 (rest of the world). On-site registration will be held from 9 am to 9 pm at the ACH- ALLC93 Conference Headquarters in Copley Formal Lounge beginning June 15th and extending throughout the conference. At 6 pm on June 15th, a welcome cocktail party for participants will be held on the upper-level esplanade of the Leavey Conference Center. The conference will commence with an opening session on Wednesday, June 16th, at 9 am in Gaston Hall. Occasional reports of interest to participants will be accessible by Internet, either through the Georgetown University Gopher server (in the ACH_ALLC93 directory) or by anonymous ftp from guvax.georgetown.edu (141.161.1.2) in directory ACH_ALLC93. Options for accommodations at the conference include: 1. Village C Residence Hall on campus. $50 a night (single) or $25 a night (double). Air conditioned with private bath, daily linen service. Furnishings Spartan but clean. Staff assistance. Telephones and televisions in common areas only. 3- minute walk to conference sessions. Optional meal plan available on campus at $20 a day. Access to gym and pool available at $10 a week. 10-12 minute walk to Georgetown shopping and restaurants. Vending machines on site. Parking available at $10 a day, $30 a week. Extensions of reservations at the conference rate are available for several days before and after the conference. 2. Leavey Conference Center Hotel on campus. $115 a night (single), $130 (double) with sales tax @ 11% plus $1.50 a night occupancy tax. Full services and plush furnishings of a new and luxurious conference hotel. 3-minute walk to sessions. Access to gym and pool available at $5 a day. 13-15 minute walk to Georgetown shopping and restaurants. Restaurants on site. Parking available at $9 for a 24-hour period. Extensions of reservations at conference rate depend upon availability; contact the hotel soon at the address below. 3. Georgetown Inn (in business district). $95 per room a night (single or double) with tax at 11% plus $1.50 a night. Complimentary continental breakfast and parking. Air conditioned with private bath. Atmosphere and furnishings of a small, recently remodeled hotel. Service from front desk and concierge. Telephones and television in rooms. 10-15 minute walk (up slight incline) to campus and sessions; free conference van service at regular intervals. No access to gym or pool. In the heart of tourist and shopping district. Restaurants on site and nearby. Extensions of reservations at conference rate depend upon availability; contact the hotel soon at the address below. REPLY FORM Please return to: Dr. Michael Neuman, Local Organizer ACH-ALLC93 Academic Computer Center 238 Reiss Science Building Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057 Country code: 1 phone: 202-687-6096 fax: 202-687-6003 Internet: ach_allc93@guvax.georgetown.edu (Details provided below will be used to compile the Conference List of Participants. Please enter your name and affiliation as you would like them to appear on your badge.) Your Name: Institution/Affiliation: Title: Surface-mail address: City, State or District, Postal Code, and Country: Telephone: Fax: Email: Software Fair: Please check here if you would like to demonstrate a product or project. Yes ___ Then specify requirements for operating system, RAM, hard disk space, special graphics or controller cards, or software platform needed for your demonstration. FEES Please enter relevant amounts (in US$) and return this form with your remittance to the address above. Registration status: Amount Regular registration $140 ___ Member of ACH or ALLC in good standing 100 ___ Spouses, companions 30 ___ Graduate students 30 ___ One-day rate (Specify day and date) 70 ___ Other approved designation (Please specify) ___ Late registration surcharge (after June 1) 20 ___ (Cancellation penalty after May 15): $20 Registration includes access to all program sessions, special-interest-group meetings, software fair, exhibits, and inter-session refreshments. Membership fee: Association for Computers and the Humanities at $60 ___ Assoc. for Literary and Linguistic Computing at $57 ___ Banquet (7:30 p.m. Thursday 6/17/93) Number ___ at $38 ___ Name of guest _____________________________________ Please note any dietary restriction: Residence hall* at $50 per night (single) or $25 (double) Number of nights ___ at nightly rate $ ___ = Total: ___ If double, please include name of the other person: Arrival/check-in date: Departure/check-out date: Check-in at Village C Residence Hall beginning Tuesday, June 15 at 9 am or (by prior arrangement). GRAND TOTAL for registration, membership fee, banquet, and residence-hall lodging ___ Method of payment in US$ (Please do not send cash.) Check or money order (enclosed) ___ Payable to: Georgetown University Credit card (Mastercard or Visa) ___ Card number _____________________ Expiration date _________________ Name as it appears on card _____________________ * For alternative lodging, please make your reservation before May 15, 1993 at hotel or conference center directly. Reservations at conference rate may not be available after May 15. GU Conference Center The Georgetown Inn 3800 Reservoir Road, NW 1310 Wisconsin Avenue NW Box 2315 Hoya Station Washington, DC 20007 Washington, DC 20057 Phone from USA and Canada Phone from USA and Canada 800-424-2979 800-446-9476 From other countries From other countries 1-202-333-8900 1-202-687-3232 Fax: 202-625-1744 Fax: 202-687-3291 Be sure to mention ACH-ALLC93 when making reservations, and confirm the conference rate listed under options for lodging. Please check here if arranging your own accommodations. ___ Program Chair: Marianne Gaunt, Rutgers University International Program Committee: Thomas Corns, University of Wales (ALLC) Paul Fortier, University of Manitoba (ACH) Jacqueline Hamesse, Universit/e catholique de Louvain- la-Neuve (ALLC) Susan Hockey, Center for Electronic Text in the Humanities (ALLC) Nancy Ide, Vassar College (ACH) Randall Jones, Brigham Young University (ACH) Michael Neuman, Georgetown University (ACH) Antonio Zampolli, University of Pisa (ALLC) Local Organizer: Michael Neuman, Georgetown University ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 16:32:05 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0120 Audition Monologues Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 120. Tuesday, 2 March 1993. From: Chantal Payette Date: Tuesday, 2 Mar 1993 9:10:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0116 Audition Monologues I myself would also love to know a few recommendations for monologues, since I too will hopefully be able to audition for a Shakespearean company this summer. Thanks Chantal Chantal@vax.library.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 16:35:02 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0121 SSE in North Dakota Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 121. Tuesday, 2 March 1993. From: Hardin Aasand Date: Tuesdy, 2 Mar 93 08:26:44 MDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0118 Re: SSE at the Folger Theatre I thought I would drop a brief note regarding the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express's only appearance in North Dakota, yes, North Dakota! As one of the few native North Dakotans in this country, I can proudly report that the Express will be in Dickinson, North Dakota at Dickinson State University in late April, performing <>, <>, and <> and conducting two acting workshops. Any Shakespeareans who plan to be in North Dakota (for whatever inexplicable reason) are encouraged to stop by. Give me a shout and I'll help reserve a space for you. A true Northern Exposure, Hardin Aasand Dept. of English/Dickinson State ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 07:16:37 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0122 Re: Parody; Folger Library and Theatre Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 122. Wednesday, 3 March 1993. (1) From: Jon Enriquez Date: Tuesday, 2 Mar 1993 18:05 EST Subj: Parody (2) From: Mike Lomonico Date: Sunday, 18 Feb 96 15:32 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0101 Q: Folger Library and Theatre (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jon Enriquez Date: Tuesday, 2 Mar 1993 18:05 EST Subject: Parody This is sort of a response to an earlier note about the CBC parodies. The funniest parody I've ever heard is called "So That's the Way You Like It," performed by Britain's Beyond The Fringe group (Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore). It's part of the playscript (available through Samuel French, I believe) and can be heard on the original cast album (1960). It's mostly a skewed history play. Quite good. The best extended parody I've seen is the Reduced Shakespeare Company. These three guys perform the entire canon in two acts. The second act is Hamlet, and the first act is everything else. The finale, where they do the second act in fast-forward, is worth the price of admission alone. I saw them last winter, when I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. I laughed with a vigor I usually reserve for The Simpsons or MST3K. I think they're San Francisco-based. Jon Enriquez The Graduate School Georgetown University ENRIQUEZJ@guvax (Bitnet) ENRIQUEZJ@guvax.georgetown.edu (Internet) (2)--------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Lomonico Date: Sunday, 18 Feb 96 15:32 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0101 Q: Folger Library and Theatre The Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger has moved to a new theatre in downtown DC near the White House. It is not and never was affiliated with the Folger; they just rented the space. They are currently running Comedy of Errors. The Travelling Shakespeare Company recently did a great MND at the Folger Theatre however. As far as admission, one needs a reader's card which generally comes through an affiliation with a University. Most of the readers are post-doctoral. There is an exhibit hall which is currently running an exhibit called "New World of Wonders: European Images of the Americas 1492-1700" which has some wonderful material from their collection. The exhibit and gift kiosk are open to the public. ----------------- 40.41N, 73.32W Mike Lomonico K-12 Teacher at Farmingdale High School, Farmingdale Farmingdale, NY ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 11:33:10 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0123 SSE at the Folger Theatre Update Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 123. Wednesday, 3 March 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Wednesday, 3 March 1993 Subject: SSE at the Folger Theatre I just call 1-800-SAY-PUCK and got confirmation that indeed The Shenandoah Shakespeare Express's performance on March 20 at the Folger Theatre is *NOT* open to the public. However, SSE will be in Washington, D.C., in residence at the Folger Theatre from June 15 through July 3 this summer. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 12:54:58 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" PUT SHAKSPER MEMBERS SHAKSPER PW=WILLKEMP Shakespeare Electronic Conference -- Members 3/3/93 BOAT@AC.DAL.CA John Kwane Tawiah-Boateng mafeking@AC.DAL.CA Sean Lawrence XYNJYN@AC.DAL.CA Merina Hew NQB1621@ACFCLUSTER.NYU.EDU Nava Bromberger PEACOCK@ACFCLUSTER.NYU.EDU Kenneth J. Peacock RATUNIL@ACFCLUSTER.NYU.EDU Ludemo Ratunil R1RMZ@AKRONVAX Ra'eda Zietoon R1AMF@AKRONVM Antonia Forster R1NR@AKRONVM Nicholas Ranson FFJL@ALASKA Janis Lull CCRUPI@ALBION Charles Crupi rose@ALSYS1.AECOM.YU.EDU Eric Rose HDCHICKERING@AMHERST Howell D. Chickering GZIEGLER@amherst.edu Georgianna Ziegler LIEBLER@APOLLO.MONTCLAIR.EDU Naomi Liebler traherne@ARIEL.UCS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Richard D. Jordan ATJXB@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU Jean R. Brink psdlit@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Peter S. Donaldson koelke@ATSS.CALSTATELA.EDU Kent Oelke RELIHAN@AUDUCVAX Constance C. Relihan ENYOUNGBERG@augustana.edu Karin Youngberg davist@A1.RELAY.UPENN.EDU Tad Davis traister@A1.RELAY.UPENN.EDU Daniel Traister A1140345@BCIT.BC.CA Simon Edgett SOLON@BEACH.CSULB.EDU Todd Allaria lav@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU John Lavagnino HMCook@BOE00.MINC.UMD.EDU Hardy M. Cook ekelemen@BRAHMS.UDEL.EDU Erick R. Kelemen jhalio@BRAHMS.UDEL.EDU Jay L. Halio PVASILE@BRAHMS.UDEL.EDU Pamela A. Vasile ELAINE@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU Elaine Brennan jpeter@BUCKNELL.EDU Jean Peterson QUARK@BUCSF.BU.EDU Paul Fu, Jr. EMER@CALVIN.EDU Cheryl Forbes KEN.STEELE@CANREM.COM Kenneth B. Steele IDA@CASBAH.ACNS.NWU.EDU Michael P. Ida nwatson@CASBAH.ACNS.NWU.EDU Nicola J. Watson nwatson@CASBAH.ACNS.NWU.EDU Michael Dobson mwarren@CATS.UCSC.EDU Michael Warren tblackb1@CC.SWARTHMORE.EDU Tom Blackburn cjohnsto@CCS.CARLETON.CA C. Todd Johnston SABINSON@CCVAX.UNICAMP.ANSP.BR Eric M. Sabinson tdrga@CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU Todd Drga tcbowden@CLOVIS.FELTON.CA.US Tim Bowden rmburns@CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU Robert M. Burns GTVV03@CMS.GLA.AC.UK John Michael Reeves JWHITE@CMSUVMB D. Jerry White precosky@CNC.BC.CA Dan Precosky leosborn@COLBY.EDU Laurie E. Osborne 100013.1162@COMPUSERVE.COM Philip Ormond 71222.472@COMPUSERVE.COM Douglas Rutledge 76645.3610@COMPUSERVE.COM Beverly Jacobson rjones@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU Rick Jones LHT@CORNELLA.CIT.CORNELL.EDU Nate Johnson BOLSEN@CS.UMR.EDU Brian Olsen dunne-bob@CS.YALE.EDU Bob Dunne vjh@CSD4.CSD.UWM.EDU Virginia J. Haas MCCARTHY@CUAVAXA William J. McCarthy EHPEARLMAN@CUDENVER E.H. Pearlman jml36@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu Jesse M. Lander mdm18@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu Magen Dror Marcus SURCC@CUNYVM Steven Urkowitz BOSS@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU Judith E. Boss LEN11@DMSWWU1A Marga Munkelt JAE@DRYCAS Jae Walker RAY_LISCHNER@DSD.MENTORG.COM Ray Lischner D.C.Greer@DURHAM.AC.UK David C. Greer ocoreng@durras.anu.edu.au Robert F. O'Connor MILLERAA@DUVM.OCS.DREXEL.EDU Amy Miller katy@ENG.SUN.COM Katy Dickinson EJMASO@ENGFAC.INDSTATE.EDU Tom Derrick EJWEDAM@ENGFAC.INDSTATE.EDU David Wedaman ian@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA Ian Lancashire KWEST@epas.utoronto.bitnet Katherine West lthomson@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA Leslie Thomson pseary@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA Peter Seary WARKENT@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA Germaine Warkentin callas@ERIS.ENET.DEC.COM Jon Callas ASPONBERG@EXODUS.VALPO.EDU Arvid F. Sponberg JPAUL@EXODUS.VALPO.EDU John Steven Paul DLG8X@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU David L. Gants jll6f@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Joseph Lawrence Lyle LHB6V@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Laura Hayes Burchard THIEL@flis.utoronto.ca Greg Thiel MIRANDA@FORDMULC Aramis Miranda jd1@FORTH.STIRLING.AC.UK John Drakakis LOUGHLIN@FREDONIA Tom Loughlin BRYSON@FRMNVAX1.BITNET Rhett Bryson ELI16@FRMOP22 Centre d'Etudes Elisabethaines eliason@GACVX1.GAC.EDU Eric Eliason fister@GACVX1.GAC.EDU Barbara Fister RASTLEY@GALLUA Russell Astley DUDAJ%UNION.decnet@gar.union.edu Jean Graca NYHOFF@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU Jeffrey L. Nyhoff JOHN.C.MUCCI@gte.sprint.com John C. Mucci ENRIQUEZJ@GUVAX.GEORGETOWN.EDU Jon Enriquez NEUMAN@GUVAX.GEORGETOWN.EDU Michael Neuman WILDER@GUVAX.GEORGETOWN.EDU Jim Wilderotter LIDHT@GUVM Todd M. Lidh dweller@GVSU.EDU Ronald Dwelle CF012C@GWUVM.GWU.EDU Kate Gray DAGRIER@GWUVM.GWU.EDU David Alan Grier OTHELLO@GWUVM.GWU.EDU Amy L. Ward JORDAN@HARVARDA.HARVARD.EDU Nancy S. Reinhardt CRANEM/EN@hermes.bc.edu Mary Thomas Crane enjg@hippo.ru.ac.za John Gouws DORENKAMP@HLYCROSS John H. Dorenkamp HWHALL@HLYCROSS Helen Whall COX@HOPE John D. Cox HR973093@HOPE Rasa L. Hollender EMERSON@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU Derek Emerson SHADY@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU Jean Shady NDROSE@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU Nathan Rose 21798RAR@IBM.CL.MSU.EDU Randal Robinson rww@ibuki.com Richard Weyhrauch bont@IEEEPUB.ORG Tom Bontrager IWKI500@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU Dawn Wilhite ZAROBILA@JCVAXA.JCU.EDU Charles Zarobila SCOTTP@JESTER.USASK.CA Peter Scott maura@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu Maura LoMonico bickford@jimmy.harvard.edu Paul Bickford FAC_AMIL@JMUVAX Ann E. Miller STU_PALO@JMUVAX1 Paul A. Lord DKOVACS@KENTVM.KENT.EDU Diane Kovacs sreid@KENTVM.KENT.EDU S. Reid JONGSOOK@KRSNUCC1 Jongsook Lee ANTHONY@KRSOGANG Anthony Teague ENGXW878@ksuvxa.kent.edu Cassandra Whittington NEURINGER@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU Charles Neuringer BM41@LAFAYACS Malika M. Browne LJ#4@LAFAYACS James Lusardi SI#0@LAFAYACS Ian Smith SJ#3@LAFAYACS June Schlueter WS#1@LAFAYACS Suzanne R. Westfall SCHNEIDB@LAWRENCE Ben Ross Schneider, Jr. mez@LCS.MIT.EDU Mez Mez dfrazee@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU David Frazee orgel@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU Stephen Orgel NOVELLI@LEMOYNE Cornelius Novelli CON_MDP@LEWIS.UMT.EDU Mike Post PGALLAGH@LIFE.JSC.NASA.GOV Patricia E. Gallagher BELL@LTUVAX Janet E. Bell Thomas.H.Luxon@MAC.DARTMOUTH.EDU Tom Luxon jrogers@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU Judith K. Rogers mwinches@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU Mark D. Winchester dpacheco@MATH.MACALSTR.EDU David Pacheco 0003786240@MCIMAIL.COM Vinton G. Cerf HAMMOND@MCMASTER Antony Hammond ktw@MHWPA.ATT.COM Kenneth Wolman cfrey@MILTON.U.WASHINGTON.EDU Charles H. Frey FLD@MILTON.U.WASHINGTON.EDU Leo Daugherty flevy@MILTON.U.WASHINGTON.EDU Fritz Levy C359452@MIZZOU1 Michael O'Conner JOHNST67@MMC.bitnet Donald Johnson LEWIS@MSUS1.MSUS.EDU Piers Lewis Ronnie_I._Lakowski@MTSG.UBC.CA Romuald I. Lakowski AERLEBAC@MTUS5.CTS.MTU.EDU Anne Falke Erlebach mlomonico@nasstract.nyued.fred.org Mike LoMonico DIVHMF1@NCCVAX.WVNET.EDU Terry Ann Craig H594@NEMOMUS Tonya Kreuger richard@NEXT1.ACS.UMN.EDU Richard A. Gale TB0DJK9@NIU David J. Knauer TB0WPW1@NIU William Proctor Williams TJ0AJS9@NIU Anne J. Spencer SANDONA@NIMUE.HOOD.EDU Mark Sandona JURBAN@NORDEN1.COM Joseph Urban UDLE031@OAK.CC.KCL.AC.UK Stephen Roy Miller FGORFAIN@OCVAXA.CC.OBERLIN.EDU Phyllis Gorfain Robert_Knapp@OFFCAMPUS.REED.EDU Robert S. Knapp COUCH@OHSTMVSA.IRCC.OHIO-STATE.EDU Nena Couch S.A.RAE@OPEN.AC.UK Simon Rae MEIHSU@OREAD.CC.UKANS.EDU Kung-yu Chin FLANNAGA@OUACCVMB Roy Flannagan sinowitz@pilot.njin.net Jonah Sinowitz PDJ2@PO.CWRU.EDU Peter D. Junger TGB2@PO.CWRU.EDU Thomas G. Bishop rabrams@PORTLAND.MAINE.EDU Rick Abrams P00256@PSILINK.COM Meredith Dixon EN02@PRIMEB.DUNDEE.AC.UK R.J.C. Watt BCJ@PSUVM Kevin Berland SAS14@PSUVM.PSU.EDU Stephen A. Schrum SHERSHOW@PUB2.BU.EDU Scott Shershow GODOT@PURCCVM Shawn Smith WGRIM@RCNVMS.RCN.MASS.EDU William Grim SKURA@ricevm1.rice.edu Meredith Anne Skura AXNNCE@RITVAX.ISC.RIT.EDU Tony Naturale SDMGLA@RITVAX.ISC.RIT.EDU Stanley D. McKenzie MOH@RNB.DTC.HP.COM David Moh TOM@SAILFISH.CSE.FAU.EDU Tom Horton JODONNEL@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU James O'Donnel cmazer@sas.upenn.edu Cary M. Mazer prackin@SAS.UPENN.EDU Phyllis Rackin FRIEDMAN@SCRANTON Michael D. Friedman UWAX00@SDNET Adrian Weiss SSIMS@SD68.NANAIMO.BC.CA Stephen Sims Geoffrey_Hargreaves@SFU.CA Geoffrey Hargreaves S31647@SIENA Chris Gladis GR4302@SIUCVMB Jeff Taylor GA0708@SIUCVMB.CDALE.SIU.EDU Herbert S. Donow CLARY@SMCVAX F. Nicholas Clary N_PARKER@SMCVAX Nikki Parker SHAKESPR@SMITH SHAKSPEReans at Smith MACDONALD@SMITH.SMITH.EDU Ron Macdonald VB7R0048@SMUVM1 Charles Baker FEINMAN@SNYBKSAC Richard D. Feinman WOLF@SNYCORVA Janet S. Wolf KLIMANB@SNYFARVA Bernice Kliman BLASERPF8052@SYNONEVA.CC.ONEONTA.EDU Paul Blaser AC05@SOL.ACS.UNT.EDU Bhattacharya Sumangala jmassa@SPONSORED-PROG-PO.DSP.UIOWA.EDU John S. Massa MOYLEK@SSCVAX.CIS.MCMASTER.CA Kenneth C. Moyle OSTOVICH@SSCVAX.CIS.MCMASTER.CA Helen Ostovich HF.CHL@STANFORD Charles R. Lyons pinnow@STOLAF.EDU Timothy Dayne Pinnow IRWINKE@STORM.CS.ORST.EDU Keith Irwin ellen.edgerton@SUADMIN Ellen Edgerton marjorie@SUN490.FDU.EDU Harry Keyishian marjorie@SUN490.FDU.EDU Marjorie Keyishian KELARSON@SUVM Kenneth E. Larson LDDENNO@SUVM Kathryn Barbour CR06@SWTEXAS Clifford J. Ronan WKEMP@S850.MWC.EDU William Kemp PERICLES@TEMPLEM Daniel P. Tompkins ETRIB@TEMPLEVM Evelyn Tribble dorisann@TENET.EDU Doris Smith MELISSAA@TENET.EDU Melissa McMillian-Cunningham abartisc@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU Caesarea Abartis andersonj@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU James B. Anderson jhibbard@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU Jack H. Hibbard OZTURKC@TRBOUN Tugrul Can Ozturk wug@triton.dsto.gov.au Wolf Getto MEDS002@UABDPO A.J. Wright GSTOVAL3@UA1VM.UA.EDU Jerry Stoval USERKAY@UBCMTSG Kay Stockholder USERSTAP@UBCMTSG Paul G. Stanwood SULLIV3@UCC.UWINDSOR.CA John F. Sullivan WENDY@UCC.UWINDSOR.CA Wendy Woytasik ECZ5SEE@UCLAMVS Naomi Seeger HASENFRA@UCONNVM Bob Hasenfratz JACOBUS@UCONNVM Lee A. Jacobus JANEY@UCS.INDIANA.EDU John T. Aney CCOCHRAN@uga.cc.uga.edu Charles Cochran omalley@UHUNIX.