December
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0690 Wednesday, 24 December 2008 From: Kevin De Ornellas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 26 Nov 2008 14:02:37 +0000 Subject: BBC: Real Skull Used for RSC's 'Hamlet' [Editor's Note: I will continue in a few days with the submissions for threads that I have not gotten to as of yet. --HMC] Page last updated at 10:57 GMT, Wednesday, 26 November 2008 Bequeathed skull stars in Hamlet The skull held aloft by actor David Tennant in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet was a real one, it has been revealed. Pianist Andre Tchaikowsky left his skull to the RSC when he died in 1982 in the hope it would be used on stage. But since his death at the age of 46, it had only been used in rehearsals. Tennant held it on stage during the famous "Alas, poor Yorick" scene in 22 performances at the Courtyard Theatre, in Stratford-upon-Avon. THE STORY OF THE SKULL October 1979 - Mr Tchaikowsky writes his will, bequeathing his skull to the RSC June 1982 - He dies of cancer, aged 46 July 1982 - Terry Hands, the RSCs artistic director, accepts the bequest August 1982 - Mr Tchaikowsky's unusual bequest is reported in The Times 1982-1984 - The skull spends two years on the roof of an RSC building to be 'aired' 1984 - The skull is used for a photo session with actor Roger Rees to promote that season's production of Hamlet 1989 - Mark Rylance rehearses with the skull, but a cast is used for the performances August 2008 - Mr Tchaikowsky's wish to appear in Shakespeare's play Hamlet as the skull of Yorick is finally realised The Doctor Who star has been lauded for his performance as Hamlet since it opened in Shakespeare's home town in August. But it was not revealed that Tennant used a real skull in the play's most famous scene. Mr Tchaikowsky, an acclaimed composer and concert pianist, died of cancer in 1982 aged 46 and donated his body for medical science. In his will he wrote that his skull "shall be offered by the institution receiving my body to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in theatrical performance". Since then it has only been used in rehearsals because no actor felt comfortable enough using it on stage in front of an audience. In 1989 actor Mark Rylance rehearsed with it for a while, but in the end it was decided using the skull for performances would not be appropriate. Instead, Rylance used a cast of Mr Tchaikowsky's skull, and the real thing was returned to the props department, where it resided in a tissue-lined box for almost 20 years. It remained there until Greg Doran, who directed Tennant in Hamlet, retrieved it for his production. "It was sort of a little shock tactic. Though, of course, to some extent that wears off and it's just Andre, in his box," Doran told the Daily Telegraph. He added that he did not want the story to get out before Hamlet opened. He said: "I thought it would topple the play and it would be all about David acting with a real skull." It is thought the skull will also be used when Hamlet transfers to London on 9 December. RSC curator David Howells: "We hope Mr Tchaikowsky would have been pleased that his final wish has been realised in Gregory Doran's acclaimed production of Hamlet." Kevin De Ornellas University of Ulster _______________________________________________________________ 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 19.0689 Wednesday, 24 December 2008 From: Edna Boris <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 13 Dec 2008 12:47:13 -0500 Subject: Twelfth Night Allusion The opening sentence of John Cassidy's Dec. 2, 2008, New Yorker article, "Anatomy of a Meltdown, Ben Bernanke and the financial crisis" alludes to the "letter" that Malvolio reads in Twelfth Night. Cassidy writes, "Some are born radical. Some are made radical. And some have radicalism thrust upon them." _______________________________________________________________ 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 19.0688 Wednesday, 24 December 2008 From: Alan Horn <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Wednesday, 17 Dec 2008 08:11:00 -0500 Subject: New Yorker Talk of the Town Piece: Retrying Shylock's Case RETRIAL by Lizzie Widdicombe DECEMBER 22, 2008 The other night at the Cardozo School of Law, a group of distinguished legal minds got together to settle a dispute over a loan default. The lender wasn't Citibank or Countrywide -- it was Shylock, from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." His last trial, English majors may recall, didn't go so well. (He was publicly humiliated, and was forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity; the authorities handed over his estate and half his money to his enemies.) Modern audiences tend to view his treatment at the hands of the Venetian court as unfair -- the scholar and critic A. David Moody wrote that "it seems to involve a reversal of the right order of things" -- and so Richard Weisberg, a professor of law and literature at Cardozo ("Poethics," "When Lawyers Write"), decided to give him an appeal. "Lawyers were one of the first groups, along with theatre directors, to see Shylock's position," Weisberg, who takes a pro-Shylock reading of the play, said last week. "Shylock really has the best lines -- there isn't a lot