SHAKSPER 2001: Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 07/02/01 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1670  Monday, 2 July 2001

[1]     From:   Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Friday, 29 Jun 2001 09:11:11 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.1655 Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

[2]     From:   Sam Small <samsmall@globalnet.co.uk>
        Date:   Friday, 29 Jun 2001 22:02:04 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.1655 Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

[3]     From:   Jack Heller <quomodo@toolkitmail.com>
        Date:   Saturday, 30 Jun 2001 14:33:08 +0000 (GMT)
        Subj:   Shakespeare Argues

[4]     From:   Takashi Kozuka <shaxpeare@hotmail.com>
        Date:   Saturday, 30 Jun 2001 15:15:05
        Subj:   Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

[5]     From:   Pervez Rizvi <Pervez.Rizvi@capgemini.co.uk>
        Date:   Monday, 2 Jul 2001 10:40:23 +0100
        Subj:   Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Friday, 29 Jun 2001 09:11:11 -0700
Subject: 12.1655 Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.1655 Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

My apologies to Don (and Sam) for mixing them up.

Melissa has pointed to how math, science and philosophy can also be
understood as culturally constructed.  For some reason, though, we don't
treat them as dismissively as (say) aesthetics, however, nor do we worry
about getting global cultural unanimity behind the value of pi.  Rather,
we'd say that anyone who tries to give pi a different value is simply
not doing geometry.

Which leads me to wonder why Don (and Sam, first) insist on
Shakespeare's relevance in all latitudes of the world.  Why are we
trying to prove universality empirically?  This seems to open the
arguments to their own disproof, in a way that isn't necessary.
Couldn't we work out an aesthetics based on phenomenology, for instance,
or on psychology?

Cheers,
Seán.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sam Small <samsmall@globalnet.co.uk>
Date:           Friday, 29 Jun 2001 22:02:04 +0100
Subject: 12.1655 Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.1655 Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

Gabriel Egan and John Briggs variously say:

You should bear in mind that, in important respects, Copnor isn't even
like North End.

Not something that I'd ever considered...  Mind you, I probably don't
help matters by thinking of Buckland when people say North End.  Now, if
you'd said Stamshaw...

Those unfamiliar with the game *Mornington Crescent* will probably be
completely baffled by this Portsmouth version...

The proper threads of this argument I will follow in due course but I
must toss in a comment after being astonished at the above geographical
references.  Portsmouth is the armpit of England populated by a people
who have no idea that it is so.  If Copnor isn't North End then North
End is nothing like Paulsgrove.  Nothing is like Paulsgrove.  I should
know; my childhood was spent there.  But what of the Shakespeare
connection?  Takashi Kozuka will be amazed, I know, that Shakespeare's
text can decently relate to anywhere except the middle class amateur
stage but foul Portsmouth would be a perfect setting for a re-write of
Titus Andronicus.  Anyone want to read the script?

SAM SMALL

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Jack Heller <quomodo@toolkitmail.com>
Date:           Saturday, 30 Jun 2001 14:33:08 +0000 (GMT)
Subject:        Shakespeare Argues

Dear Listmembers:

I've been lurking on the discussion of Shakespeare's "universalism," and
as it seems to be dying down, I'll add my two cents worth.

In the last month, I've read at least five 16th century writers on the
reign of King John. William Tyndale presents the disastrous end of
John's reign as an example of what can happen when subjects' fealty to
their king is trumped by their fealty to the Pope. John Bale uses John
as almost an archetype for a king committed to the Reformation; John is
explicitly a forerunner and exemplum for Elizabeth. Typologically, Bale
compares the suppression of John to the enslavement of the Hebrews in
Egypt before Moses. In John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, John is a
pre-Reformation Christian martyr. A woodcut illustration of his
poisoning in Acts and Monuments seems to influence the dramatisation of
John's poisoning in the anonymous play The Troublesome Raigne of King
John. The author of that play (whom I suspect may be Greene) is somewhat
skeptical of the hagiographic treatment of John, giving more emphasis to
the intended execution of Prince Arthur. However, he is as committed to
militant Protestantism as his predecessors in his portrayal of the moral
corruption of the monasteries.