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU Lurana O'Malley RWILLIS@UKANVAX Ron Willis CAVITT01@ULKYVM Chet Vittitow INKSHED@UNB.CA James A. Reither ROWAN@UNB.CA Don Rowan RSPACEK@UNB.CA Richard A. M. Spacek EGERTON@UNC Katy Egerton MOSLEY@UNC George Mosley starman@unc.bitnet Tom Hocking JOEP@UNC.ACS.UNC.EDU Joe Pellegrino ETBJR@UNC.OIT.UNC.EDU Edward T. Bonahue OBERON@unc.oit.unc.edu Grant Moss D_LANIER@UNHH.UNH.EDU Douglas Lanier D_RICHMAN@UNHH.UNH.EDU David Richman CBHW23@UPVAX.ULSTER.AC.UK M.W.A. (Wilf) Smith MAIL_KIERNAN@UQVAX.CC.UQ.OZ.AU Adrian Kiernander kln101@URIACC.URI.EDU Mathilda M. Hills CREAMER@URVAX.URICH.EDU Kevin J.T. Creamer SCHWARTZ@URVAX.URICH.EDU Louis Schwartz engler@URZ.UNIBAS.CH Balz Engler MKRAKOVS@US.ORACLE.COM Marina Krakovsky CAMPBELL@USDCSV.ACUSD.EDU Gardner Campbell DIBIASE@UTKVX.BITNET Carmine DiBiase IVAD@utmartn.bitnet Daniel Farris Pigg HAG@UVMVM.UVM.EDU Hope Greenberg BEST@UVVM.UVIC.CA Michael Best werstine@UMOVAX.UWO.CA Paul Werstine WHITER@VAX.CITADEL.EDU Robert A. White ARCHIVE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Lou Burnard STUART@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Stuart D. Lee Chantal@vax.library.utoronto.ca Chantal Payette GW2@VAXB.YORK.AC.UK Geoffrey Wall FOSTER@VAXSAR.VASSAR.EDU Donald W. Foster FAC_JLFUNSTO@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU Jay Funston fac_mdhawtho@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU Mark D. Hawthorne MRIGGIO@vax1.trincoll.edu Milla Riggio engl_le@VAX1.UTULSA.EDU Lars Engle vfk57016@VAX1.UTULSA.EDU Kay Van Valkenburgh PECHTER@VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA Ed Pechter ENG1683@VAX2.QUEENS-BELFAST.AC.UK John Manning JLH5651@VENUS.TAMU.EDU James L. Harner JLH5651@VENUS.TAMU.EDU Harrison Meserole shand@VENUS.YORKU.CA Skip Shand KKM7M@VIRGINIA Karen Kates Marshall ifm5u@VIRGINIA.EDU Ian F. Macinnes f24113@VM.BIU.AC.IL Alan Rosen CADMADGE@VM.UOGUELPH.CA Madge Grant Brochet UGG00324@VM.UOGUELPH.CA Kelly Caldwell ENGNEIL@VM.UOGUELPH.CA Neil Carson UGU00279@VM.UOGUELPH.CA Shirley Senoff hart@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU Michael S. Hart D.A.Bank@VME.GLASGOW.AC.UK David A. Bank AASAND@VM1.NODAK.EDU Hardin Aasand DS001451@VM1.NODAK.EDU Ray Wheeler LSCHWART@VM1.NODAK.EDU Larry Schwartz UD006866@VM1.NODAK.EDU Richard F. Hampsten wilson@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR Wilson Roberto Afonso CHESHIRE@VTVM1 Linda Anderson TSC@VX.CIS.UMN.EDU Thomas Clayton ravens@wam.umd.edu Brian Sobus CARTERJJ@WHITMAN James J. Carter Grace.E.Aspinall@WILLIAMS.EDU Grace E. Aspinall MATSUBA@WRITER.YORKU.CA Stephen Matsuba ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1993 22:02:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0124 The SHAKSPER Membership Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 124. Wednesday, 3 March 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Wednesday, 3 March 1993 Subject: The SHAKSPER Membership Dear SHAKSPEReans, Earlier today, I addressed the latest copy of the SHAKSPER Membership File to the list address rather than to LISTSERV as I intended. As a result, all members of SHAKSPER received this file. Although I did not intend this to happen, my mistake provides me with the occasion to inform everyone of the current state of the SHAKSPER membership. Last summer, I announced as a goal having a membership of more than 300 by the end of 1992. This goal was actually accomplished a few weeks into January 1993. Currently, SHAKSPER boasts 307 active members with new requests for information about joining arriving almost every day. Our members reside in twelve countries around the world: Australia, Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, Canada, and the United States. We are truly a global conference. We also are a diverse group. We are professors and high school teachers, graduates and undergraduates, academics and theatre professionals, computer scientists and librarians, and lots of folks who are simply interested in the works of Shakespeare, the Renaissance, English Literature, and Drama. If you would like to find more about who we are, you may consider reading through the SHAKSPER BIOGRAFY files, which now number ten volumes. These files may be retrieved individually or as a set. To obtain the complete set, send the following one-line mail message to LISTSERV@utoronto.bitnet: GET BIOGRAFY PACKAGE SHAKSPER. There have been in the past few months some extremely interesting discussions carried out on SHAKSPER, but there are nearly four years of discussions that preceded these. If you are interested in reviewing any of these, there are four index files on the fileserver that you should know about: DISCUSS INDEX_1 An index to the first year's discussions on SHAKSPER. DISCUSS INDEX_2 An index to the second year's discussions on SHAKSPER. DISCUSS INDEX_3 An index to the third year's discussions on SHAKSPER. DISCUSS INDEX_4 An index to the fourth year's discussions on SHAKSPER. You may also wish to examine SHAKSPER FILES: a descriptive listing of the SHAKSPER fileserver's contents. SHAKSPEReans can retrieve any of the above files from the SHAKSPER fileserver by issuing the interactive command, "TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET SHAKSPER". If your network link does not support the interactive "TELL" command (i.e. if you are not directly on Bitnet), or if LISTSERV rejects your request, then send a one-line mail message (without a subject line) to LISTSERV@utoronto, reading "GET SHAKSPER". Let me also remind everyone that the SHAKSPER LOGs are now available through GOPHER, which supports searching by keyword within each monthly log for ready access to information. If you have any questions, you may, as always, feel free to contact me. Hardy M. Cook Editor of SHAKSPER ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 07:16:46 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0125 Q: Tree's 1899 *King John* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 125. Thursday, 4 March 1993. From: John Aney Date: Wednesday, 3 Mar 93 23:01:55 EST Subject: H.B. Tree's 1899 _King John_ Fellow SHAKSPER-eans: I am currently doing some research on H. Beerbohm Tree's 1899 production of _King John_, and would be very interested to hear if anyone out there has some ideas of sources I might check on. I realize this specific question may not yield any answers, but then again, you never know. Also, any one have any good resources for trying to determine how the ORIGINAL production of _KJ_ might have been staged (we have no record of it being performed pre-Restoration...) I am using you all as a resource, not as a substitute for my own research, which continues daily (and nightly!!!) Thanks! John "It is useless to claim people are born free if you deny people are born good." - George Bernard Shaw -JANEY@UCS.INDIANA.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 09:46:05 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 126. Thursday, 4 March 1993. From: Ronald Dwelle Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 09:26:52 EST Subject: [Q: "naked new-born babe" I'm teaching Macbeth (for the first time in years) and stumbling a bit on some of the language. For example: I,vii, 16-25. Macbeth is in soliloqy, describing Duncan's meekness and other virtues, which will "plead against his taking off...." Then the lines: And pity, like a naked new-born babe Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I can find no gloss and can make little sense of the simile. Can someone interpret (or direct me)? Thanks [I cannot resist this one: start with Cleanth Brooks's "The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness," the second chapter in *The Well Wrought Urn*. --hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 18:34:21 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0130 Q: SGML Primer/Guide Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 130. Thursday, 4 March 1993. From: Richard Spacek Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 13:33:48 AST Subject: SGML Primer/Guide I am having trouble finding a good guide to SGML. I expect that the release of WP Markup will change this, but I do not want to wait! Can anyone suggest a useful text? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 17:51:28 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0127 [was unnumbered] Rs: Tree's 1899 *King John* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 127. Thursday, 4 March 1993. (1) From: Georgianna Ziegler Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 1993 11:55:07 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0125 Q: Tree's 1899 *King John* (2) From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 1993 15:32 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0125 Q: Tree's 1899 *King John* (3) From: John C. Mucci Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 93 19:01:00 UT Subj: RE: SHK 4.0125 Q: Tree's 1899 *King John* (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Georgianna Ziegler Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 1993 11:55:07 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0125 Q: Tree's 1899 *King John* The New York Public Library has a microform of *Shakespeare's historical drama King John produced at Her Majesty's Theatre by Herbert Beerbohm Tree on the 20th of September, MDCCCXCIX.* [London]: British Mutoscope and Biograph Co., 1899. The Folger Library has a photogravure of Tree as K. John done by Charles A. Buchel, and an ink and opaque drawing of K. John I.v. showing McLeay as Hubert, Mr. Tree as K. John, Miss Bateman as Constance, and Master Lefton as Arthur. We also have a number of letters to and from (24) Tree, though I'm not sure that any of these will deal with that production. Georgianna (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 1993 15:32 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0125 Q: Tree's 1899 *King John* The next issue of the *Shakespeare Bulletin* has information about this production. You should have this issue soon if you are a subscriber. Also, an essay appeared fairly recently in *Theatre Survey* by B. A. Kachur, with excellent illustrations. *The Shakespeare on Film Newsletter*, which has now merged with the *Shakespeare Bulletin*, carried an announcement of the Kachur essay in vol. 16.2, p. 7. To subscribe to the *Bulletin* send $15 for one year and $30 for two to Profs. James LUSARDI and June SCHLUETER, at Lafayette College, Easton, PA 18042. The Bulletin, a performance journal, is issued quarterly and has about 50 pages per issue--full of good things. Good luck with your research. Bernice W. Kliman (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John C. Mucci Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 93 19:01:00 UT Subject: RE: SHK 4.0125 Q: Tree's 1899 *King John* There is a very interesting account of the 1899 production of _King John_ in the book SHAKESPEARE AND SILENT FILM, as that particular production was the basis of the world's first cinematographical representation of Shakespeare. There are a few stills from the film --and I believe one of the stage production, but the actual film itself is apparently lost. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 18:09:10 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0129 Sonnet 20: Hews = Jews? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 129. Thursday, 4 March 1993. From: Nate Johnson Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 16:08:00 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0115 Re: Shakespeare, Jews, and Anti-Semitism Although, as Jay Halio points out, there are no explicit references to Jews in the sonnets, I wonder about line 7 of sonnet 20: "A man in hew all *Hews* in his controlling" ["Hews" is italicized] Even without the (random?) italicization, it strikes me that there might be a pun here, especially given the prevalence of "use" and usury as themes in the sonnets. Booth suggests several possible meanings of 'hue' and a pun on "you." Give the typography of "Iew" in MOV, and at least one use--"Marke Iew, O learned judge" (Hinman facs)--which suggests a similar pun, it's tempting to speculate about visual or auditory puns on you/Iew/ewe/hew or Iews/Hews/use/ewes in the sonnets. The italicization is also interesting, although perhaps even more dangerous as grounds for speculation. Authorial intent, of course, isn't the issue, but I'm also unwilling to believe that italicization and capitalization are utterly irrelevant at least as clues to some kind of perceived emphasis. The most frequent use of italicization in the sonnets (based on a very rapid scan) seems to be to highlight proper nouns, esp. from classical sources. In the "will" sonnets, the most concentrated use of italics, although not consistent, highlights a word which is both a proper noun and a fertile pun. Having said this, I'm prepared to be jumped on and will have little to say in my defense unless others have supporting ideas or evidence. --Nate Johnson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 18:02:16 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0128 Rs: "the naked new-born babe" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 128. Thursday, 4 March 1993. (1) From: Daniel Pigg Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 14:25:53 CST Subj: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" (2) From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 1993 15:48 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Daniel Pigg Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 14:25:53 CST Subject: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" I'm not sure the new critical reading of Brooks is the best, especially given his obvious ahistoricism. Dan Pigg (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 1993 15:48 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" I can't help jumping in also. I discusss the passage in my recent book *Macbeth* in the Manchester UP series on Shakespeare in Performance, p. 6. I agree that Brooks is interesting and suggestive, but this is what I wrote: "What can listeners make of the language of Macbeth's hesitancy about murdering Duncan? Readers have difficulty untangling the metaphoric layers to understand Macbeth's state of mind. Sensitive to and appreciative of metaphor as Shakespeares's audience may have been, it is hard to believe that, even were the speech spoken with studied deliberateness, they would get more than flashes of images and the emotive intent, conveyed largely through intonation, gesture, and expression." I see this obscure language as a element of Shakespeare's characterization of Macbeth and contrast his language with Lady Macbeth's much clearer language. Cheers, ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 21:37:26 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0131 More Rs: "a naked new-born babe" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 131. Thursday, 4 March 1993. (1) From: Georgianna Ziegler Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 1993 16:06:54 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" (2) From: Robert F. O'Connor Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 10:38:50 +1000 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" (3) From: Tad Davis Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 14:38:01 -0500 Subj: RE: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Georgianna Ziegler Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 1993 16:06:54 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" The new Folger Shakespeare "Macbeth" glosses cherubin thus: "In other plays, Sh. uses the word cherubin to refer to cherubs (winged angels, depicted as infants or youths with wings and rosy, smiling faces); here, the reference seems to be to the powerful supernatural winged creature described in Ezekiel 10 and referred to in Psalm 18.10 where God comes to the rescue of the psalmist, David, riding on a cherub ("...he rode upon a Cherub and did fly, and he came flying upon the wings of the wind")." In the same edition, Mowat and Werstine gloss "sightless couriers" as "invisible coursers or steeds." But I will ditto Hardy's advice on this one--go look at Brooks! Cheers--Georgianna (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert F. O'Connor Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 10:38:50 +1000 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" Ronald Dwelle wrote: >I'm teaching Macbeth (for the first time in years) and stumbling a bit >on some of the language. For example: > I,vii, 16-25. >Macbeth is in soliloqy, describing Duncan's meekness and other virtues, >which will "plead against his taking off...." >Then the lines: > And pity, like a naked new-born babe > Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin horsed > Upon the sightless couriers of the air, > Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye > That tears shall drown the wind. >I can find no gloss and can make little sense of the simile. By the happiest of coincidences I am also working on 'Macbeth' for the first time since being an undergraduate. This passage also caught my eye, though not, I confess, because it stumped me. It always makes me think of Southwell's 'The Burning Babe' for obvious reasons, and I think there is a deliberate prefiguration of the bloody child of 4.1.90ff. The idea that an evil deed would make itself known through the physical world goes all the way back to the murder of Abel, I think - Vindice's sentiments at the end of 'The Revenger's Tragedy' notwithstanding. The idea that Duncan was a super-virtuous king is one that I have been told is not (by some interpretations of the sources) accurate - any comments anyone? ROC An addendum - I am using the recent Oxford Shakespeare edition of 'Macbeth' and I can recommend it for further info. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tad Davis Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 14:38:01 -0500 Subject: RE: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" I can't offer much of a gloss, but it's one of the most frightening images in Shakespeare. Some of that fright for me, though, may be based on one of those early misapprehensions that are so difficult to root out. "Sightless couriers" has always raised images of eyeless horses, perhaps with little ribbons of red flame trailing from their ears. It has always been mingled in my mind with images of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. I believe, however, that "sightless" really means "invisible," and the "sightless couriers of the air" are really the four winds rather than the four horsemen... Tad Davis davist@a1.relay.upenn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 21:41:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 132. Thursday, 4 March 1993. From: Roy Flannagan Date: Thursday, 4 March 93, 17:31:19 EST Subject: [Random Queries] A few almost random queries, based on points that have come in classes that dealt with comedies and tragedies: Is Shakespeare down on dogs, since he has very few kind words to say about them, except possibly beagles ({Twelfth Night}) and hounds with matched voices ({MND})? Is the problem that they might be associated with hell hounds? What is a whoreson dog, precisely? In {King Lear}, with its missing mothers, what can we say about Edmund's mother, other than that she was presumably a "good sport" in his making? Is the audience really supposed to like Sir Toby Belch? I have one student (not notably puritanical), who finds more to like about Malvolio than Sir Toby. Is Feste's final song--concerned with, among other things, "tosspots"-- a final word on Sir Toby's world of heavy toping? Why does Shakespeare invariably give his romantic leads bad poetry to compose, as with Orlando and even Hamlet? Are the Fools or minstrels, provided that they are supposed to be writing their own material, better poets than the lovers? My questions might seem flippant or under-informed, but I would appreciate hearing the collective wisdom of SHAKSPERians. Roy Flannagan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 17:27:10 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0136 Italics and "Iew" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 136. Friday, 5 March 1993. From: Roy Flannagan Date: Friday, 5 March 93, 09:01:50 EST Subject: Italics and "Iew" A quick check through the OTA {Merchant of Venice}--if the italics were all entered (and they are hard to remember, sometimes)--shows that the compositor's practice was very irregular in the text, as compared with the speech prefixes. More often than not, "Iew" is not italicized. Perhaps in the printing of the sonnets, a compositor saw the configuration of type and italicized it in a knee-jerk reaction. Normally italics would be used to identify proper names, with occasional appearance on foreign or translated words and quotations. Roy Flannagan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 07:17:47 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0133 Rs: SGML Primer/Guide Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 133. Friday, 5 March 1993. (1) From: John Gouws Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 07:02:42 +0200 (EET) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0130 Q: SGML Primer/Guide (2) From: John Lavagnino Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 1993 20:34 EDT Subj: Re: SGML Primer/Guide (3) From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 09:36 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0130 Q: SGML Primer/Guide (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Gouws Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 07:02:42 +0200 (EET) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0130 Q: SGML Primer/Guide Richard Spacek writes: > > Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 130. Thursday, 4 March 1993. > > From: Richard Spacek > Date: Thursday, 04 Mar 93 13:33:48 AST > Subject: SGML Primer/Guide > > I am having trouble finding a good guide to SGML. I expect that the > release of WP Markup will change this, but I do not want to wait! > Can anyone suggest a useful text? > You could try the SGML project base at the University of Exeter . I have been told they hold articles, documents and some free software. Best wishes. John -- John Gouws - Department of English - Rhodes University Internet: enjg@hippo.ru.ac.za Telephone: (0461) 22023 xt 402 (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Lavagnino Date: Thursday, 4 Mar 1993 20:34 EDT Subject: Re: SGML Primer/Guide The Tutorials in *The SGML Handbook* by Charles Goldfarb, published by Oxford a few years ago, are an excellent introduction to SGML. A fine article on the ideas underlying the use of SGML in humanities applications is James H. Coombs, Allen H. Renear, and Steven J. DeRose, "Markup systems and the future of scholarly text processing," Communications of the ACM, volume 30, November 1987, 933-947. I'd avoid relying solely upon a software company's explanation of what SGML or any other standardized language is. Such companies like to add nonstandard features and pass them off as part of the language, so as to discourage defection to competitors. Not a nice thing to find out after you've invested a lot of work. John Lavagnino, Department of English, Brandeis University (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 09:36 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0130 Q: SGML Primer/Guide Regarding SGML, you might want to contact the Association of American Publishers. I believe they have a headquarters in Washington, DC. See Carol Risher on MCI Mail: "Carol Risher" Vint Cerf ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 07:25:58 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0134 Re: "a naked new-born babe" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 134. Friday, 5 March 1993. (1) From: Christoppher Johnston Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 1:42:48 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" (2) From: Roy Flanngan Date: Friday, 5 March 93, 06:11:33 EST Subj: [Re: "a naked new-born babe"] (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Christoppher Johnston Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 1:42:48 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" I'm not familiar with the various glosses of this, but it seems to be an allusion to Judgement Day, a cherub blowing a trumpet riding a horse of air, the same image being repeated in the newborn riding the blast and the cherubim riding the wind-coursers. In the Judgement, Duncan's virtues will "plead like angels." There is also the emphasis on horse-riding, picked up by Macbeth's "vaulting ambition" and the spur to prick his intent. An apocalyptic horse foreshadowing his perdition? Todd Johnston ccs.carleton.ca (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Roy Flanngan Date: Friday, 5 March 93, 06:11:33 EST Subject: [Re: "a naked new-born babe"] Subject: sightless couriers and cherubim "Sightless" could mean either "unseeable," hence invisible, or "without the abilitity to see." Probably in this case the couriers *are* the winds, and it is we who cannot perceive them. Compare the Attendant Spirit's "I must be viewless now" in Milton's {Comus} 92. Cherubim (the plural form of the noun meaning an order of angels) were often painted as infants with wings, putti, despite the objections of some thologians who wanted angels, if pictured at all, to appear ageless. The word "cherub" could be applied to a young child, even by 1700. Roy Flannagan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 07:34:06 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0135 Re: The Folger Library and the Shakespeare Theatre Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 135. Friday, 5 March 1993. From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 09:35 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0122 Re: Parody; Folger Library and Theatre Regarding relationship of the Folger Library and Shakespeare Theatre, it is not correct that there never was an affiliation. Indeed there was some years ago, but the financial stresses on the Shakespeare Theatre were sufficiently threatening to the Library that the two activities were legally segregated. Michael Kahn, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre rescued the company and has made a success of it - so much so that they really needed a larger house to generate larger income (more seats) during the same "season." Both the Library and the Shakespeare Theatre have benefitted from the move since the Folger gets back use of the Globe Theatre (which is now being renovated, thanks to a major grant). Vint [Editor's note: I was at the preview years back, when John Neville-Andrews, then artistic director, announced the end of the company. The efforts of many Washingtonian, including some prominent ones, saved the group. Michael Kahn became the new artistic director, and now The Shakespeare Theatre is one of the finest classical theatre companies in the nation. --hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 17:49:00 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0137 Rs: Assorted Queries Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 138. Friday, 5 March 1993. (1) From: Jay L Halio Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 12:57:43 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries (2) From: Rick Jones Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 11:59:25 -0600 (CST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries (3) From: Lars Engle Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 10:29:53 -0600 (CST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay L Halio Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 12:57:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries To Roy Flanagan: See Caroline Spurgeon's *Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us* for dogs, which he did not like because of their fawning behavior, apparently. And I don't think there is anything else in *Lear* about Edmund's mother. Jay Halio (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 11:59:25 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries I'll skip some of Roy Flannagan's questions, put submit a couple of possible responses to others: >Is the audience really supposed to like Sir Toby Belch? I have one >student (not notably puritanical), who finds more to like about Malvolio >than Sir Toby. Sir Toby is fun-loving; Malvolio is a prude. In and of itself, that makes Sir Toby somewhat more appealing. But I'd argue that they're at the opposite ends of a spectrum (or perhaps a series of spectra) for which the appropriate ground is in the middle. Sir Toby has too much fun and does not uphold the standards of conduct appropriate to a knight; Malvolio has not enough fun and over-reaches his status to believe himself a legitimate suitor for Olivia. Olivia, on the other hand, enjoys a good laugh, but also recognizes propriety as a cardinal virtue of one of her status in the society. And it is Olivia (and Orsino and Viola) who is rewarded in the end: Sir Toby's antics are both censured and curtailed (this latter through the socially unbalanced marriage to Maria); Malvolio goes into voluntary exile. I hadn't thought of this before, but I'm reminded of Moliere's _Misanthrope_ (which, for all I know, may have been influenced by _Twelfth Night_): Celimene, the frivolous character (in a different sense of the term than would apply to Sir Toby), is shown up; Alceste, the self-righteous character, departs the court. Who's left? Eliante and Philinte, the characters who understand the falseness of the court but manage to establish themselves simultaneously as honorable characters and sensible courtiers who know when not to rock the boat. One other thought: I'd guess that your student has only read, not SEEN the play. A glimpse of Malvolio actually yellow-hosed and cross-gartered goes a long way toward clarifying the role. >Why does Shakespeare invariably give his romantic leads bad poetry to >compose, as with Orlando and even Hamlet? Are the Fools or minstrels, >provided that they are supposed to be writing their own material, better >poets than the lovers? I think this ties in to the concepts of love melancholy and degree. Lovers were expected to write poetry; that poetry was expected to be more heart-felt than literary. Fools, on the other hand, compose poetry as part of their "job" -- they're allowed to show off a little (and, by extension, to show the playwright off). Also, while it may have been important for courtiers to dabble in the arts, it was certainly not considered an appropriate pastime taken to extremes: i.e. everyone has her/his place in the society, and courtiers ought to be concerned about the affairs of state, leaving the arts to those who, in effect, can't do anything else. See Erasmus's _Education of the Christian Prince_ for more on this... or, for an example from the drama, look at Lyly's _Campaspe_, in which Alexander the Great recognizes that Apelles is a greater artist than he... and also abandons Campaspe (the cortesan) to Apelles because he (Alex.) has greater worlds to conquer. -- Rick Jones Cornell College (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lars Engle Date: Friday, 5 Mar 1993 10:29:53 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries Support for Roy Flanagan's hunch that Shakespeare was down on dogs can be found in a couple of characteristically regretful pages in A.C. Bradley's "Shakespeare the Man," *Oxford Lectures on Poetry* (London, 1909; rpt London: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 340-341. I quote selectively: "Shakespeare has observed and recorded, in some instances profusely, every vice that I can think of in an ill-conditioned dog . . . . Whately's exclamation -- uttered after a College meeting or a meeting of Chapter, I forget which -- 'The more I see of men, the more I like dogs,' would never have been echoed by Shakespeare. The things he most loathed in men he found in dogs too. And yet all this might go for nothing ifwe could set anything of weight against it. But what can we set? Nothing whatever, so far as I remember, except a recognition of courage in bear-baiting, bull-baiting mastiffs . . . . There is no reference, I believe, to the fidelity of the dog in the whole of his works . . . To all that he loved most in men he was blind in dogs. And then we call him universal!" The essay is full of such gems. Lars Engle, U. of Tulsa ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 17:39:49 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0137 More Rs: "a naked new-born babe" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 137. Friday, 5 March 1993. (1) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 07:33:30 PST Subj: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" (2) From: Timothy Pinnow Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 11:42:52 CST Subj: [Re: "a naked new-born babe" (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 07:33:30 PST Subject: SHK 4.0126 Q: "a naked new-born babe" I think about that image as related to the many images of children and of the childlike and tender that Macbeth destroys in the process and aftermath of killing Duncan. Just as he knows the deep consequences of his act before he performs it, he also forsees that the pity he surpresses in perfomring it will return to avenge it. He renders tender and familial his enemy, as he also forsees when he muses on the "even handed justice". (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Timothy Pinnow Date: Friday, 5 Mar 93 11:42:52 CST Subject: [Re: "a naked new-born babe"] As I read the previous discussions about that extended simile of the "new born babe" in the Scottish play, I find myself wondering just how simple you can make that comparison and still not lose its flavor. So, from my sinplistic (note purposeful misspelling) actor's point-of-view (which I admit lacks any great depth)--I believe I would play the line as meaning: "If I allow myself to feel pity, I will be as defenseless as a naked babe and stand there teary-eyed (irresolute) as if there were a strong wind blowing in my eyes." Yup, that's definitely simple--but playable, I think. Timothy Dayne Pinnow Ass't. Prof. of Theatre St. Olaf College 1520 St. Olaf Ave Northfield MN 55057 ph. 507/646-3327 Internet: pinnow@stolaf.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1993 08:06:56 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0139 *MV*: Is Shakespeare Anti-Christian? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 139. Saturday, 6 March 1993. From: Ben Ross Schneider Date: Friday, 05 Mar 1993 17:25:42 -0600 (CST) Subject: MV: Is Shakespeare anti-Christian? Instead of concentrating almost exclusively on Shylock and Jews in England and other Jews in Shakespeare, shouldn't we be devoting more thought to what the play as a whole says about Shylock? We cannot avoid comparing Shylock to his opponents in the play. Since it is human nature to take sides, our attitude to him varies inversely with out attitude to them. Is he morally better, no worse, or worse than the Christians? If worse, then on what basis? If better, on what basis? I suggest that he is worse because he gets and keeps money. The Christians are better because they throw it away. Elizabethan attitudes to money support this hypothesis. If the Christians are better in some way, it's Shylock's morality, not his race that the play holds up for scorn. Herbert Donow has already started us down this path. But Tad Davis says that the Christians are "an awful crew of yuppies" and suggests that Shylock has tragic dignity. This difference of opinion brings up a new question: Is Shakespeare anti-Christian? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1993 18:29:23 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0140 Towards a Sonnet Boom Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 140. Saturday, 6 March 1993. From: Timothy Bowden Date: Friday, 05 Mar 93 11:06:23 PST Subject: Towards a Sonnet Boom TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF. THESE.INSVING.SONNETS. Mr.W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE. AND.THAT.ETERNITIE. PROMISED. BY. OVR.EVERLIVING.POET. WISHETH. THE.WELL-WISHING. ADVENTVRER.IN. SETTING. FORTH. T.T. My thanks to those who referred me to the article on this epigraph published in the Publication of The Modern Language Society as "RIP, Mr W. H." by Mr Donald Foster in 1987. I see there a cogent study of these mysteries which would convince us on evidence of numerous other such dedications of the period that the `Bettetter' would have been none other than the poet and the `Everliving Poet' would be God and Mr Thorpe himself is the `Well-Wishing Adventurer' and is setting forth on the publication of these same sonnets, and the whole of the message would have been to authenticate their authorship (a question which naturally would arise, given the rampant misattribution of the period). Also there are examples of misprints by Mr Thorpe's printer, including in these poems and in other extant epigraphs and titles, which might explain how `Mr W.SH.' might have had the `S' elided. I also ask indulgence of the list and the doctrine of `routine use' to quote a reality check Mr Foster presented in his piece: +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= After nearly two hundred years of speculation and scholarship, we have made remarkable little progress toward uncovering the `true story' behind Shakespeare's Sonnets, if indeed there is a story to be uncovered. The poems tease us with what appear to be references to real persons, persons who knew the man Shakespeare much better than we. Yet we still have no plausible candidates for the role of dark lady (or ladies) or of the rival poet (or poets) or of the speaker's young friend (or friends). We do not know whether all the sonnets are to be taken as spoken by a single speaker or whether the speaker in each poem is Shakespeare, a fictional lover, or a man. We do not know that the `sugared sonnets' mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598 are these published in the Quarto, whether we have all the sonnets written by Shakespeare, whether they are all by Shakespeare, whether they are arranged as Shakespeare wished, or when any one of them was written. We do not even know that William Shakespeare wrote a single one of these poems, however likely that surmise may be. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Which only encourages me in my annual speculation about the comparison of the first 17 of the Sonnets as arranged in the Quarto of 1609, dealing in the persuading of a young man to marry, and the public record of the Belott-Mountjoy suit of 1612, which documents Shakespeare's involvement about ten years previous in precisely that capacity. I sometimes fantasize of some pretext or other bringing Mrs Mountjoy into the rooms of her tenant, the man Shakespeare, where she chances a glance at some papers arranged on his desk and spies very eloquent pleas to a young man that he should busy himself with begetting, a cause very near the heart of this mother of a marriageable daughter. I again invite your own thoughts... Tim ========================================================= tcbowden@clovis.felton.ca.us (Timothy Bowden) uunet!scruz.ucsc.edu!clovis.felton.ca.us!tcbowden Clovis in Felton, CA ========================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1993 18:44:21 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0141 Rs: Is Shakespeare Anti-Christian? Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 141. Saturday, 6 March 1993. (1) From: Piers Lewis Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 1993 12:59 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0139 *MV*: Is Shakespeare Anti-Christian? (2) From: Luc Borot Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 93 20:42 Subj: Anti-Christian Bard????? (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Piers Lewis Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 1993 12:59 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0139 *MV*: Is Shakespeare Anti-Christian? C.L Barber remarks (*Shakespeare's Festive Comedy*) that the beautiful people of Venice and Belmont are let off too easily. That, it seems to me, goes to the heart of the various problems *The Merchant of Venice* presents for a modern audience. Juxtaposed against the intensity of Shylock's concentration on the uncompromising demands of his one true god, money--and his hatred of Antonio--these gilded butterflies do seem unreal; especially Bassanio to whom everything comes too easily--both money and love. Surely it should not be so easy to have it both ways? To live high, wide and handsome on borrowed money and go on to become the hero of romance who wins the heart of the princess in the tower? To live an idle, unproductive life of pleasure and self-indulgence, and find true love and riches beyond the dreams of avarice by solving a stupid riddle? Our bourgeois minds find this hard to take. Money and love should be earned, we think. "Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath," says the lead box, but it is not clear that Bassanio has anything to give or hazard--except the life of his friend, Antonio. Portia throws herself into his arms, giving herself utterly and without reserve, and what does he say? "Madame, you have bereft me of all words . . ." By demonizing Shylock, the play demonizes money. Portia, good fairy princess, waves her wand and both disappear. It shouldn't be that easy, we think-- and we're right: money is too powerful, too mysterious and too important to be treated in this way. Shakespeare knew that too, deep down, which is why in all honesty he makes Shylock so intensely alive that the other characters seem unreal by comparison--to us at any rate for whom the aristocratic ideal, largely taken for granted in this play, has faded away. Morocco and Aragon, egoists and rationalists both, tie themselves in knots over the riddle, wallowing in confusion; Mr. Right comes along and just knows without having to puzzle it out that gold and silver are without intrinsic value ("hard food for midas," the one; the other, a "common drudge") and pounces on the correct solution. Why? As a true aristocrat, he's contemptous of money--filthy luchre-- so of course he just knows the right answer, without having to be told--and that's another problem: why open up the slightest possibility that Portia might have tipped him off? Shakespeare was not thinking clearly, perhaps, when he has Portia sooth Bassanio's spirits with the beautiful song, 'Tell me, where is fancy bred . . .?' I don't think Portia is supposed to be a hypocrite but our cynicism is so intense we snatch at any pretext. But then Shakespeare was not writing for an audience of cynics. Piers Lewis (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Luc Borot Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 93 20:42 Subject: Anti-Christian Bard????? Dear Fellow SHAKSPEReans, Our colleague Schneider has just raised a very important issue when he raised the question whether *MV* could be seen as an Anti-Christian play. As one of the dominant interpretations of Marlowe's *Jew of Malta* with which I fully agree reads that play as more critical of the Christ- ians than of the Jew(s?) or Moslems, and as a previous contributor to our often biased and anti-historical discussion on this issue has al- ready opened a parallel with Marlowe's *JM*, let me stop on it a trice (expect an hour when a Mediteranean tells you so), but though I live 10 miles or so from the aforesaid Mare Nostrum, I was born and bred in Pa- ris, which is almost polar to my "native" secretary and you may expect me to keep my word on this problem of duration. Marlowe and Shakespeare express views which come to us from the same time, and address our sensibilities, which can be assimilated in spite of our differences just as we underrate almost too naturally the differences between Marlowe and Shakespeare, which may have sounded atrouciously unbearable to Elizabethan 'initiates' (though I don't think I could physically and intellectually sign one word Prof. Sinfield or Prof. Drakakis ever wrote, and expect the same from them towards me, though they are likely to ignore the writings (in French) of a 17th-cen- tury scholar mostly dealing in Hobbesiana). If we are ready, from Marlowe's own words, to consider that the Maltese knights are rivalling with Barabbas only for the title of the best --or worst-- machiavelist in the tiny island of Malta, lost in the Mediterranean, cannot we also look on Shakespeare's characters in *MV* with less passionate eyes and more critical hearts? "When you prick us, do we not bleed?" is not something you are likely to hear from Barabbas, or from the Maltese knights. Portia is the only Christian who can over-mercy the mercy-begging Shylock. I was shock ed by two things when I saw Antony Sher's rendering of Shylock in '87 in Stratford: he borrowed some extra-textual acts from Jewish rituals of Pessah, for which the company claimed the authority of a consultant rabbi. Nonetheless, he looked the more cruel and the production looked the more anti-semitic for that bit of misplaced 'authenticity'. Introducing a genuine part from one of the most sacred rituals of Judaism at the moment when Shylock rejoices in the expectation of cut- ting one pound of flesh from a Christian contradicted one of the most interesting dimensions of that stimulating (but morally debatable) prod- uction: toleration professed by the director. Many of us French Jews and Christians (I'm of the latter) were shocked. The production seemed to assimilate the most sacred rituals of Judaism with the most infamous (now rejected, I hope...) insults Christianity has ever dumped on Jews: deicide and infanticide. The second thing I didn't like in that production, but not very re- levant here, is the way Portia was acted as a Restoration libertine: she certainly cuts far deeper than the libido-driven Restoration heroine she was played like. Besides, the appearance of crosses and beads on the garments and in the hands of the Venetian characters (including Rebecca) in the second half of the play seemed to turn the play into a ridiculing of Roman Catholicism as the only form of anti-semitical Christianity. On top of this, the end was confusing to Jews and Christians together: what did that mean? The director had Rebecca and Antonio almost fighting for a jewel-cross Rebecca had just let drop, as if to obtain the cross, the Jewish woman had to beg the Christian merchant for it, whereas she had been shown deliberately and freely leaving her father's house. The merchant, as merchant i.e. for whom entering the kingdom of the father will be as difficult as for a camel to thread a needle, is Antonio almost as tragically as Shylock. These theological echoes must have been present to Shakespeare's audience almost as strongly as the anti-semitical connotations which so justifiably bring our hearts to our mouths. To justify myself (if on need to), I will add this element of biography: in 1942, when my father was an apprentice of 15, a Roman Catholic socialist by education, he joined the Paris Resistance move- ment when he realised that most of the Jewish children with whom he had been to school in our district of Le Marais, and Rue des Rosiers, who had been one half of his classmates when he left school at the age of 13, had been taken away to Drancy and the Death Camps. Of 20, born between 1925 and 1928, 4 returned, dead to the world for the rest of their lives; 1 survives to this day and won't tell... I'm as scared with the rising anti-semitism of integrist Moslems on both sides of the Mare Nostrum aforesaid as with the condemnation of Shakespeare for the evils of the 20th century, as if we were trying to escape our resp- onsibility by rejecting it on our elders. So I really was long, I'm afraid, but we have been very blind of late, haven't we, as we wanted to be more clever than our elders... Tres amicalement yours, Luc ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1993 18:49:52 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0142 R: "a naked new-born babe" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 142. Saturday, 6 March 1993. From: Christoppher Johnston Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 93 13:12:19 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0137 More Rs: "a naked new-born babe" The idea of the newborn babe in connection with Duncans's murder is further intriguing if we look at Lady Macbeth's words to her husband which follow upon this: I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed his brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. She is trying to prick his courage, but it almost seems a response to Macbeth's comment of the newborn babe (before she entered): Duncan becomes the babe that she would kill if she had so sworn, coalescing perhaps with Macbeth's previous metaphor. (Lady Macbeth's lines, if I remember correctly from K. Muir's "Sources..", have echoes of a translation of Medea). Todd Johnston ccs.carleton.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1993 19:00:28 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0143 R: Dogs; Q: Summer Shakespeare; College Productions *TGV* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 143. Saturday, 6 March 1993. (1) From: William Kemp Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 93 11:10:09 EST Subj: Shakespeare and dogs (2) From: Daniel Pigg Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 93 16:02:18 CST Subj: Ren. Drama in Summer 1993 (3) From: Jeff Nyhoff Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 93 11:11:24 -0800 Subj: [College Productions of *TGV*] (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Kemp Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 93 11:10:09 EST Subject: Shakespeare and dogs If I recall accurately, the title character/narrator in Leon Rooke's novel SHAKESPEARE'S DOG (New York: Ecco Press, 1983) didn't much care for Shakespeare. Every dog has his . . . no, I won't write that. Bill Kemp Mary Washington College Fredericskburg, Va. wkemp@s850.mwc.edu (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Daniel Pigg Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 93 16:02:18 CST Subject: Ren. Drama in Summer 1993 Does anyone have a tentative schedule for plays that will be performed in summer 1993 in London and Stratford or perhaps at the Edinburgh Festival? Thanks, Daniel Pigg IVAD@UTMARTN.BITNET (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jeff Nyhoff Date: Saturday, 6 Mar 93 11:11:24 -0800 Subject: [College Productions of *TGV*] "Two Gentleman of Verona" strikes me of late as particularly well suited to college production, and yet I've not recently heard of any college productions of it, let alone seen one. Have I just missed them? Or am I missing some potential production pitfalls in the script? Does anyone have experiences of college productions of TGOV and/or thoughts on a potential college production of it? Jeff Nyhoff ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 09:32:07 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0144 Re: College Productions of *TGV* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 144. Sunday, 7 March 1993. From: Steven Solomon Urkowitz Date: Saturday, 06 Mar 93 23:24:44 EST Subject: Re: College Productions *TGV* Jeff Nyhoff's query about college productions of Two Gents catches me a week after I worked through the text in a Shakespearean Comedy course. It could be done well, as long as a director and actors could play the wonderfully abrupt slides up and down the linguistic registers. Those jumps up into super-courtly diction and down into pots and pands and codpiece pins have to be negotiated with reckless daring. Otherwise any lapse into monotone rendering of kool-ade linguistic intensity will sink the project. Maybe other people saw the ACTING COMPANY on tour with a Wild West rendering. Magnificent, especially because cowboys and bandits and cattle barons and mariachi bands have the conventional possibilities of courtly adventure that Shakespeare was playing with. Gene Autry stands not all that far from Sir Phillip Sidney as a codifier of now-ancient gestures usable in funny ways for modern fictions. Ride 'em, cowboys. Steve Urkowitz (SURCC@CUNYVM) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 17:42:07 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0145 New on the SHAKSPER FileServer: COMPUTER TEACHING Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 145. Sunday, 7 March 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Sunday, 7 March 1993 Subject: New on the SHAKSPER FileServer: COMPUTER TEACHING As of today, SHAKSPEReans may retrieve COMPUTER TEACHING from the SHAKSPER FileServer. COMPUTER TEACHING contains two articles by Michael Lamonico about using the Riverside Shakespeare with WordCruncher to teach Shakespeare to high school students (excerpts below). SHAKSPEReans can retrieve COMPUTER TEACHING by issuing the interactive command, "TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET COMPUTER TEACHING SHAKSPER." If your network link does not support the interactive "TELL" command (i.e. if you are not directly on Bitnet), or if LISTSERV rejects your request, then send a one-line mail message (without a subject line) to LISTSERV@utoronto, reading "GET COMPUTER TEACHING SHAKSPER." Should you have difficulty receiving this file, please contact the editor, or . For an updated version of the file list, send the command "GET SHAKSPER FILES SHAKSPER" in the same fashion. For further information, consult the appropriate section of your SHAKSPER GUIDE. =============================================================================== 1. TEACHING SHAKESPEARE WITH A COMPUTER, By MICHAEL LAMONICO Teaching Shakespeare with a computer sounds like an oxymoron. The very idea of high school students exploring the language of the foremost writer in history on a high tech machine seems ludicrous. My colleagues scoffed at the idea, thinking that the mechanization of this process would result in nothing more than lists of meaningless data. In a way this was my first reaction when I first heard of WordCruncher, a concordance and text retrieval program combined with The Riverside Shakespeare's Complete Works. But after convincing my school to order this program in 1988, my teaching has undergone a radical change, and I have spread my discoveries to teachers everywhere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. "SEEK ME OUT BY COMPUTATION" After assigning my students a project that required the Shakespeare Concordance, I was told by our school's computer director that the electronic version of the Riverside Shakespeare and WordCruncher had arrived and was ready to use. Later that day, as I sat at the computer and became familiar with the program, one of my students sat at the next terminal and asked if he could try it. Within 30 minutes he had searched through Hamlet and found the references he needed to begin his assignment and left the computer room with his print-out in hand. This program contains some advanced routines that will take most users some time to master, but its primary use as a way to search through the text and locate words is a task that most can master at one sitting. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 17:46:14 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0146 Another R: "a naked new-born babe" Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 146. Sunday, 7 March 1993. From: Kay Stockholder Date: Sunday, 7 Mar 93 14:01:48 PST Subject: SHK 4.0142 R: "a naked new-born babe" Throughout the first part of the play the minds of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are perfectly attuned to each other. She knows that Macbeth's tender side represents a danger to their enterprise, just as he does. In this sense they collude in surpressing it, but, unlike her, he knows ahead of time that the milky tenderness, the impulses to nurture and be nurtured, represented in the image of the babe, that are being violated will return and take their toll. In this way the play as a whole argues for the existence of a natural law,inscribed in the unconscious if not the conscious, that render sin the instrument of its own punishment. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 19:12:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0147 Tracing Actors Through the Plays Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 147. Sunday, 7 March 1993. From: Roy Flannagan Date: Sunday, 7 March 93, 17:53:59 EST Subject: Tracing actors through the plays This is a large question, and may come out of a still-larger ignorance. Has any scholar speculated very carefully about which of the various members of acting companies (outside of the very famous, such as Armin, Kemp, and Burbage) acted various parts? We have slips in printed texts that might indicate the presence of various actors like Kemp, and we have legends, such as that of Shakespeare playing Adam in {As You Like It} or the ghost of Hamlet's father, but has anyone worked out a tree of probable associations? Was the actor who played Jaques a kind of Emmett Kelly type who always did melancholy, and what of those two matched pairs of male and "female" romantic leads who did Lysander and Demetrius and Helena and Hermia, then Benedick and Claudio and Beatrice and Hero? Who did the perennial Prince or Duke? Did the shorter boy actor have less of a dramatic range than the taller? Did the Benedick male lead become the dominant one by force of his acting skills? Did the boy actor who played Katherina play Beatrice? Portia? How many sensitive, witty, singing clowns did Robert Armin play? How would the boy actor who did, say, Katherina, move on to Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra? I know the chronology of the plays is uncertain, but certainly associations among characters such as Bottom and Dogberry, and the actor who presumably played both of them, can be made. There is at least a fascinating web of associations to be made, if someone hasn't done it (and no, I don't want to do it). Roy Flannagan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1993 19:25:06 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0148 Effect of Computer Technologies Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 148. Sunday, 7 March 1993. From: Jeff Nyhoff Date: Sunday, 7 Mar 93 16:17:47 -0800 Subject: [Effect of Computer Technologies] The recent article regarding computer-aided instruction in Shakespeare studies prods me toward a request I've been meaning to submit to this group: My dissertation work is in need of a clearer idea of the present and potential effect of recent computer technologies upon scholarship and pedagogy in the areas of dramatic literature and theatre. Consequently, I'm keenly interested in hearing from SHAKSPERians regarding how such technologies (networks, multimedia, hypertext/hypermedia, etc.) have had and might have impact upon their work. Any related bibliographic recommendations would also be greatly appreciated. I'm fairly new to the group, so forgive me if there has already been substantial discussion related to this; if this is the case, then perhaps someone could refer me to the proper section of the group's archives? Please -- even the shortest note would be of great use to me. Feel free to e-mail to me directly (nyhoff@garnet.berkeley.edu). Thanks in advance, Jeff Nyhoff ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1993 06:59:41 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0149 R: Assorted Queries Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 149. Monday, 8 March 1993. From: Robert O'Connor Date: Monday, 8 Mar 1993 13:43:39 +1000 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries Roy Flannagan asked: >Is the audience really supposed to like Sir Toby Belch? I have one >student (not notably puritanical), who finds more to like about Malvolio >than Sir Toby. I have always had a soft spot for 'Twelfth Night' - it was one of the plays that got me hooked on Shakespeare in the first place - and like many people I suppose I am often troubled by the torments meted out to Malvolio toward the end of the play. I always thought his "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you" begged for a sequel (any takers?). Considering some of the nasty things said in other plays about English drinking habits (for example by Stephano and Trinculo in 'Tempest') I think if nothing else Sir Toby is intended to be as familiar a figure to an Elizabethan audience as Malvolio, and perhaps just as reviled. The trio formed by these two and Andrew Aguecheek may be funny, even likable, but they are not admirable. ROC ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1993 15:55:26 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0150 R: Tracing Actors Though the Plays Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 150. Monday, 8 March 1993. From: John Cox Date: Monday, 8 Mar 1993 09:54 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0147 Tracing Actors Through the Plays In response to Roy Flannagan's question about Elizabethan type casting, I would suggest looking at David Bevington's *From Mankind to Marlowe* where he takes apart T. W. Baldwin's argument about assigned parts. This goes back several years (early 60s); perhaps someone could suggest more discussion of the matter since then. John Cox ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1993 15:58:15 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0151 Re: Summer Shakespeare Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 151. Monday, 8 March 1993. From: Ann Miller Date: Monday, 08 Mar 1993 10:53:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: Summer Shakespeare The Stratford Festival is giving three Shakespeare plays this summer, _Anthony & Cleopatra_ and _Midsummer Nights Dream_ on the Festival stage and _King John_ at the Patterson theatre. Other offerings include - _Gypsy_ and _The Mikado_, _The Imaginary Invalid_, _The Importance of Being Earnest_, _Bacchae_, and the _Wingfield Trilogy_, plus a Canadian play whose title escapes me. I'm at the office, my brochure's at home. If I've missed anything important I'll post it later. Ann Miller fac_amil@vax1.acs.jmu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1993 06:17:29 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0152 Re: Summer Shakespeare Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 152. Tuesday, 9 March 1993. (1) From: Milla Riggio Date: Monday, 8 Mar 93 17:25 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0151 Re: Summer Shakespeare (2) From: Robert O'Connor Date: Tuesday, 9 Mar 1993 12:05:07 +1000 Subj: Re: Summer Shakespeare (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Milla Riggio Date: Monday, 8 Mar 93 17:25 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0151 Re: Summer Shakespeare To all SHAKSPER-EANS: The posting of summer plays reminds me that, as secretary of the Medieval/Renaissance Drama Society, I edit a bi-annual newsletter that posts information to society members. I would love to have listings of performances, books, papers, articles, conferences, etc., -- both past and upcoming: calls for papers and reports of where you've been, to share with our members. (and for a mere $10 per year, you can join the MRDS, if you are not already a member). I've just sent out a call for information for the spring newsletter. If you want to send it to me, privately, or publically through SHAKSPER, please do so. And thanks. Milla Riggio (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert O'Connor Date: Tuesday, 9 Mar 1993 12:05:07 +1000 Subject: Re: Summer Shakespeare >The Stratford Festival is giving three Shakespeare plays this summer, >_Anthony & Cleopatra_ and _Midsummer Nights Dream_ on the Festival >stage and _King John_ at the Patterson theatre. >Other offerings include - _Gypsy_ and _The Mikado_, _The Imaginary >Invalid_, _The Importance of Being Earnest_, _Bacchae_, and the >_Wingfield Trilogy_, plus a Canadian play whose title escapes me. Heavy sigh from the Antipodes. The Royal Shakespeare Company is in Australia at the moment but they are NOT coming to where I am. Oh to be in England etc.!!!! Any sympathetic comments on cultural isolation? Seriously, is there anyone else in the SHAKSPER group who feels their work is inhibited by lack of access to quality productions? And are there any interesting productions being done of the non-Shakesperean plays? ROC ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1993 06:22:26 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0153 R: Tracing the Actors Through the Plays Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 153. Tuesday, 9 March 1993. From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Monday, 08 Mar 93 20:12:21 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0150 R: Tracing Actors Though the Plays About Roy Flannagan's actor-tracing query: SHAKSPER correspondent Don Foster at Vassar printed a series of pieces in SHAKESPEARE NEWSLETTER over the last few years that give the tentative results of his fascinating computer analysis of "rare words" as they recurr in play after play. He found that these words aren't evenly distributed across a playscript. Instead, the rare words that are found in an early play in only one or two roles appear in disproportionate numbers in the following plays. Foster argues that Shakespeare would have been most closely associated with the words from roles that he played himself, so they would be at the tip of his tongue (or pen) as he composed further. Then the theory begins to deliver many fascinating projections about the order of composition, the possibilities of revision, and the retirement and return to the King's Men repertory of different plays. So, Foster's research, still grinding through textual data, will have a lot to tell you about at least one very interesting actor in the company. Steve Urkowitz SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1993 18:28:00 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0155 Q: Branagh Hamlet Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 155. Tuesday, 9 March 1993. From: Chantal Payette Date: Tuesday, 9 Mar 1993 9:25:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0152 Re: Summer Shakespeare This question does have something to do with the Royal Shakespeare company. I was in England last October, November and December and did manage to see several high quality plays by Shakespeare in Stratford-Upon-Avon. I managed to get a ticket to see Kenneth Branagh playing Hamlet in London on opening night. Problem is, I had to come back to Canada a week early and to miss it. Has anybody seen it, and if you have, how was it? I'm dying to know what I missed. Chantal Chantal@vax.library.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1993 18:23:38 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0154 More Rs: Tracing Actors Through the Plays Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 154. Tuesday, 9 March 1993. (1) From: Roy Flannagan Date: Tuesday,9 March 93, 10:27:10 EST Subj: tracing actors again (2) From: Skip Shand Date: Tuesday, 9 Mar 1993 15:44 EDT Subj: Re: SHK 4.0153 R: Tracing the Actors Through the Plays (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Roy Flannagan Date: Tuesday,9 March 93, 10:27:10 EST Subject: tracing actors again That's it--a good use for the computer in checking word-frequencies part by part or character by character to find similar patterns. Most obvious would be Bottom and Dogberry both being written down an ass, but more subtle would be Lucio and Osric as lapwings (I haven't checked for other lapwings). If we know for sure that Burbage played Lear, or that Armin played the Fool, what useful knowledge can we extrapolate about other important roles? Who was the actor who had the red nose? Who specialized in drunken parts? Was there an actor who couldn't see his knees, or did "Falstaff" use padding? At what point did Flute's beard grow? I know Bevington's book, but can we build to the side of the mistakes of the past, without idle speculation? Roy Flannagan (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Skip Shand Date: Tuesday, 9 Mar 1993 15:44 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0153 R: Tracing the Actors Through the Plays Seems to me that T.J.King, at one of the Waterloo Conferences and in a subsequent issue of *Elizabethan Theatre*, addresses this issue in some detail. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 15:36:46 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0156 Various Responses Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 156. Wednesday, 10 March 1993. (1) From: Michael D. Friedman Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 1993 14:32:59 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0147 Tracing Actors Through the Plays (2) From: Ben Schneider Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 1993 12:26:29 -0600 (CST) Subj: Various responses (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael D. Friedman Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 1993 14:32:59 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0147 Tracing Actors Through the Plays To follow up with a little additional help for Roy Flannagan, T.J. King has a book entitled *Casting Shakespeare's Plays: Actors and Their Roles, 1590-1642* published by Cambridge University Press. Michael D. Friedman Friedman@Scranton (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ben Ross Schneider Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 1993 12:26:29 -0600 (CST) Subject: Various responses For Luc Borot-- The question you raise (6 Mar) as to whether Shakespeare isn't following Marlow's course in the *Jew of Malta* of inviting us to compare the behavior of the Jew to that of the Christians, to the disadvantage of the Christians -- this question has been answered definitively, in my opinion, by Allan Dessen in "The Elizabethan Stage Jew and Christian Example: Gerontius, Barrabas, and Shylock." *Modern Language Quarterly* 35: 232-9. He agrees with you actually, but, if I remember, views Shylock as a shame to mercenery Christians in general, not specifically to the Christians in the play (whom I argue are not mercenary). On this point also we should be sure to note what David Banks said in his communication of 26 Feb: "One's impression of most of these books [in the *Short Title Catalogue*] is that their references to Jews have the purpose of amendment *of Christians*. May this be an important part of MV too?" For Roy Flanagan-- You ask (7 Mar) "has any scholar speculated very carefully about which of the various actors acted the various parts": I just found this item in a list of books by Columbia PhD's: T. J. King. *Casting in Shakespeare's plays: London Actors and their Roles, 1590-1642*. Cambridge UP 1991. From 1660-1800 the record of casting (and much more) on the London Sage has been published in 11 volumes. During the 70's this record was computerized here (Lawrence University), and the resulting data base is now searching for a home where someone will maintain it and make it available to scholars in theatre history or whatever. It seems likely right now that the Electronic Text Center at University of Virginia will provide this home. After about 1705, London Stage records are nearly complete, and one can trace the actors of a role and the roles of an actor in order to see if there are any trends. Actually I have analyzed the roles of the actors in MV. The first post-Restoration Shylock, as is well known, in Granville's adaptation *Jew of Venice* (1701) was played by Dogget, a clown. After that, when it isn't Macklin, as I remember, it was often the company's fop. Macklin (see *Dictionary of Actors*) as far as I can make out, terrorized the audience with his lust for vengeance, but it's hard to tell what his conception of the character was. Antonio is more interesting: Quin, the actor who played him, played Kent, Brutus, Cato, Timon, and several other "noble Romans," and also some malcontents like Jaques and Wycherley's Plain Dealer. In fact "Plain Dealer" fits his type best, and in many ways so does Antonio, much too plain in his opinions of Shylock. Bassanio remarks that "in [Antonio] the ancient Roman honor lives more than any man in Italy." The answer to Roy's question, then, is that, for the 18th century, casting does throw some light on plays, but it is not generally definitive. The trouble is that if an actor is too rigidly typed, he can only work the plays in which his type appears. The fop roles by themselves would keep Colley Cibber busy maybe less than half the time. So to make a living he plays the villains in tragedy as well, and of course Richard III. For Jeff Nyhoff-- You ask about the impact of computer technology on scholarship in dramatic literature and theatre; how has this technology assisted one's scholarly work? (7 Mar) The London Stage data base described above has had very little use (1 query a year). I attribute this to three factors: 1) reaserch in theatre history has dropped off radically in the past decade. 