of argument about that -- but in the nineteenth century a prominent German legal philosopher, Rudolf von Jhering, was among the first to argue that he actually had the better legal case." This was an exhibition hearing (Weisberg arranged a similar one for Melville's Billy Budd in 2006), but the legal lineup was extremely legit. Hearing the case: the First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams; Jed S. Rakoff, a federal district judge in New York; Justice Dianne T. Renwick, of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court; the federal appeals-court judge Richard Posner; the Columbia literature professor Julie Peters; Bernhard Schlink, the law professor and novelist; and Anthony Julius, best known as Princess Diana's divorce lawyer. The appeal was held in the Cardozo moot courtroom, before a sold-out crowd that seemed to be equal parts lawyers and Shakespeare nuts. Actors did a CliffsNotes version of the play, focussing on the trial scene. Quick refresher: Renaissance Venice, a different era in Judeo-Christian relations. Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, lends three thousand ducats to the Christian merchant Antonio, so that Antonio's friend can use it to woo the wealthy Portia. Shylock, who hates Antonio, demands a "pound of flesh" as collateral. Some things go wrong, and everyone ends up in court, where Portia, disguised as a doctor of law, gets Antonio off the hook and gets Shylock charged with attempted murder. The staging was contemporary: Antonio wore a suit; Shylock carried a briefcase. After a short reception -- sushi, wine, California wraps -- the seven judges took the bench to hear arguments from lawyers for Shylock and Antonio. They were dressed as if for brunch (sweaters, turtlenecks), and a few jotted down notes. Michael Braff, a partner at Kaye Scholer, argued, on Shylock's behalf, that his client should get his money back, plus interest. (He did not press for "specific performance"-the pound of flesh that Shylock had been shouting about in the play. "After four hundred years, my client has had time to reconsider," Braff said.) Daniel Kornstein, a partner at Kornstein Veisz Wexler & Pollard, represented Antonio, and he attacked the validity of the pound-of-flesh agreement. He brandished a detailed brief that he had written, which compared the agreement to "a tainted C.D.O." and Shylock to a predatory lender. "If it please the court," Kornstein said, "this is a case about an illegal contract." "What's illegal about it?" Judge Rakoff interrupted. "As you well know, there is a virtual obesity epidemic in this country, and to remove a pound of flesh is wholly to the public good." "Not by a knife wielded by your sworn enemy," Kornstein said. He brought up Shylock's ulterior motives -- "the deep hatred" he had for Antonio. "What does that have to do with anything?" Floyd Abrams asked. "Why should we even consider that in deciding whether to enforce the contract?" "It adds color," Kornstein said. He went back to the pound of flesh. "The contract, on its face, contains a clause that is such a penalty that no civilized society-not even Venice, New York, here -- would enforce it." A woman in the audience called out, "They would in Venice, California." To skip, "Law & Order" style, to the rulings: the judges were split, but they came out, five to two, in Shylock's favor. Schlink, Rakoff, Abrams, Peters, and Renwick said that he deserved to be repaid his three thousand ducats, though they differed on the question of interest. (Schlink, on the pound of flesh: "It was Antonio's obligation to deliver," but "our public policy forbids enforcing a contract in a way that enforcement leads to one party's death.") Posner and Julius voted to let Antonio keep the money. Portia, admired by many readers for her "quality of mercy" speech, was reprimanded by the judges for impersonating a doctor of law. "The trial was a travesty," Abrams said, of Shakespeare's litigation scene. "Beautiful sometimes, funny sometimes, and ugly sometimes, but that judgment is not something that we sitting here today can enforce." Posner said, "I'm particularly critical of Antonio's conduct. His failure to insure his cargoes was completely irresponsible." Renwick said that the whole thing made her think of the rickety deals that got us into the current financial mess -- "the dangers of going into a contract with someone who has covert ideas and interests" -- and suggested that all the parties were at fault. Posner agreed: "This is one of those cases in which we've just heard very fine lawyers argue the cases, but the litigants are all disreputable people. This is often true, particularly in the twenty-first century." _______________________________________________________________ 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 19.0687 Wednesday, 24 December 2008 From: Al Magary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 02 Dec 2008 23:34:13 -0800 Subject: Blind Shakespeare William Shakespeare might have left London and stopped writing three years before he died because he had lost his sight, a playwright has suggested. By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent Telegraph, 03 Dec 2008 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3542702/Shakespeare-left-London-and-stopped-writing-because-he-went-blind.html