March
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0271 Saturday, 28 March 1998. [1] From: Pat Dolan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 06:16:00 -0600 (CST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0266 Re: Postmodernism [2] From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 13:19:35 +0000 (GMT) Subj: RE: Postmodernism [3] From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 10:12:28 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0266 Re: Postmodernism [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Pat Dolan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 06:16:00 -0600 (CST) Subject: 9.0266 Re: Postmodernism Comment: Re: SHK 9.0266 Re: Postmodernism William Godschalk writes, If I read a long s as an f in one of the Folios, I am in error; but the long s remains a long s. And, yes, this is a matter of faith. I cannot prove that my inadequate perceptual system does NOT affect external reality. A long s is only a long s within a system of letters. When I say to a student, "Oh, that's really an s," I think I mean something quite different than when I say, "Oh yes, there's "really" some sort of physical world out there that functions without respect to my perceptions of it." In the student's case, I'm making an ultimately rhetorical point, "Your reading will be easier and make more sense if you understand that mark as we do." I firmly believe the two statements are fundamentally different. One urges us to join the conventions of a linguistic system. The other expresses faith in something that causes our perceptions and the knowledge we build out of them. Hamlet may not be "really" fleeing his father in the swearing scene, but it sure makes sense to me to see him as doing so. (It's a new one on me.) In haste, Pat [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 13:19:35 +0000 (GMT) Subject: RE: Postmodernism Sean Lawrence quotes Gabriel Egan: >> And if anybody has the cheek to tell me that I'm not >> qualified in the subject, I shall remind them that the >> Internet email discussion lists are places where >> amateurs and professionals meet as peers. and comments: > Don't you think it in rather bad faith to write this while > bewailing (on Ardennet) the fact that SHAKSPER "has suffered > increasing trivialisation as Internet access has spread > beyond academia"? That's not 'bad faith' but rather irony. I used a rhetorical device to suggest that those who believe that amateurs should be treated as the peers of professionals would have to give as much credence to my amateur physics as they would to any professional's ideas. Sigh! Bill Godshalk jumps into the amateur physics debate with me: > Newtonian mechanics works just fine on this planet. If the sun ceased to exist in an instant, Newtonian mechanics would have the earth flying off at a tangent at that instant. Einstein would have the earth continuing on its orbit for 8 minutes while the flattening of the space-time continuum spreads out, at the speed of light, from the centre of orbit. This is space-time, nor are we out of it. I would second any motion that we take this debate off of SHAKSPER and onto alt.physics.amateur. Gabriel Egan [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 10:12:28 -0500 Subject: 9.0266 Re: Postmodernism Comment: Re: SHK 9.0266 Re: Postmodernism >What is at point is >how any knowledge claim about, say, the physics of flight or the editing >of the first folio, has a history that continues into the present. Of >course, if you insist that in our post-Enlightenment "brilliance" we >somehow have complete insight, then history can be forgotten. Okay, granted. I suppose the point here is that our model of the universe WILL undoubtedly change as time goes by. Ptolemy was wrong, and, as human instruments became more reliable, we humans realized that Ptolemy's model was incorrect. I believe that our current model is better than Ptolemy's, but that it too will be replaced. However, the fact that we can build airplanes that fly (i.e., when a model leads to a usable technology) indicates that we are on the right track. Or so I pragmatically think. As Aldous Huxley used to point out, even the smartest caveperson could not fly to the moon. Yours, Bill Godshalk
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0270 Saturday, 28 March 1998. [1] From: Bill Cain <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 09:15:56 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0267 Re: SHAKSPER Description [2] From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 12:34:21 -0500 (EST) Subj: Elitism, revisited [3] From: Paul S. Rhodes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 12:47:10 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0267 Re: SHAKSPER Description [4] From: John Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 16:01:22 EST Subj: Re: SHK 9.0261 Re: SHAKSPER Description [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Cain <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 09:15:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: 9.0267 Re: SHAKSPER Description Comment: Re: SHK 9.0267 Re: SHAKSPER Description RE: the Arden dismissal of SHAKSPER I, too, was surprised by the Arden dismissal of the SHAKSPER list. The interest and quality of the postings seem to me quite high, from academics and non-academics, and from professional and non-professional Shakespeareans. This list manages to avoid the two problems that (in my view at least) mar so many lists: 1) requests from students for very basic help with papers, and 2) very general, hurried requests from teachers (e. g., "Hi! I'm teaching MIDDLEMARCH tomorrow-anyone have any suggestions?"). Bill Cain [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Walker White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 12:34:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: Elitism, revisited As for Mr. Egan's remarks, which happily do