December
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2046 Tuesday, 13 December 2005 From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 10 Dec 2005 19:42:57 -0500 Subject: TCM Shakespeare Film Festival Two stand-outs are the 1912 silent Cleopatra and the Stuart Burge Othello (out of print and only on vhs in the US). MND is only on vhs too, so this is a chance to TiVo it and make your own DVD. Turner Movie Channel December 14 Wednesday Shakespeare 6:00 AM Silent Shakespeare (1908) A collection of seven silent shorts based on the plays of William Shakespeare, including King John (1899), King Lear (1910) and Richard III (1911). 89m. 7:30 AM Cleopatra (1912) In this silent film, Cleopatra shakes the Roman Empire with her legendary affair with Marc Antony. Helen Gardner, Pearl Sindelar, Harley Knoles. D: Charles Gaskill. 88m. 9:00 AM Othello (1922) In this silent film, a famed general is led astray by jealousy and an evil underling. Emil Jannings, Lya De Putti, Werner Krauss. D: Dimitri Buchowetzki. BW 80m. 10:30 AM A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) Shakespeare's classic about two pairs of lovers and an amateur actor who get mixed up with fairies. James Cagney, Dick Powell, Mickey Rooney. D: Max Reinhardt, William Dieterle. BW 143m. CC 1:00 PM As You Like It (1936) Film version of Shakespeare's comedy of a young woman who disguises herself as a man to win the attention of the one she loves. Laurence Olivier, Elisabeth Bergner, Henry Ainley. D: Paul Czinner. BW 96m. 3:00 PM Romeo And Juliet (1936) Shakespeare's classic tale of young lovers from feuding families. Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, John Barrymore. D: George Cukor. BW 125m. CC DVS 5:30 PM Julius Caesar (1953) An all-star adaptation of Shakespeare's classic about Julius Caesar's assassination and its aftermath. Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud. D: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. BW 121m. CC DVS 8:00 PM Henry V (1944) Shakespeare's tale of the warrior king who learns the meaning of heroism during a daring invasion of France. Sir Laurence Olivier, Robert Newton, Leslie Banks. D: Sir Laurence Olivier C 137m. 10:30 PM Hamlet (1948) The melancholy Dane flirts with insanity while trying to prove his uncle murdered his father. Laurence Olivier, Eileen Herlie, Jean Simmons. D: Laurence Olivier. BW 154m. 1:15 AM Othello (1965) A famed general convinces himself that his wife is unfaithful. Laurence Olivier, Frank Finlay, Maggie Smith. D: Stuart Burge. C 166m. LBX 4:15 AM Orson Welles: The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice (1952) The legendary Moor of Venice battles his growing suspicions that his wife is unfaithful. Orson Welles, Michael MacLiammoir, Suzanne Cloutier. D: Orson Welles. BW 93m. _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2045 Tuesday, 13 December 2005 From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 Subject: Various Ramblings I did not edit SHAKSPER digests yesterday because I had three different appointments about my disability. I just spent an hour and a half deleting close to 1,700 spams, viruses, and other non-list related e-mails when I really should be grading papers so that I can start my holiday shopping. Instead, now I feel compelled to write yet another editor's message to the membership, which will take me an inordinate amount of time to be tactful. In the past more than fifteen years, I have given a great deal of my life to delivering SHAKSPER to subscribers. I have explained that for the first years of its existence SHAKSPER was almost exclusively an academic list with scholars constituting 95% of its members. Then the Internet revolution got underway and Internet access is approaching universal in some parts of the world and now significant numbers of SHAKSPER members are enthusiasts. Clearly, some members are happy with SHAKSPER exactly as it is, but I am not. It hurts me every time I get notification that another young or established scholar is leaving the list. It hurts me when interesting scholarly postings are ignored and others that simply drive me crazy thrive. It bothers me that appropriate discourse for some appears to be ad hominem attacks on the poster, especially if they disagree with his politics. Along these lines, I should have simply sent Richard Burt's pop Shakespeare citation and not have posted the inappropriate paranoid responses to it. I have received even more (one particularly over-the-top), but the only submission I am sending out is this one: +++++ From: Arthur Lindley <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 09:09:48 +0800 Subject: 16.2041 Former Soldier Cites H5 Comment: RE: SHK 16.2041 Former Soldier Cites H5 I'm not alone, am I, in finding this post offensive and silly? If you're not interested in pop Shakespeares, Tom, use the delete key. That's what I've been doing with 'Lions and Tigers and Wagers'. I haven't felt the need to write in and insult the participants for having interests different from mine. Arthur Lindley +++++ I have been looking for solutions to my dilemma, but nothing seems to be adequate. Concerning my specific-purpose discussion groups proposal Michael Luskin write the following. +++++ From: Michael B. Luskin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 14:50:54 EST Subject: 16.2022 Reminder Comment: Re: SHK 16.2022 Reminder Or maybe this belongs to the SHK 16.2037 QuickTopic and Yahoo! Groups thread... Or maybe we should start a yahoogroup to discuss yahoogroups. I am the owner and moderator of five yahoogroups, and belong to several more. On a few occasions, people on this list Hardy in particular, have complained about spam. A fine place to harvest addresses is a yahoogroups listserv, and I SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE. Having a dozen listservs means that we have a dozen archives, and the yahoogroup archive search capability is rudimentary. I have watched this thread unhappily. The idea of going to many yahoogroups listservs to discuss this or that is distasteful. Furthermore, we will then have to know which listserv is meant for which particular point. What if we miss the name of the yahoogroup, and don't know where things disappeared to? Since we have several Hamlet discussions going on right now, does that mean we will have several listservs, one for each, how will we keep track of all of them? And what if they start to spawn other discussions? What if threads start to interweave? What is the purpose of shaksper going to be? Announcements, quick points of information? Talk about becoming unmanageable! In addition, I don't know what it means for a thread to reach the end of its useful life. When threads becomes too tedious or too contentious, I am quite capable of clicking delete, and everyone else is as well. I think that we are spending too much time worrying about managing problems that don't have to be managed. There are plenty of posts that are uninteresting, or too scholarly for me, and I simply don't read them. What is the issue? I think it would be far better if Hardy appointed a sub-editor for certain threads, if it becomes too difficult for him to manage them. I don't see an enormous change in volume now, so it seems to me that the editor's time commitment should be the same, no matter what. Michael B. Luskin +++++ I never wanted to be anything more than an Internet Louis Marder. Certainly, I don't want to be an Internet Oprah, Jerry Springer, or Rush Limbaugh, which is what I sometime feel I have become. In two weeks, SHAKSPER will enter its seventeenth year. I plan to take a break starting December 20 through New Year to spend some time with my family. This message has taken me far too long to compose, so after I post an announcement from Richard Burt that is time-sensitive, I am going to call it a day for SHAKSPER and go to my pharmacy to pick up a refill of my pain medication. Hardy _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Webpage <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2044 Friday, 9 December 2005 [1] From: Chris Whatmore <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 19:30:09 +0000 Subj: RE: SHK 16.2013 Living Characters [2] From: Elliott Stone <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 20:04:37 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 16.2030 Living Characters Penultimate [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chris Whatmore <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 19:30:09 +0000 Subject: 16.2013 Living Characters Comment: RE: SHK 16.2013 Living Characters Returning (I think) to something like the original subject of this thread before the Friday deadline, there was an interesting passage in Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech - which, unusually for him, included a number of personal observations on the creative process of play writing: "It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort. So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time." Surely it is this "ambiguous transaction" between "flesh and blood" and "language in art" that is the very engine of Pinter's, Shakespeare's or any dramatist's enterprise; to argue that one side of the transaction is more important or more 'real' than the other seems somehow to miss the point. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Elliott Stone <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 20:04:37 -0500 Subject: 16.2030 Living Characters Penultimate Comment: Re: SHK 16.2030 Living Characters Penultimate Joseph Egert might be on to something when he asks "Is the relationship between Norway and Claudius a little too cozy?". Is not this a theme in the Tempest? Best, Elliott H. Stone _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2043 Friday, 9 December 2005 [1] From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 08 Dec 2005 13:59:33 -0500 Subj: Re: SHK 16.2028 Gertrude-Ophelia Penultimate [2] From: John Reed <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 09 Dec 2005 04:07:00 +0000 Subj: Re: Gertrude-Ophelia [3] From: John Reed <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 09 Dec 2005 04:43:47 +0000 Subj: Re: Gertrude-Ophelia [4] From: S. L Kasten <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 09 Dec 2005 17:04:41 +0200 Subj: Re: SHK 16.2028 Gertrude-Ophelia Penultimate [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 08 Dec 2005 13:59:33 -0500 Subject: 16.2028 