Rick Thomas said he thought years of writing by candlelight would have left Shakespeare struggling to see. He has just written a play, For All Time, about why the bard left London for Stratford-upon-Avon in 1613. It is question has vexed scholars for years. Thomas said he had came to the conclusion out of personal experience - that writing plays for years on end had taken its toll on his vision. With the conditions Shakespeare was working under, he thought his sight would have deteriorated much faster. Thomas was commissioned to write For All Time by The Theatre By the Lake in Kendal for its summer season next year. He said: "I started off thinking about how Shakespeare would spend his working day, He would have been rehearsing in the morning, he would have been performing in the afternoon. "So if he was going to write at all it would have been in the evening. So for six months of the year that would have been in candlelight. "If you think about it in those terms it would have been virtually impossible for him to get to the age of 48 and still have 20-20 vision," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He added: "I just can't see that Shakespeare could have had that clear vision." After leaving London Shakespeare did not write any more plays and died three years later in 1616. Thomas also came up with an alternative theory - that Shakespeare was frightened of staying in London in case his health failed at the speed it left his father. "When William was a teenager, his father John 'went through a strange situation when he lost a lot of money very quickly'. "I wonder if one of the reasons might be that he was a diabetic, lost a lot of money and couldn't work, and William was worried about that happening to him later on in life," he said. Stanley Wells, chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said the blindness theory was an interesting one. But he thought the playwright could have left London after being traumatised by the Globe theatre burning down in 1613. He also cast doubt on the assumption that Shakespeare lived full-time in London before moving back home. "He didn't exactly depart from London. I think that's a very simplistic way of putting it," he said. "He started spending more and more time in Stratford, it would appear, but I think he spent far more time in Stratford [throughout his career] than has been acknowledged." He stressed: "He never had a house in London - he only had lodgings there - but he had the second-biggest house in Stratford." Little historical documentation exists about the last years of Shakespeare's life and the reason why he stopped writing remains a mystery. But Mr Wells said Shakespeare must have been able to see well enough at the very end of his life to sign his "elaborate" signature. Five of the six surviving signatures come from his "last years of his life," he said. "He was able to see well enough to sign his quite elaborate signature within two months of dying," he argued. Thomas said his play was not meant to be a historical account, but to put forward "lots of reasons why Shakespeare wanted to leave London." "I plumped for the blindness in the end as the main reason but the truth is we just do not know and the truth is we will probably never know," he said. _______________________________________________________________ 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 19.0686 Wednesday, 24 December 2008 From: Austin SHAKESPEARE <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 1 Dec 2008 19:35:34 +0100 Subject: Set the World on Fire with Shakespeare November 21, 2008 Dear Shakespeare Friend: We are pleased to report that Austin Shakespeare's debut of Macbeth at the Long Center was a "super success," receiving excellent reviews and performing before sold out houses. Building on this momentum, we are focusing on our outreach programs for the youth of Central Texas by offering workshops and school performances. By celebrating the language of Shakespeare, young people not only improve their vocabulary and reading comprehension, they simply fall in love with the beauty of the English language. The more deeply our actors and directors can work with young people, the more success we can achieve. To this end, we are committed to doubling the number of hours spent with students this year Shakespeare causes everyone he touches to stretch to become nobler. Both young people and adults feel this. The unique spirit of youth -- that "anything is possible:" -- lives in us all. We need your support to help make this happen. We know that the financial picture is shaky, but particularly in an economic downturn, we have found that the more each contributor can give within their means, the more our supporters feel that quality education for students is being supported and nourished for the future. With a contribution, you can make it possible for Austin Shakespeare to visit more schools more often, reaching more students. And you can feel confident that you'll be bringing students the best our culture has to offer, the grandeur of Shakespeare. Sincerely, Boyce Cabaniss President Ann Ciccolella Artistic Director Alex B. Alford Managing Director _______________________________________________________________ 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.