not represent those of Ardennet, I am trying to remember if this is the same Egan with whom I shared barbs, over the issue of elitism in the theatre. If I remember correctly, he made a categorical statement to the effect that theatre was an elitist enterprise; as an actor and director, I took exception to this statement, which to me smacks of vulgar Marxism. The irony of his remarks about SHAKSPER is even clearer to me, as I begin to make acquaintance with postmodern criticism. How a scholar who works in modern critical method can adopt such an explicitly elitist position is beyond me. I thought the whole point of postmodernism was to attack this sort of elitist posturing, and to examine the ways in which ideologies past and present have done us a disservice. Substituting a new elitism for the old one certainly doesn't advance scholarship in a field devoted to a playwright whose work explicitly rejected elitist modes of dramaturgy. Andrew White Arlington, VA [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul S. Rhodes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 12:47:10 -0600 Subject: 9.0267 Re: SHAKSPER Description Comment: Re: SHK 9.0267 Re: SHAKSPER Description I would think that Gabriel Egan has been sufficiently shamed for his arrogance and smugness. I don't think anything I write will add to his ignominy. Let me, then, just state the obvious for it does need re-stating if only to remind post-modern academics such as Mr. Egan that a whole world exists beyond their theories: Shakespeare wrote for everyone. This has been shown time and again by performances in almost every single language and in almost every conceivable culture. One touch of Shakespeare and the whole world is kin This glorious universal vision, I suggest, is what make Shakespeare so thrilling fun. But this vision has almost been blocked out by those academics who would like to keep the Bard locked up in the tower-ivory, that is. These academics would like to allow in the tower only those with the proper credentials in their transcendence-denying theories. But the academics should know that the Bard has never been locked up in their tower. The Bard they think they have is nothing but a straw man stuffed with insubstantial air and inconstant wind. Mr . Egan, the academia and all its theories will crumble and be forgotten, but people of every stripe and class and culture will still discuss the inspired poetry of Shakespeare. That's what disturbs you more than anything else, isn't it? Paul S. Rhodes [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Robinson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 16:01:22 EST Subject: 9.0261 Re: SHAKSPER Description Comment: Re: SHK 9.0261 Re: SHAKSPER Description >Do other SHAKSPERians feel that the list should be reserved for >"scholars" and the rest of us should at best be allowed to lurk on the >sidelines observing the debate? Or do we actually have something to say >that can stimulate discussion even from those lofty "scholars" Ardenites >seem to find the only worthy participants? I quite agree. Enlightenment can come at the most unexpected times and places. Someone, for example, might make a comment on this list that another person may think is foolish-then again, in rebutting that foolish comment or question you might start thinking about the subject in a way that may never have occurred to you otherwise. Don't forget... the lion lives on digested sheep. John Robinson
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0269 Saturday, 28 March 1998. From: Stephen N. Matsuba <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 10:52:18 +0000 Subject: VRML Dream Auditions Reminder This is a reminder to everyone that the VRML Dream Project will be conducting auditions for the various parts on 29 March from 12 PM to 1 PM Eastern Time. Copies of the script are available at the VRML Dream site (http://www.shoc.com/vrmldream). To participate, you will need the Speak Freely play (available from http://www.shoc.com/vrmldream/downloads/speakf.zip). You will also need to sign on to the IRC chat we will set up. Start Speak Freely. You will need to set the following in Speak Freely: Options/Jitter Compensation/None Options/GSM Compression Options/Transmission Protocol/Real Time Protocol (RTP) Bernie and I will also have an IRC chat open so that we can communicate with everyone should things go awry. The group will be on DALNet. There are several IRC networks, and DALNet happens to be the one we're using. The group we will be on is vrmldream You can use mIRC for the connection. It is available for free from www.tucows.com. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Bernie or myself. Please let me know if you will be participating, and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. You can reach me by e-mail atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . I'm looking forward to hear from you. Regards Stephen
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0268 Friday, 27 March 1998. [1] From: Peter T. Hadorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 09:42:59 -0600 Subj: RE: SHK 9.0254 Re: Anti-Semitism [2] From: Frank Whigham <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 11:25:04 -0600 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0258 Re: Anti-Semitism [3] From: Douglas Lanier <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 17:15:21 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0259 Re: R3's "amorous looking-glass" [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter T. Hadorn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 09:42:59 -0600 Subject: 9.0254 Re: Anti-Semitism Comment: RE: SHK 9.0254 Re: Anti-Semitism I found Jacob Goldberg's response overly selective in its focus. When I teach *Merchant* I suggest that the play as a whole is intentionally unsatisfying because we can't find ANYBODY to like with the exception (I think, significantly) of old Gobbo (a