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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0169  Friday, 23 February 2007

[1] 	From: 	Matthew Steggle <M.Steggle@shu.ac.uk>
	Date: 	Thursday, 22 Feb 2007 18:30:42 -0000
	Subj: 	Recent Deaths

[2] 	From: 	Stephen Hazell <stephen.hazell@nie.edu.sg>
	Date: 	Friday, 23 Feb 2007 13:55:32 +0800
	Subj: 	RE: SHK 18.0165 Recent Deaths


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Matthew Steggle <M.Steggle@shu.ac.uk>
Date: 		Thursday, 22 Feb 2007 18:30:42 -0000
Subject: 	Recent Deaths

I very much admired Tony Nuttall. He co-supervised me for part of my D 
Phil, and did so with thoroughness and humanity.

One of my personal favourites among his writings on Shakespeare is A.D. 
Nuttall, 'Bottom's Dream' (Notes and Queries 48[2001] 276).  It's a 
brilliant idea, expressed with rigour and wit, and yet also a model of 
concision - the whole thing fits onto a single page.

Matt

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Stephen Hazell <stephen.hazell@nie.edu.sg>
Date: 		Friday, 23 Feb 2007 13:55:32 +0800
Subject: 18.0165 Recent Deaths
Comment: 	RE: SHK 18.0165 Recent Deaths

Tony Nuttall was one of my tutors at Merton College in the early 1960s. 
My first recall is of a young man always laughing, in a generous way, 
embracing the possible interest of the idiosyncratic ideas put to him, 
while delicately suggesting alternative lines to pursue.

He did not supervise my Shakespeare studies, but I remember an informal 
conversation about Henry IV Part Two. He was amused by Justice Shallow 
casting around in his country residence for something to offer Falstaff 
by way of a feast, and turning up only last year's apples (pippins) and 
some caraway seeds. (What was not available by way of meat was made up 
for by the flow of drink.) Then Tony moved out from this specific moment 
of social comedy into a riff about orchards in the European imagination 
(note: he was from Herefordshire, a very fruit-laden county not so far 
from Warwickshire), then to a light allusion to Arden and the 'golden 
age', all exemplifying the amplifying resonances with which Shakespeare 
can charge the ordinary; the Shallow even. (I think the pun may be my 
embellishment.)

Tony had large Latin and more Greek - he must have started, at school 
and university, with Classics as his main studies. A New Mimesis is 
probably still his best-known publication. That work alone shows how 
much more he is than the pastoral dreamer that my anecdote might 
inadvertently seem to imply.

In the way of things, I met him only a couple of times after Oxford, at 
conferences. At a Sussex conference in the late 1970s, I saw that he was 
a highly attentive and supportive presence for his colleague, Jonathan 
Dollimore, though I doubt that he was by nature sympathetic to the 
ground-swell then of cultural materialism.

This summer, I shall return to Britain after a long stint at a 
university in Singapore. One of the things I had been promising myself 
was to look in on Tony Nuttall. Alas.

All the more keenly, I look forward to Shakespeare the Thinker (and to 
time spent seeking the company of old friends).

Stephen Hazell

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