2) Scholars in literature and theatre are computer-shy. Afraid that the price of tooling up is not worth the possible payoff. 3) Scholars don't now work on topics of research suitable for analysis by means of the London Stage DB. However, I think my computer helps me a tremendous lot in Shakespeare research. In the 70s I became a great admirer of optical scanning and now the state of the art has reached take-off speed. What I do is scan primary works and pertinent criticism. To save time I don't scrutinize these works until I proofread and mark the scanner output. I end up being quite familiar with the material and having my own index to my own special topics. And of course, even with so crude a tool as WordPerfect search, I have an index to every word or phrase in the work. When it comes time to write, one just electronically assembles all the relevant passages in the electronic texts and ties them together in some sort of argument. Maybe it would be faster just to take notes in the old way, but one learns as one goes and I don't always mark what I should have. "I never know what I think until I see what I write," as the famous lady is supposed to have said. Computer search of my online sources can almost always answer the question I too often have: "Now where did I read that." For Piers Lewis-- On 6 March you made this very acute comment on which I can't resist expanding at some length: Money is too powerful, too mysterious, and too important to be treated [lightly]. Shakespeare knew that too, deep down, which is why in all honesty he makes Shylock so intensely alive that the other characters seem unreal by comparison--to us at any rate for whom the aristocratic ideal, largely taken for granted in this play, has faded away. I fix on "the aristocratic ideal," and I whole-heartedly agree that it has faded away: Marx, Weber, Habermas, and Polanyi (for example) have commented on this phenomenon at length, and it is well understood in sociological circles. *Reciprocity* lies at the core of pre-capitalist ethics, and rather astonishingly, we are now having some kind of a renaissance of reciprocity awareness. Anthropologists have been talking about it for fifty years (Evans- Pritchard, Mauss, Sahlins); and now, in the 90s, philosophers (Becker); biologists (Alexander, Cronin), and even mathematicians (Axelrod) have discovered it. Years ago, putting together Cicero's *De Officiis*, which I had to read in another context, and the emphasis on friendship in MV, I thought I sensed reciprocity in MV. I began reading Roman morality, for some reason not a topic of modern Renaissance scholarship, and it began to look as if Seneca's *de beneficiis*, Englished in the late 16th century, might be the basis of aristocratic behavior in MV. If anyone is interested in more detail and documentation of this hypothesis, I'm sending an article, forthcoming in *Restoration*, called "Granville's *Jew of Venice*: a Close Reading of Shakespeare's *Merchant*," to the Shaksper fileserver. The focus in this piece is a bit fuzzy, however, and I'm working on a new approach via *The Crisis of the Aristocracy*. Meanwhile, I invite and welcome any criticsm of this article and/or hypothesis, hostile or friendly. Thanking you in advance, I am, Yours ever, BEN SCHNEIDER PS. Unfortunately I am leaving on a trip tomorrow and won't be back until 3 April. I will be silent until then, but look forward eagerly to perusing any comments these remarks may generate. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 21:07:55 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0157 New on the SHAKSPER FileServer: GRANVILL JEW_OF_V Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 157. Wednesday, 10 March 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Wednesday, 10 March 1993 Subject: New on the SHAKSPER FileServer: GRANVILL JEW_OF_V As of today, SHAKSPEReans may retrieve GRANVILL JEW_OF_V from the SHAKSPER FileServer. The file GRANVILL JEW_OF_V contains Ben Ross Schneider's essay, "Granville's Jew of Venice (1701): A Close Reading of Shakespeare's Merchant," mentioned in his recent SHAKSPER posting and excerpted below. SHAKSPEReans can retrieve GRANVILL JEW_OF_V by issuing the interactive command, "TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET GRANVILL JEW_OF_V SHAKSPER." If your network link does not support the interactive "TELL" command (i.e. if you are not directly on Bitnet), or if LISTSERV rejects your request, then send a one-line mail message (without a subject line) to LISTSERV@utoronto, reading "GET GRANVILL JEW_OF_V SHAKSPER." Should you have difficulty receiving this file, please contact the editor, or . For an updated version of the file list, send the command "GET SHAKSPER FILES SHAKSPER" in the same fashion. For further information, consult the appropriate section of your SHAKSPER GUIDE. =============================================================================== Granville's Jew of Venice (1701): A Close Reading of Shakespeare's Merchant Ben Ross Schneider, Jr. In a recent essay in which Catherine Craft examines George Granville's adaptation of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, called The Jew of Venice, she decides that Granville's goal was to produce a more purely comic play than the original, one more suited to his own age. [Long quotation omitted] Ms. Craft assumes that the "dark colorings" removed by Granville are a feature of the original. But they were not observed in it until the latter end of the last century, when major actors began to play Shylock, and critics did not reach a consensus on their presence until the last decade.(1) Still, it does not occur to Ms. Craft that modern readers might be the revisionists, not Granville, and that The Jew of Venice might be closer to Shakespeare's Merchant than the play we reconstruct on the stage and in our minds today. What if we reverse Ms. Craft's thesis and investigate the proposition that Granville's plot (perhaps better described as "moral and uplifting" than "light and happy") is an accurate reading of the original's ideological substance, after all? [six paragaphs omitted] In the process, working from the other side of the ethical divide that separates us from Shakespeare, Granville gives us no less than a virtual point by point refutation of the standard modern/postmodern interpretation of Shakespeare's Merchant. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1993 07:06:23 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0158 Q: Banquo as Christ Figure Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 158. Thursday, 11 March 1993. From: Steven S. Vrooman Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 93 14:49:36 PST Subject: new topic? I'm an undergrad and this is my first post, but I was wondering what you more knowledgeable folks would think about an idea I used to write a paper on for my Shakespeare class. I think it is original, but I'm not sure. I did a close reading of Macbeth's "To be thus is nothing" soliloquy. I took "My Genius (a spirit according to Riverside footnote) is rebuk'd" to be an echo of Jesus' rebuking demons in the New Testament. I also took "...He chid the sisters When first they put the name of king upon me, And he bade them speak to him..." as an echo of Christ as well (see Mark 1:23-6, 5:6-10). Plus, Banquo is resurrected, in a sense. There are other parallels as well. My thesis was that Shakespeare is setting up Banquo as a Christ figure in this speech about Banquo's kingly virtues. Am I looking for more than is in the text? Steven S. Vrooman Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1993 07:10:48 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0159 Q: UVa Electronic Text Center Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 159. Thursday, 11 March 1993. From: John Gouws Date: Thursday, 11 Mar 1993 06:40:59 +0200 (EET) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0156 Various Responses Ben Schneider writes: > > (2)-------------------------------------------------------------------------- > From: Ben Ross Schneider > Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 1993 12:26:29 -0600 (CST) > Subject: Various responses > > > You ask (7 Mar) "has any scholar speculated very carefully about which of > the various actors acted the various parts": I just found this item in a list > of books by Columbia PhD's: T. J. King. *Casting in Shakespeare's plays: > London Actors and their Roles, 1590-1642*. Cambridge UP 1991. From 1660-1800 > the record of casting (and much more) on the London Sage has been published in > 11 volumes. During the 70's this record was computerized here (Lawrence > University), and the resulting data base is now searching for a home where > someone will maintain it and make it available to scholars in theatre history > or whatever. It seems likely right now that the Electronic Text Center at > University of Virginia will provide this home. > Is the existence of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia generally known? What facilities does it offer? Until now I had thought that the only place for lodging texts and text-bases was the Oxford Text Archive (about which I do have information should anyone want it). -- John Gouws - Department of English - Rhodes University Internet: enjg@hippo.ru.ac.za Telephone: (0461) 22023 xt 402 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 06:25:21 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0161 Re: UVa Electronic Text Center Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 161. Friday, 12 March 1993. From: David L. Gants Date: Thursday, 11 Mar 93 09:27:45 -0500 Subject: University of Virginia Electronic Text Center On March 10 Ben Ross Schneider wrote: During the 70's [London Stage] was computerized here (Lawrence University), and the resulting data base is now searching for a home where someone will maintain it and make it available to scholars in theatre history or whatever. It seems likely right now that the Electronic Text Center at University of Virginia will provide this home. John Gouws of Rhodes University responded: Is the existence of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia generally known? What facilities does it offer? Until now I had thought that the only place for lodging texts and text-bases was the Oxford Text Archive (about which I do have information should anyone want it). To expand on this thread, the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center has been working with Mr. Schneider on converting the London Stage files to a UNIX-readable format and placing them in the Center's public archives. Much works needs to be done both technically (digital technology has greatly changed in the past 20 years) and in acquiring copyright permission from Southern Illinois University Press. I am confident, however, that the invaluable collection will be available in machine-searchable format some time in the future. For those interested in UVa's Electronic Archives, I append a description. Please feel free to contact us with questions or suggestions. David L. Gants -- Electronic Text Center -- University of Virginia dlg8x@virginia.edu -- (804)924-3230 The Electronic Text Center & On-line Archive of Electronic Texts Alderman Library, University of Virginia As part of an ongoing commitment to the use of computers in education and research, the University of Virginia Library has established an Electronic Text Center and an on-line collection of machine-readable texts. The initial set of on-line texts includes the new Oxford English Dictionary; the entire corpus of Old English writings; selected Library of America titles; several versions of Shakespeare's complete works; hundreds of other literary, social, historical, philosophical, and political materials in various languages (chiefly from the Oxford and the Cambridge Text Archives); and the currently released parts of two massive databases from Chadwyck- Healey: J-P. Migne's Patrologia Latina, and the English Poetry Full-Text Database, comprised of the complete works of 1,350 English poets from AD 600 to 1900. Because of contractual obligations, access to these texts and searching tools is restricted to University of Virginia students, faculty and staff. A principal aim of the Electronic Text Center is to help create a new broad-based user community within the humanities at Virginia. We work daily with individual users to introduce them to new working methods, new teaching possibilities, and new types of equipment, and we aid John Price-Wilkin, our library's Information Management Coordinator, to run regular training sessions for the on-line data and search tools. The Library was adamant from the earliest stages of this enterprise that these new services had to be introduced and taught through ongoing workshops and demonstrations, in order to become a mainstream part of the teaching and research resources on which our faculty and students draw. New users need to see for themselves that they can sit at a large color monitor and simultaneously search multiple on- line databases (say, the Oxford English Dictionary and the English Poetry database) while manipulating color images of manuscript pages (which they may have just created in the Center), and then can open another window to e-mail a colleague about the results, or to log into another library's catalog before using our on-line document delivery service to order a book through Inter-Library Loan. Such a hands-on demonstration typically overcomes any initial trepidation a new user may feel. Our on-line texts are all SGML encoded. Some of these we are tagging ourselves, with the aid of volunteers from various library departments, under a Staff Sharing program for cross-training. The on-line texts are searched using Pat, a program developed initially for the Oxford English Dictionary. Users in the Library and elsewhere on campus with access to a machine running X Windows can search and view these databases through a graphical interface to Pat that shows texts in a form very close to the appearance of the printed page; users dialing in from desktop machines will typically use a VT100 search and display front-end to Pat (called Patty), which the Library is developing in conjunction with UVa.'s Academic Computing Department. Having the majority of our electronic texts available on-line affords significant advantages: it eases the pressure of use on the Center, gives much more flexible and convenient access to our users, and allows us to provide the same search and display "front-end" for all our collections. Having been taught to use one database, a user has the knowledge necessary to search all current and future databases, thereby overcoming the frustrations often involved with using CD-ROM products, each of which may have a different interface. In addition to building the on-line collection, the Electronic Text Center both provides a place in which to use those few texts not available on-line and also houses hardware and software that allows the computerized analysis of text. At present we have MS-DOS machines, a NeXT, and an IBM RS6000, all with large color monitors (a Macintosh is on order); two scanners that turn printed text into computer-readable forms and that generate high-resolution color images; and laser printers and CD-ROM drives. These tools allow scholars to use software that can generate indices, concordances, word-lists, and statistical analyses (Micro-OCP, Tact, MTAS, and LitStats), create hypertexts (Guide), and perform collations and cumulative sum analysis. We use "xv", an X Windows image viewer, extensively on the RS6000, the PCs, and the NeXT for viewing, cropping, and enlarging digital images alongside the searchable databases. The Center's NeXT also gives us the capacity to record digital sound. Our first semester of operation has necessarily been a time of experiment and fine-tuning; nonetheless, there have been significant research and teaching projects using the services of the Center and the on-line texts throughout the fall: * A large undergraduate survey course used our holdings in the 19th century novel and added an 18th century Canadian novel to the collection * scholars have searched the Hebrew bible, the Talmud, and several hundred books of rabbinical responsa on the Taklit-Shoot cd-rom * a Shakespeare survey course created a teaching tool using text, images, and digitized sound from different productions of The Merchant of Venice, to run alongside the on-line collections of Shakespeare's works. * a graduate student has studied ship-naming conventions and metaphors in Anglo-Saxon writings, using the Old English Corpus * A composition class used our services to gather and search Bush/Clinton articles * a French professor has set up a language tutorial program for his medieval French course * bibliography students have used collating software, image scanning, and digitized sound while preparing and presenting research projects for a graduate textual editing course * a medievalist has scanned in manuscripts, using the ability to enlarge and re-color portions of a scanned image as he transcribes them. In addition, the first two Fellows of the University's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities have entered text and images for a hypermedia edition of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and have scanned in maps, engravings, census data, and texts for a major research project on two Civil War communities (one Northern and one Southern). In the course of all this activity, the E-Text Center staff have given impromptu and formal training sessions to hundreds of faculty, students, and visitors. The Center and on-line archive provide a potential model for other institutions as they plan similar endeavors. We hope that the strong partnership we have forged with our local academic computing community will also provide an example of how to create an "information technology community" at the college level by unifying the creative energy and expertise of technical and non-technical departments. The Electronic Text Center, located on the third floor of Alderman Library, is open Monday-Thursday 9am-10pm, Friday 9am-6pm, and Sunday 1pm-10pm, and is staffed by David Seaman (coordinator), Peter Byrnes, David Gants, Peter Kastor, Jamie Spriggs, and Kelly Tetterton. For more information, e-mail us at etext@virginia.edu or phone 804-924-3230. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 06:20:36 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0160 Rs: Naked Babe; Banquo as Christ Figure Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 160. Friday, 12 March 1993. (1) From: Jean Peterson Date: Thursday, 11 Mar 1993 16:59:15 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0131 More Rs: "a naked new-born babe" (2) From: Sean Lawrence Date: Thursday, 11 Mar 1993 18:25:29 -0400 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0158 Q: Banquo as Christ Figure (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jean Peterson Date: Thursday, 11 Mar 1993 16:59:15 -0500 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0131 More Rs: "a naked new-born babe" To Robert O'Connor: >The idea that Duncan was a super-virtuous king is one that I have been told >is not (by some interpretations of the sources) accurate - any comments >anyone? > There is a delightful essay by Barbara Riebling in SEL 31 (1991) titled "Virtue's Sacrifice: A Machiavellian Reading of *Macbeth*" which discusses the disastrous consequences of Duncan's political innocence in Machiavellian terms; (e.g.) Duncan, however admirable a man, is by Machiavellian standards a dangerous king--a ruler whose gentle and trusting character has invited treason, civil war, and foreign invasion. By being a perfect Christian, Duncan succeeds in becoming a perfect lamb--a sacrificial lamb on the altar of real-world politics. Hope this helps! Best--Jean Peterson (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sean Lawrence Date: Thursday, 11 Mar 1993 18:25:29 -0400 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0158 Q: Banquo as Christ Figure The idea of Banquo as a Christ figure is interesting, though it may be pretty subtle. He does, after all, seem to be negotiating with Macbeth in act I, which makes him rather dubious. However, you might want to check out the masque (in act 4?) The idea of becoming a king through one's death is strongly reminiscent of Christ. You might also want to see how these sorts of masque plays might tie in with the medieval Corpus Christi plays. I just had a lecture today on how reformation England transformed religious symbolism to support the monarchy--i.e. the imagery of the Blessed Virgin Mary was adopted in part by Elizabeth, for instance. Anyway, good luck! Sean Lawrence (MAFEKING@AC.DAL.CA) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 21:01:40 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0162 Q: Folger Library: Undergraduate Research Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 162. Friday, 12 March 1993. From: Howell Chickering Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0163 R: Banquo as Christ Figure Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 163. Friday, 12 March 1993. From: John Gouws Date: Friday, 12 Mar 1993 15:20:00 +0200 (EET) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0160 Rs: Naked Babe; Banquo as Christ Figure Sean Lawrence writes: > From: Sean Lawrence > Date: Thursday, 11 Mar 1993 18:25:29 -0400 > Subject: Re: SHK 4.0158 Q: Banquo as Christ Figure > I might be coming in on the tale-end of this exchange, but it is worthwhile considering the observation that a contemporary audience would have been reminded that the "porter scene" looks back to earlier dramatic presentations of the Harrowing of Hell in which Christ comes on Judgement Day. Since it is Banquo who is knocking so loudly, the audience is invited to see him in terms of the Christ in Judgement figure. I hope this helps. -- John Gouws - Department of English - Rhodes University Internet: enjg@hippo.ru.ac.za Telephone: (0461) 22023 xt 402 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1993 08:04:20 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0165 R: Undergraduate Research at the Folger Library Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 165. Saturday, 13 March 1993. From: NAOMI LIEBLER Date: Friday, 12 Mar 93 23:54:00 EST Subject: RE: SHK 4.0162 Q: Folger Library: Undergraduate Research To Howell Chickering and others similarly interested: You should get in touch with Peggy O'Brien at the Folger. I don't know what her formal title is there, but I do know that her commitment to the Folger's education outreach is very strong. She's done splendid things there with and for secondary-school students, and I imagine she'd be the best one to help you with stuff for your undergraduates. I don't know whether she's on the SHAKSPER network (I don't recall seeing her name listed) but snail-mail will reach her, as will a phone call to the Folger. Good luck. --Naomi Liebler ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1993 08:02:00 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0164 The Real Duncan Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 164. Saturday, 13 March 1993. From: Christoppher Johnston Date: Friday, 12 Mar 93 23:14:52 EST Subject: The Real Duncan My apologies if this has been responded to already: > > Robert O'Connor writes: > > The idea that Duncan was a super-virtuous king is one that I have been told > is not (by some interpretations of the sources) accurate - any comments > anyone? > Yes, Duncan's character is another element of "history" with which WS took liberties. In Holinshed Duncan is a rather young and rather inadequate ruler. He may have supplied Macbeth with a legitimate beef by naming his son as Prince of Cumberland: the rules of succession at the time supposedly would have made Macbeth in line by his wife and the son of her last husband. Look at *Holinshed's Chronicle* (Everyman, 1965), p. 205ff. Todd Johnston ccs.carleton.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 22:19:53 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0169 Re: Undergraduate Research at the Folger Library Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 169. Monday, 15 March 1993. From: Vint Cerf <0003786240@mcimail.com> Date: Saturday, 13 Mar 93 15:51 GMT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0165 R: Undergraduate Research at the Folger Library I faxed the earlier query about the Folger/Undergraduate support this morning to Tom McCance, the development Director and I am sure he will forward to Peggy. There is at least one person at the Folger reading the SHAKSPER list, I believe (but I am not sure who). The Folger has a very good record of outreach, so I am optimistic they will find a way to be helpful. Vint Cerf ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 22:27:09 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0171 Juliet's Drowse Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 171. Monday, 15 March 1993. From: ALAN REESE Date: Saturday, 13 Mar 1993 09:37:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: Juliet's Drowse Is there such a compound that would create the "borrowed likeness of shrunk death" Fr. Laurence describes in R&J, IV.i.97-108? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 22:33:06 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0172 Q: Surnames Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 172. Monday, 15 March 1993. From: Phyllis Rackin Date: Monday, 15 Mar 1993 22:24:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Query [Surnames] Does anyone know when, where, in what circumstances, brides started taking their husbands' surnames and when, where, in what circumstances, the practice became institutionalized as a matter of course? I'm thinking, e.g. of the difference between Dame Eleanor Cobham in 2 Henry VI and Mistress Ford and Mistress Page in Merry Wives. Phyllis Rackin prackin@ccat.sas.upenn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 21:55:06 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0166 Re: Undergraduate Research at Folger Library Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 166. Saturday, 13 March 1993. From: Bernice W. Kliman Date: Saturday, 13 Mar 1993 08:17 EDT Subject: Re: SHK 4.0162 Q: Folger Library: Undergraduate Research Since Georgianna Ziegler is on this list, I am sure you'll hear from her. Under the capable leadership of Peggy O'Brien, the Folger has a deep and rich program for teachers and students through 12th grade. Last time I was there, hoards of students were there in the great hall and theater but not in the library itself. The Folger as you may have heard has recently received a large grant to expand its public programs, including those for school children. I'll be there on Monday; let me know by Sunday night whether I can look into anything for you. Yours, Bernice W. Kliman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 21:56:24 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0167 Re: UVa Electronic Text Center Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 167. Saturday, 13 March 1993. From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Saturday, 13 Mar 93 08:12:46 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0161 Re: UVa Electronic Text Center Writing from City College, one end of the original BITNET connection linking CCNY and YALE (so I've been told), I began giggling and Santa-Claus-dreaming about the games one could play with the UVa system. The exquisite labors of community-building, funding, training, and actively applauding of accomplishments that David Gants exhibits in his description should be a model held up to all of our local librarians and local computer services folks. Now we can hope that the new guys in Washington hear about these possibilities. The idea of a post office worked such a revolution, as did the idea of the easy-access public and university library. The basic drives seem to be a spirit of generosity and a commitment to free exploration of possibilities. Hey, sounds like art. I'll be forwarding your description of the UVa system to my campus friends. Cheers! Steve Urkowitz, SURCC@CUNYVM ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 21:57:03 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0168 Re: The Real Duncan Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 168. Saturday, 13 March 1993. From: John Gouws Date: Saturday, 13 Mar 1993 15:54:00 +0200 (EET) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0164 The Real Duncan Christoppher Johnson writes: > > Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 164. Saturday, 13 March 1993. > > > From: Christoppher Johnston > Date: Friday, 12 Mar 93 23:14:52 EST > Subject: The Real Duncan > > > > > The idea that Duncan was a super-virtuous king is one that I have been told > > is not (by some interpretations of the sources) accurate - any comments > > anyone? > > > You could look at David Norbrook's very helpful "_Macbeth_ and the Poltics of Historiography" in _Politics of Discourse_, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N Zwicker (Berkeley, 1987), pp.78-116. -- John Gouws - Department of English - Rhodes University Internet: enjg@hippo.ru.ac.za Telephone: (0461) 22023 xt 402 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 22:23:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0170 Re: Collge Productions of *TGV* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 170. Monday, 15 March 1993. From: Rick Jones Date: Monday, 15 Mar 1993 13:57:36 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0143 R: College Productions *TGV* A belated response to Jeff Nyhoff's question about college productions of *TGV*: There was a production done here at Cornell College a few years ago -- rather unsatisfactory, I thought. I think the problem with the production here... and perhaps A reason why the play isn't done more often is the difficulty in coming to terms with the gender issues in the play. First, there are only three female roles, and most college programs are looking for more roles for women than that. Secondly, those roles that do exist for women are a LOT less interesting than, say, Kate or Bianca. Third, the play's "sexism" (real or imagined -- I'd like NOT to open that particular can of worms again!) is only slightly less virulent than in *Shrew*, and *TGV* has the disadvantage of not being "canonical"... I confess I've never actually read the play, and wouldn't know it at all if I hadn't seen the production. Audiences are more willing to look past potential pitfalls in plays they believe (or are told to believe) are "classics"... thus, *Shrew* and *Merchant* get performed frequently. But the "second rung" plays don't fare so well -- and *TGV* joins *All's Well* and perhaps *Measure for Measure* in the list of those that seem to be performed infrequently relative to their qualities. Just a thought... I'd like to hear more from those who know the play better than I. Rick Jones ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1993 07:31:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0173 Rs: Juliet's Drowse; Surnames; Q: Shakespeare's Verse Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 173. Tuesday, 16 March 1993. (1) From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Monday, 15 Mar 93 23:00:44 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0171 Juliet's Drowse (2) From: Stephen Orgel Date: Monday, 15 Mar 93 21:18:26 PST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0172 Q: Surnames (3) From: William Proctor Williams Date: Monday, 15 Mar 93 21:20 CST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Urkowitz Date: Monday, 15 Mar 93 23:00:44 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0171 Juliet's Drowse Sure. Grind up a few pages of OF GRAMMATOLOGY, mix with herbs gathered under the lecterns at MLA sessions, dilute in the limpid waters of textual collations, and feed to the victim. Wake-up time depends on the page numbers, the numbers attending the MLA session, and the total number of texts being collated. Next question, please. Dr. Steven Drowzewitz SURCC@CUNYVM (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephen Orgel Date: Monday, 15 Mar 93 21:18:26 PST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0172 Q: Surnames Yes: and the Countess of Bedford is always referred to as Lucy Harington, not Lucy Russell, ie by her father's name not her husband's. Stephen Orgel (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Proctor Williams Date: Monday, 15 Mar 93 21:20 CST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0132 Assorted Queries I've been away for a few days so this is a very late response, but Roy Flannagan does raise an interesting point: why is the verse typically given by Shakespeare to his romantic (good?) characters such bad stuff? Is the poetry given to the baddies always good or is it bad too? And why is some of the "verse" given to prophetic characters (e.g., Fool in +Lear+) frequently incomprehensible? Just asking. William Proctor Williams TB0WPW1@NIU ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1993 21:37:46 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0174 Re: Shakespeare's Verse Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 174. Tuesday, 16 March 1993. (1) From: Kay Stockholder Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 93 07:24:40 PST Subj: Re: Rs: Juliet's Drowse; Surnames; Q: Shakespeare's Verse (2) From: Rick Jones Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 1993 11:50:10 -0600 (CST) Subj: RE: SHK 4.0173 (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kay Stockholder Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 93 07:24:40 PST Subject: Re: Rs: Juliet's Drowse; Surnames; Q: Shakespeare's Verse The answer must lie in original sin. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rick Jones Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 1993 11:50:10 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0173 A brief response to William Proctor Williams's final question: >And why is some of the "verse" given to prophetic characters (e.g., >Fool in +Lear+) frequently incomprehensible? I hadn't thought to put the question in these terms before, but it strikes me that doing so actually takes us a long way toward the answer. The incomprehensibility is indeed directly linked to the phophetic nature of the character... this is a time-honored dramatic (and historiographic) trope: qv. Teiresias, the Delphic Oracle, even late medieval dumb-shows (such as the ones in _Gorboduc_)... All would seem to be variations on the same theme. Rick Jones Cornell College ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1993 21:48:27 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0175 Re: Undergraduate Research; *TGV*; Juliet's Drowse Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 175. Tuesday, 16 March 1993. (1) From: Georgianna Ziegler Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 1993 16:39:00 -0500 Subj: Re: Undergraduate Research at the Folger Library (2) From: Steve Schrum Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 93 15:09 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0170 Re: College Productions of *TGV* (3) From: ALAN REESE Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 1993 11:58:48 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: Rs: Juliet's Drowse; Surnames; Q: Shakespeare's Verse (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Georgianna Ziegler Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 1993 16:39:00 -0500 Subject: Re: Undergraduate Research at the Folger Library The general policy of the Folger Library is to admit researchers only at the advanced graduate level and beyond. Questions on this topic can be directed to me at GZIEGLER@Amherst.edu. For presentations involving elementary and secondary school groups, Naomi is correct in suggesting that Peggy O'Brien would be the person to contact. --Georgianna Ziegler Reference Librarian, The Folger (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Schrum Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 93 15:09 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0170 Re: College Productions of *TGV* A recent production at the University of Scranton (and Michael Friedman, who served as dramaturge and Launce can give more details) addressed the problem of sexism somewhat at the end. The director, Joan Robbins, had Silvia gagged for the entire ending, choking out responses to what was going on around her but unable to respond verbally. A nice touch, since the men do make all the decisions at the end... Steve Schrum Penn State Hazleton (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ALAN REESE Date: Tuesday, 16 Mar 1993 11:58:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Rs: Juliet's Drowse; Surnames; Q: Shakespeare's Verse To wit: the wit of Drowzewitz Urkowitz regarding his witty & helpful reply to my serious inquiry: YAWN! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1993 16:40:21 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0176 Re: College Productions of *TGV* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 176. Wednesday, 17 March 1993. From: Michael Friedman Date: Wednesday, 17 Mar 93 16:22 EST Subject: College Productions of *TGV* Thanks to Steve Schrum for the plug for our recent performances of *TGV* and for the prod to finally reply to Jeff Nyhoff on the question of college productions of the play. I agree that *TGV* is an excellent choice for college students because the concerns of the play are closely related to their own lives and interests. Among our cast, nearly all could remember a time when the demands of friendship and love had come into conflict, usually with disastrous results, and this thematic accesibility helped break down many of the barriers represented by the unfamiliar language of the play. Our director, Joan Robbins, found the play relatively easy to rehearse because in only a few scenes are more than 2 or 3 actors required on stage at the same time. After much discussion, we decided to set the play in a 50's prep school atmosphere, using song lyrics of the era as an analogue to the Petrarchan love conventions followed so scrupulously by Valentine and Proteus ("Well, I wonder, wonder who bee-do-do-do, who wrote the Book of Love?"). The gagging of Silvia grew out of our desire both to draw attention to her silence in the final scene and yet to make our feminist statement a comic one. I'll be presenting a paper on this topic at the West Virginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association Conference in April, so if anyone's interested in more details, you can come hear me speak. I think the complications of the final scene are the primary reason why the play is not performed more often. No one can take it as a believable human action when it is played seriously, and farcical action tends to gloss over the gender issues that figure so prominently in the text. Feminist productions can bring these issues to the foreground very effectively, but they also tend to emphasize the brutality of the attempted rape and Silvia's powerlessness in her own disposition, which makes the ending something other than comic (not necessarily a negative thing, but not one calculated to inspire delight). Personally, having played Launce, I also think that the fact that the play calls for a dog actor might scare off a few prospective directors. My own pet, Troy (actually Troilus, named for Petruchio's spaniel) played Crab opposite me, and let me tell you, you never know what a dog will do once he gets in the spotlight (yawn, scratch, lick private parts, try to sniff the audience), but of course, that's the fun of having him out there. He reinvented his role freshly every night, and forced me to do so as well. Michael Friedman Friedman@Scranton ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1993 06:53:32 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0177 Re: College Productios of *TGV* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 177. Thursday, 18 March 1993. From: Gordon Jones Date: Wednesday, 17 Mar 1993 21:55:28 -0230 (NDT) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0176 Re: College Productions of *TGV* Two years ago I did TGV - style of Gilbert & Sullivan, high camp. How to solve the dog problem? Use a cut-out plywood dog wheeled on behind Launce. But even wooden dogs can still upstage. The same is probably true for kids. Gordon Jones Memorial University ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1993 21:13:36 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0178 Re: Productions of *TGV* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 178. Thursday, 18 March 1993. (1) From: Helen Ostovich Date: Thursday, 18 Mar 1993 11:09:05 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Dog's part in TGV (2) From: Stephen Orgel Date: Thursday, 18 Mar 93 10:23:30 PST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0177 Re: College Productios of *TGV* (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Helen Ostovich Date: Thursday, 18 Mar 1993 11:09:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Dog's part in TGV Although productions of TGV tend to use a real dog on stage, no evidence suggests that Shakespeare's company did so. The only real dog part written for the Globe was in Jonson's EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR (1599). Other dogs are either walk-ons or noises off. Helen Ostovich McMaster University (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephen Orgel Date: Thursday, 18 Mar 93 10:23:30 PST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0177 Re: College Productios of *TGV* Three years ago I saw a production by the Asian Students' Drama Society at Harvard. It was pretty incompetent, though it had some interesting ideas, first about cross-casting--Proteus played by a woman dressed like Mme Mao, and second about Launce, a redheaded Irish boy, the only non-Asian in the production. The dog was a green stuffed dinosaur; it did not upstage anyone, not that it would have mattered. HOWEVER, Adrian Kiernander, Australian director/professor at the U of Queensland (he's on the network, but away from his e-mail at the moment) has just done what sounds like a brilliant college production at the U of Wellington in New Zealand. You can get some idea of it from the poster, which he sent me: it has two boys sunbathing with a dog, and across the top "VERONA 90210" The dog was the largest St Bernard he'd ever seen. Cheers, S.O. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1993 21:21:39 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0179 Renaissance Dance Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 179. Thursday, 18 March 1993. From: Nick Clary Date: Thursday, 18 Mar 1993 13:55:31 -0500 (EST) Subject: Renaissance Dance [Hardy, I am re-routing this posting at the request of Andrew Draskoy, who is not on the SHAKSPER roll. I have asked him for information on the Bergomask dance performed by the mechanicals at the end the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in DREAM. He is working on it for me. I have some standard stuff but I would like more--certainly anything from areas of scholarly interest outside of the field. Thanks for passing this announcement along to our growing round-table, Nick Clary clary@smcvax.bitnet] ******************************************************************************* I'm planning to start up an email list for discussion of Renaissance dance, with a focus on reconstruction. If there is already an appropriate place for this, or some other forum where interested parties might be reached, please let me know. Please do NOT send subscription requests until the list has been announced. This notice has been posted to the Bitnet lists PERFORM, RENAIS-L, and the Usenet groups rec.arts.dance, rec.folk-dancing, and rec.org.sca. Andrew Draskoy andrew@bransle.ucs.mun.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1993 20:02:06 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0180 Real Dog in *TGV*; Q: London Flat Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 180. Friday, 19 March 1993. (1) From: Michael Friedman Date: Friday, 19 Mar 1993 17:07:45 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0178 Re: Productions of *TGV* (2) From: William Proctor Williams Date: Friday, 19 Mar 93 10:49 CST Subj: [Q: London Flat] (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Friedman Date: Friday, 19 Mar 1993 17:07:45 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: SHK 4.0178 Re: Productions of *TGV* In response to Helen Ostovich's assertion that there is no evidence that a real dog was used on Shakespeare's stage, I wonder if there is any evidence that something else was used in its place (a human actor, a stuffed animal, an imaginary dog). I believe that Launce's lines call for him to play off of something present on stage, even if it's there only in his mind. Michael Friedman Friedman@Scranton (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Proctor Williams Date: Friday, 19 Mar 93 10:49 CST Subject: [Q: London Flat] A colleague who is not on e-mail is looking for an inexpensive flat-share or sublet in London from July or September 1993 through June of 1994. Replies can come to me and I'll pass them on to him. Thanks, William Proctor Williams TB0WPW1@NIU Department of English, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115 USA ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1993 15:32:26 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0181 Peter Erickson/WEB DuBois Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 181. Saturday, 20 March 1993. From: Daniel P. Tompkins Date: Saturday, 20 Mar 93 08:22:01 -0500 Subject: Peter Erickson/WEB DuBois I've been reading with some interest Peter Erickson's various essays on multiculturalism, most recently the one on Shakespeare and the 2 canons [forgot the precise title] in Kenyon Review 14.2 '92. Inter alia he mentions the sudden popularity of the African-American social thinker W.E.B. DuBois among U.S. conservatives in the summer of 1991, when he was invoked by both Donald Kagan and Allan Bloom to justify the notion of what P.E. calls a "universalizing" canon. Esp. popular was the sentence "I sit beside Shakespeare and he winces not." P.E. demonstrates that this use of DuBois amounts to scholarly dishonesty, since it ignores the anti-assimilationism, the increasing insistence on "difference," in DuBois' work--it is as if WEBDuB served only as a "quote book." Anyhow, a correspondent has not sent me another ref. to the same quote, in an article by J.Wilson Moses in Partisan Review 58 ('91) 376, 384. I don't have that right at hand but I believe it was one of their big anti-change, anti-deconstruction, anti-new historicism issues--I'll try to dig it out. So I'm sending this out for P.E. to add to his list of folks who invoked WEBDuB in the summer of '91. I'd also be interested to know if Erickson is on this list, and whether folks know of other appearances of "I sit beside Shakespeare and he winces not." Dan Tompkins Classics Temple University dpt@astro.ocis.temple.edu [Peter Erickson is not currently a member of SHAKSPER. --hmc] ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1993 15:37:35 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0182 Real Dog in *TGV*; Q: Real Bear in *WT* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 182. Saturday, 20 March 1993. From: Rick Jones Date: Saturday, 20 Mar 1993 11:01:07 -0600 (CST) Subject: RE: SHK 4.0180 Real Dog in *TGV* When Cornell College staged *TGV* a couple years ago, they used a human actor in a dog suit: the role was played by one of the more popular frat bro types, and his incessant (and successful) efforts at upstaging everything else on stage provided a bit of comic respite from an otherwise pretty dreary production. By the way, what about the bear in *Winter's Tale* in the original production? I'm sure I should know this -- but, well, I don't. Rick Jones ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 09:27:08 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0183 Re: Real Bear in *WT* Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 183. Monday, 22 March 1993. From: Stephen Schrum Date: Sunday, 21 Mar 93 23:17 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0182 Real Dog in *TGV*; Q: Real Bear in *WT* The real bear in WT: I am also curious about contemporary productions. While wandering through the Berkeley Repertory Theatre costume shop, I saw their bear suit, and at Shakespeare Santa Cruz a HUGE bear puppet entered amidst a cloud of fog. Other solutions? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 10:08:09 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0184 New on the SHAKSPER FileServer: PRIVATE PARTS Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 184. Monday, 22 March 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Monday, 22 March 1993 Subject: New on the SHAKSPER FileServer: PRIVATE PARTS As of today, SHAKSPEReans may retrieve PRIVATE PARTS from the SHAKSPER FileServer. PRIVATE PARTS contains the preliminary notes for an essay on gender identity in Shakespeare, contributed by a new member to the SHAKSPER Conference -- Al Cacicedo. SHAKSPEReans can retrieve PRIVATE PARTS by issuing the interactive command, "TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET COMPUTER TEACHING SHAKSPER." If your network link does not support the interactive "TELL" command (i.e. if you are not directly on Bitnet), or if LISTSERV rejects your request, then send a one-line mail message (without a subject line) to LISTSERV@utoronto, reading "GET PRIVATE PARTS SHAKSPER." Should you have difficulty receiving this file, please contact the editor, or . For an updated version of the file list, send the command "GET SHAKSPER FILES SHAKSPER" in the same fashion. For further information, consult the appropriate section of your SHAKSPER GUIDE. =============================================================================== Public Privates Al Cacicedo [The following are some very preliminary notes for a longish essay on gender identity in Shakespeare.] The centrality of women in Shakespeare's work, and in particular of the question that appears as the title of Mary Beth Rose's influential essay, "Where Are the Mothers in Shakespeare?"1, has become a commonplace of recent studies of Shakespeare. On the other hand, as a participant in a recent SAA seminar put it, given the relative scarcity of mothers in the plays, perhaps one ought to focus attention on the fathers in Shakespeare.2 Immediately, however, one runs into profound ambiguity. Consider, for instance, Lear's words as he begins to understand just how thoroughly he has lost status and control: O how this mother swells up towards my heart! Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, Thy element's below. (2.4.56-58)3 The Riverside edition glosses "mother" as hysteria, but then "hysteria" is the womb itself.4 Perhaps one should understand the term figuratively, as meaning that Lear begins to feel the "errant womb" that signals his impending madness. And yet my inclination is to take the passage literally: Lear really does feel the female organ inside himself, displaced from its properly submerged position and rising to strangulate him. To Rose's question, then, I answer as Juliet does when the Nurse, coming from her conference with Romeo, irrelevantly asks where Lady Capulet is: Where is my mother! why, she is within, Where should she be? (2.4.58-59). I first came across a literal reading of Juliet's remark in an avowedly psychoanalytic context, an essay by Elenore and Robert Fliess.5 Recent work, however, has allowed me to reconceive the psychological perspective of the Fliesses in a more material and historical mode. Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex has demonstrated in detail the physiological and medical ideas that underlie Renaissance assumptions about female and male genitalia. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 10:35:22 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0185 The NTD's *Ophelia* at the Folger Theatre Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 185. Monday, 22 March 1993. From: Hardy M. Cook Date: Monday, 22 March 1993 Subject: NTD's *Ophelia* at the Folger Theatre Dear SHAKSPEReans, In SHK 4.0094 (Friday, February 19, 1993), SHAKSPERean Tony Naturale reviewed the National Theatre of the Deaf's production of *Ophelia*, directed by Jeff Wanshel. In that posting, Naturale wrote, > In this adaptation of Hamlet, the playwright Jeff Wanshel worked >closely with NTD to develop further the role of Ophelia. Ostensibly >to present a woman's point of view in this "rotten kingdom" of >Denmark, the play became an experiment with mixed results. To keep >the action rolling, plot was changed, scenes borrowed from other >Shakespeare's plays were included, and conflicts between Ophelia >and Hamlet were highlightened further. The Folger Library will be presenting the NTD's *Ophelia* from Thursday, March 25, through Sunday, March 28, at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre as a part of "Project Access," an outreach initiative made possible by a $2.5 million grant to the Library from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund [See SHK 4.0033 (20 January 1993) for details of the grant]. Tickets may be charged by phone at 202-544-7077. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 17:56:22 EST Reply-To: "Hardy M. Cook" Sender: Shakespeare Electronic Conference From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: SHK 4.0186 Bears and Dogs in Shakespearean Productions Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 186. Monday, 22 March 1993. (1) From: Rasa Hollender Date: Monday, 22 Mar 1993 13:26 EST Subj: Re: SHK 4.0183 Re: Real Bear in *WT* (2) From: Karin Youngberg Date: Monday, 22 Mar 93 15:21:48 GMT-600 Subj: Re: SHK 4.0183 Re: Real Bear in *WT* (3) From: Ron Macdonald Date: Monday, 22 Mar 1993 11:06:06 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Stage dogs (4) From: Helen Ostovich Date: Monday, 22 Mar 1993 15:56:10 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 4.0180 Real Dog in *TGV*; Q: London Flat (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rasa Hollender Date: Monday, 22 Mar 1993 13:26 EST Subject: Re: SHK 4.0183 Re: Real Bear in *WT* There was a production somewhere (though I'm not sure where) of *WT* in which the play opened with the action taking place in a large room with a huge fake bear skin rug covering the stage floor. When time came to Exit followed by a bear, the bear skin was somehow hooked up to a rope pully system, rose up, and "chased" the character out... Rasa L. Hollender (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Karin Youngberg Date: Monday, 22 Mar 93 15:21:48 GMT-600 Subject: Re: SHK 4.0183 Re: Real Bear in *WT* > The real bear in WT: I am also curious abou