helpless/hapless father who cares deeply about his child and who is only abused by him). A few examples: Antonio, the "Merchant" of the play, would gladly abuse and spit on Shylock again if he had the chance (1.3). Bassanio may be after Portia only for her money (specifically, his exchange with Antonio in 1.1). The same goes for Lorenzo for Jessica. Talk about cheating fathers, Portia may very well have provided Bassanio with the necessary clues as to which casket to choose (to be sure, it's a director's choice, but there are a number verbal clues that could be played to indicate that she does just that). And then there is her cruel cat-and-mouse exchange in the trial scene. Sure, she gives Shylock an opportunity to show mercy, but then she gives everyone the impression that Antonio is going to be killed (the scales are ready, Antonio bares his chest, and she asks if a doctor is ready). Only after this long tease does she reveal her hand. Why, I ask, doesn't she do this the moment she first enters the scene? So to say that Jessica is a villain because she is a Jew (and I admit that this is not exactly what Goldberg said), is to imply-falsely-that the others are good because they are Christians. They aren't. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Frank Whigham <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 11:25:04 -0600 Subject: 9.0258 Re: Anti-Semitism Comment: Re: SHK 9.0258 Re: Anti-Semitism Re Leah's turquoise: WS makes the thing "blown" on the honeymoon *unusual* (i.e., not just "cash"), specifically detailed, in two seemingly meaningful ways: 1) it has some kind of relic or heirloom status, whoever Leah is; it's time-loaded; 2) it is traded for a monkey. Shylock's reaction seems to me to be a wail of personal grief, activated by the juxtaposition of the two attributes, which strike me as contrastive. If it's not a (special, consecrated) relic of Leah, I don't know what her name is there for (though there may well be other answers). Trading a jewel for a monkey seems complex, if not opaque. Perhaps the monkey is a quasi-homunculus, a fake human, and thus a comment of some kind on Jessica's own rank/religion shape-shifting (also present in her boy's disguise). Perhaps the degrading (if it is) trade is meant to show some kind of psychic violence on Jessica's part. (I habitually teach this in conjunction with her earlier balcony statement "I'll make fast the doors and be with you straight," exhibiting a residual "fast-bind, fast find" nominally Jewish trait even as she breaks away.) The flinging away of a precious (and female-line) family jewel (in this complexly uncomfortable and transgressive marriage) seems to go, semiotically speaking, somewhere beyond youthful high-spirited prodigality of the sort we find usual in honeymood behavior, seems to me. Surely at least some of it is an ostentatious (well, maybe not; maybe just self-directed) exhibition of "Christian" belonging, open-handedness, anti-grasping (thus partly but clearly anti-semitic in my view), etc. Anyway, I quite agree with Bill Godshalk that such high spirits are there to expect. I just wonder about the Leah/monkey framing of the jewel. Frank Whigham >yes, the two kids >(I take them as very young lovers) are improvident and blow all the >money on their honeymoon. I realize that they should have considered >investing wisely in blue chip stocks, but they're young and they don't. >And, yes, Jessica and Lorenzo are dirty, rotten scoundrels. But maybe >some auditors really don't mind when the scoundrels get away with the >cash, and maybe some auditors don't think that the marriage of Jessica >and Lorenzo is doomed to failure. > >Leah may not be Shylock's wife. She is not so identified in the text, >only in the footnotes. > >Yours, Bill Godshalk [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Douglas Lanier <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 17:15:21 -0500 Subject: 9.0259 Re: R3's "amorous looking-glass" Comment: Re: SHK 9.0259 Re: R3's "amorous looking-glass" Might the phrase "amorous looking glass" in performance be relatively indistinguishable for a casual listener (someone not following a text) from the phrase "amorous looking lass"? I wouldn't emend the text to reflect that possibility, but I do think that a listener might easily hear it (or at least hear an interestingly productive ambiguity). Cheers, Douglas LanierThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0267 Friday, 27 March 1998. [1] From: Dana Spradley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 09:27:00 -0800 (PST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0261 Re: SHAKSPER Description [2] From: Nick Kind <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 18:11:50 +0000 Subj: Re: SHK 9.0247 Announcing ArdenNet [3] From: Ed Peschko <epeschko@den-mdev1> Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 11:50:52 -0700 (MST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0261 Arden arrogance [4] From: Belinda Johnston <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 10:30:24 +1100 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 9.0247 Announcing ArdenNet [5] From: Tim Richards <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 10:21:42 +1000 Subj: Arden.net description of SHAKSPER [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dana Spradley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 09:27:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: 9.0261 Re: SHAKSPER Description Comment: Re: SHK 9.0261 Re: SHAKSPER Description Though but a lurker on SHAKSPER, I heartily agree with Marilyn Bonomi. Unfortunately, Arden's academic snobbery extends to almost every other participatory Shakespeare site on the Web, where the customary panoply of peer review to ensure the "highest academic standards" is being recreated ad nauseum. Surely even academics have something better to do with their time than forge new Web-based eyes of the needle