So what does Shakespeare do? His dramatization immediately defends a
skepticism of the legitimacy of John's reign:

King John: Our strong possession and our right for us.
Queen Elinor [John's mother]: Your strong possession much more than your
right.
[I.i.39-40]

Shakespeare repeatedly suggests that the Bastard himself would be a
preferable ruler. One example,

[Bastard:] Perchance the Cardinal cannot make your peace,
Or, if he do, let it at least be said
They saw we had a purpose of defence.
King John: Have thou the ordering of this present time. [V.i.74-77]

In the play's first act, Faulconbridge's bastardy is considered legally
no impediment to his inheritance over his younger and legitimate
brother. And one may recall that he is a son of Richard the
Lion-hearted.

Shakespeare also departs from Bale, Foxe, and The Troublesome Raign in
not dramatising the actual process of John's poisoning.

I think some of these changes from the firmly Protestant predecessors
and sources may be attributed to Shakespeare's recusant Catholicism. If
so, then any "universalism" he may have been trying to achieve would
have to be strategic rather than matter-of-fact.

One could argue that his characterizations are "true-to-life" for their
motivations, loves, emotions, etc. But why couldn't it also be said that
Shakespeare's King John is a "lying fiction"? It would have been so to
the other dramatists Foxe, Bale, and anonymous. Thus Shakespeare's King
John is not universal, but interpretive. So are all his plays.

Jack Heller

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Takashi Kozuka <shaxpeare@hotmail.com>
Date:           Saturday, 30 Jun 2001 15:15:05
Subject:        Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

>Melissa D. Aaron writes:

>Umm, maybe I'm missing something here, but aren't science and >philosophy
>also reflective of cultural differences?

I agree (especially in the case of philosophy). I didn't intend to argue
that science and philosophy had nothing to do with cultures when I said
that it was a false analogy to compare Sam's statement with science or
philosophy.

Best wishes,
Takashi Kozuka

[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Pervez Rizvi <Pervez.Rizvi@capgemini.co.uk>
Date:           Monday, 2 Jul 2001 10:40:23 +0100
Subject:        Re: Why Shakespeare Conflicts

Three quick points:

1. If, instead of claiming that Shakespeare is universal, Sam Small had
claimed that the love of mothers for their children is universal, would
it have been a good rebuttal to say that he was precluded from so
claiming because he had not checked with every mother in the world? Sean
Lawrence's question "Why should we judge universality empirically?" is
exactly the right one to ask. Can a claim like Sam Small's, based on
induction from local observations and the knowledge that we are all in
the same species, be dismissed out of hand because it is not based on a
complete census of everyone in all cultures?

2. In its 'weak' form, the claim for Shakespeare's universality does not
have to encompass every culture at all times; it is a general statement,
that allows for exceptions. Conversely, if the claim is made in its
'strong' form, i.e. that Shakespeare really does translate to all
cultures at all times, then to ask for empirical evidence, as Takashi
Kozuka did, is misguided. Even if a survey of all cultures failed to
find a counterexample, it wouldn't prove the claim in its strong form.
The statement 'All mothers love their children' in its strong form can
be refuted by finding one unloving mother; in the weak form, empirical
evidence only helps you to assess the reasonableness, or otherwise, of
the statement; in neither case is it necessary to consider every
culture.

3. To accept that Shakespeare is universal is not to accept that he is
*uniquely* so. Twenty years ago, the TV show 'Dallas' was universal (in
the weak sense); it was watched avidly in all corners of the world, by
people whose lives were hugely different to those of Texan oil barons.
Lots of works translate to different cultures in unexpected ways. I
suspect that in the minds of some claimants for universality, the
question is bound up with a view that Shakespeare is uniquely great.
Universality and greatness are not the same thing.

_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@ws.bowiestate.edu
The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://ws.bowiestate.edu>


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