Gertrude-Ophelia Penultimate Comment: Re: SHK 16.2028 Gertrude-Ophelia Penultimate >DW shows lost passages in the Q2, nowhere is there mention of the >loss of an entire *scene* I suspect that "lost passages" is intended to refer to Dover Wilson's contention that Hamlet was present in II.ii and overheard Claudius and Polonius plan to loose Ophelia upon him, even though the stage directions show no hint of that, thus explaining Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia in the Nunnery Scene. To my mind, this working backwards to answer the question is nearly as great a sin as hypothesizing lost passages to clarify Gertrude's murder of Ophelia. In fact, the text we have shows how Hamlet came to understand that Ophelia was spying on him. Dowden came closest to this "Ha ha!" moment, but no one else seems to have noticed. But this is a subject for another thread. [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Reed <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 09 Dec 2005 04:07:00 +0000 Subject: Re: Gertrude-Ophelia Philip Tomposki: >The staging of the director and the performance of the actors >ultimately determine the interpretation. But acknowledging that does >mean that you have license to construe the play in a way not supported >by the text. Perhaps, but they (directors and actors) do that anyway, even more: they offer up versions that do not represent the text in rather gross fashion, by cutting out large chunks of it (that's *changing* the text, not just not supporting it), especially in Hamlet, as Eleanor Prosser has observed. I could go on and on about this, but I won't (whew). To Todd Lidh, your observations are apt, but I was just kidding, silly. No one on this thread has been rude, unless it was myself, certainly not the divine Sara. I apologize for giving the wrong impression, and for any other misconception in this area. The tone of the discussion has been much less heated than I expected, and I want to thank Hardy, everyone who responded (as well as those who lurked) for their forbearance and patience with my heretical ideas. I'm also sorry I couldn't respond to everyone on every point, due to lack of time and skill on my part. One other minor matter. It was reported that I wrote, "But to defile someone with temptation, that's the funniest thing there is." I actually wrote, "But to defile someone with temptation, that's the funniest thing there is." They both work, almost like some of the Q/F variants in Othello. But I meant funniest, meaning "most fun." [3]------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Reed <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 09 Dec 2005 04:43:47 +0000 Subject: Re: Gertrude-Ophelia Oh, wait; when I said I was only kidding I meant in relation to identifying the forum as a den of vipers and Sara being rude. The rest of it -- Gertrude killing Ophelia -- I meant that. [4]------------------------------------------------------------- From: S. L Kasten <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 09 Dec 2005 17:04:41 +0200 Subject: 16.2028 Gertrude-Ophelia Penultimate Comment: Re: SHK 16.2028 Gertrude-Ophelia Penultimate It is clear that there is not enough here for an indictment, let alone conviction. But I still have a problem with "I will not speak with her": six stressed monosyllables, the emphatic "will not". It could have been for example a more lyric, iambic "I do not wish to speak with her." I see here no psychotophobia as suggested by one correspondent. I see here no "sweets to the sweet" or "I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife...". I see here no appropriate pity, as noted by the Gentleman or whoever. Had this line been in the performance on which Q1 was based it surely would not have been forgotten by the anonymous stenographer. It is too strong. Is it bardolatry to suggest that Shakespeare chose and ordered his words sparingly and meticulously. What was S.'s intention if not to describe Gertrude's state of mind? Please don't insult him by saying it was a chance throw-away line with no purpose. Best wishes, Syd Kasten _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.2042 Friday, 9 December 2005 From: Donald Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 8 Dec 2005 15:34:13 -0600 Subject: 16.2027 Lions and Tigers and Wagers...oh my... Comment: RE: SHK 16.2027 Lions and Tigers and Wagers...oh my... One last comment before this sinks beneath the waves. I wrote: "I'm not sure just what these early London years are. What firm dates do we have for them?" William L Davis responded: "I'm not sure we do have firm dates, at least as far as Shakespeare's arrival in London is concerned." Just so. I think it very unwise to try to make firm judgments without firm facts to base them on. If you are merely speculating ("What if . . ."), you should identify the process as such. Even so, some of the infirm facts that provide the groundwork for your speculations would be helpful. According to your sources, when do we know absolutely that WS was in London, when probably there, and when possibly there? Cheers, don _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net> DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor assumes no responsibility for them.