through which the untenured must pass on their way toward professional salvation? Still, I can understand the motivations for such exclusivity. I once more or less inactively maintained a Web site (www.shakespeare.com) where my (foolish?) goal was to democratize the appreciation, interpretation, and public discussion of Shakespeare. But alas, the volume of traffic from students simply posting their essay assignments and hoping to get a ghostwrite for free proved overwhelming - for me... Hardy, on the other hand, is to be congratulated on finding just the right balance between openness and seriousness in admitting people to the SHAKSPER list. Anyone with enough gumption to write a brief essay about their interest in Shakespeare is accepted into the fold. And that, combined with all the long hours he must put in collating and moderating the traffic, seems plenty to keep discussion here at a very high level - if anything, I find it a little too high, rather than the reverse. Maybe the Arden editor or his employer (a subsidiary of The Thompson Corporation, an evil media empire focused almost exclusively on generating 20% annual return for its owner that took over Information Access Company when I worked there) is simply jealous of the competition? "ArdenNet is the place to come on the Internet for all those interested in Shakespeare scholarship. No other resource like it exists" - sure seems like they want to corner the market on this kind of forum. Still - at least they're doing a lot of what I only had the capacity to dream of doing, in their fashion. --Dana (formerlyThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nick Kind <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 18:11:50 +0000 Subject: 9.0247 Announcing ArdenNet Comment: Re: SHK 9.0247 Announcing ArdenNet With relation to Marilyn Bonomi's comments: As the person in charge of ArdenNet, I commissioned Gabriel Egan to write a review of Shakespeare sites for research on the Internet. However, as I have made clear within ArdenNet, his article does not necessarily reflect the views of the Arden Shakespeare or myself, but his own. ArdenNet is designed to be a moderated place for scholarly debate where people can discuss the merits of SHAKSPER and any other issues that derive from the resources we are providing within ArdenNet. It is not, however, designed to be exclusive. Indeed, we have a Teaching section whose purpose is to encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas between high school teachers and university-level academics. Please see my "About Us" section in ArdenNet for more details. I trust this clears up any misunderstandings. Nicholas Kind Electronic Acquisitions Editor The Arden ShakespeareThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Peschko <epeschko@den-mdev1> Date: Thursday, 26 Mar 1998 11:50:52 -0700 (MST) Subject: 9.0261 Arden arrogance Comment: Re: SHK 9.0261 Arden arrogance > >"The electronic mailing list SHAKSPER includes many eminent scholars as > >its members, but unfortunately also has many high school and > >undergraduate students and amateurs. It has suffered increasing > >trivialisation as Internet access has spread beyond academia. An > >unmoderated Shakespeare Usenet newsgroup exists but its discussions > >rarely rise above high school level." Whoa... I missed that particular piece of arrogance! As *another* amateur myself, I've noticed that insightful comments come from all quarters; high-school students, professors, graduates, under-graduates, even lowly computer consultants... And more to the point, I've noticed that BS comes from all quarters as well. How dare they assume that narrowness of focus is the end-all be-all? Cross-pollination of ideas is what is great about the electronic forum. Without it, people of all types tend to become in-bred in their ideas. And as long as there is a good editor in place to divert spam, the 'signal-to-noise' ratio can be kept relatively high. Or perhaps the editors of ArdenNet believe in a warped version of the 'Great Chain of Being' to suit their own fancy? Ed [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Belinda Johnston <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 10:30:24 +1100 (EST) Subject: 9.0247 Announcing ArdenNet Comment: Re: SHK 9.0247 Announcing ArdenNet I'm with Marilyn on this one. I may well be an academic but I think it's pure unadulterated snobbery to consider the input of "high school and undergraduate students and amateurs" valueless. I haven't been active on this list for a while but in the past I've had debates on the list with people whose experience of Shakespeare comes from a broad variety of contexts and this has allowed me to rethink some of my own assumptions. The notion that academics represent a 'non-trivial' constituency on the list is laughable: one only needs to look at the Postmodernism thread... Rather than unsubscribing from Arden, Marilyn, perhaps we should initiate some discussion there of the notion that valuable Shakespeare discussion only emanates from a privileged, highly educated elite few? I've only just signed up for ArdenNet but I'd be happy to go back and visit and help stir up some debate! In solidarity, Belinda [5]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tim Richards <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 27 Mar 1998 10:21:42 +1000 Subject: Arden.net description of SHAKSPER Marilyn Bonomi wrote: >Do other SHAKSPERians feel that the list should be reserved for >"scholars" and the rest of us should at best be allowed to lurk on the >sidelines observing the debate? Or do we actually have something to say >that can stimulate discussion even from those lofty "scholars" Ardenites >seem to find the only worthy participants? I thought the Arden dismissal of SHAKSPER was quite insulting, and an excellent example of why Shakespeare is often viewed by the masses as the property of snobs in ivory towers. What arrogance. Tim Richards.