October
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.503 Monday, 26 October 2015
From: Paul Hamilton <
Date: October 25, 2015 at 9:11:10 AM EDT
Subject: KiSSiT: Shakespeare and the State of Exception
Kingston Shakespeare Seminar (KiSS)
KiSSiT: SHAKESPEARE AND THE STATE OF EXCEPTION CFP
Following the success of its conference on ‘Shakespeare and Waste’, Kingston Shakespeare Seminar in Theory seeks participants for a one-day conference on ‘Shakespeare and the State of Exception’ to be held on Saturday 19 December, 2015 at the Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames.
The concept of ‘the state of exception’, associated with Carl Schmitt’s book Political Theology (1922), and recently revisited by Giorgio Agamben in The State of Exception (2005), refers to the total or partial suspension of the juridical order.
Far from being a mere footnote in legal studies, ‘the state of exception’ became the basis for the notorious Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which Hitler used to authorise a twelve year state of emergency in Nazi Germany, starting on March 23, 1933.
Schmitt theorised that such a suspension of law is intimately connected with a concept of sovereignty whose origin is not merely political, but also religious. He called this ‘political theology’.
‘Political theology’ has had a long and important history in Shakespeare studies beginning with Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology and Walter Benjamin’s Origin of the German Tragic Drama.
Literary critics such as Julia Reinhard Lupton, Debora Shuger, Victoria Kahn, Richard Wilson, and Eric L. Santner have recently revitalised and deepened the discussion of ‘political theology’ in the Renaissance, to explore the relationship between sovereignty, religion, citizenship, and state sanctioned violence in Earl Modern Europe in light of theoretical contributions by Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben.
Regarding—or disregarding—this context, we invite abstracts for 20-minute presentations on the topic of Shakespeare and the state of exception. Papers might consider, but are not limited to, the following topics and questions:
- Exploration of ontological or political ‘states’ of exceptionality and exceptionality in general in the works of Shakespeare.
- State or status of exceptionality as an epistemological or ethical category, for example otherness in adaptations and performances of Shakespeare, perhaps in relation to the 21st century discourse on immigrants and refugees.
- How is Shakespeare’s unique status as playwright entangled with issues of sovereignty and exceptionality? Consider, for example, Danny Boyle’s use of Shakespeare during the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Summer Olympic Games or the famous copy of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, called the Robben Island Bible, inscribed by Nelson Mandela in prison.
- The ‘state of exception’ is often described according to an apparent contradiction: it is a ‘suspension of the juridical order’ that is contained within that very order. How might Shakespeare’s conception of the Early Modern state be analysed in light of this complex topographical (inside / outside) metaphor?
- The concept of ‘necessity’ is, according to Agamben, frequently asserted as the foundation for the ‘state of exception’. Consider the concept of ‘necessity’ in relation to law, nature, and human action in the Early Modern period and in Shakespeare.
- Consider Early Modern political culture in relation to torture, surveillance, and extrajudicial imprisonment. How might these insights shed light on the continued ‘state of exception’ which justifies the ‘detainment’ of political prisoners in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp without due process?
- Did sex offences in the Early Modern period produce a state of ‘exception’ in perpetrator and victim? Consider, for example, The Rape of Lucrece – and its relationship both to suicide and the founding of Rome. Can such exceptionality give us insight into contemporary exceptional legal language surrounding sex offences, sex offender registries, and indefinite detention of sex criminals?
Please submit abstracts and brief CVs by emailing the organizers at kingstonshakespeareintheory@gmail.com before Friday 13 November, 2015.
Conference oganizers: Paul Hamilton, Timo Uotinen.
Further information: kingstonshakespeareintheory@gmail.com and kingstonshakespeareseminar.wordpress.com.
Paul Hamilton
PhD Shakespeare Institute,
University of Birmingham
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.502 Friday, 23 October 2015
[1] From: Jim Carroll <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 2:04:09 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Shakespeare's Sonnets
[2] From: Sidney Lubow <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 1:22:17 PM EDT
Subject: The Feathered Creatures of Shakespeare
[3] From: Lynne Kinder <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 6:07:20 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Sonnets
[4] From: Ian Steere <
Date: October 23, 2015 at 5:49:56 AM EDT
Subject: Shakespeare's Sonnets
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jim Carroll <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 2:04:09 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Shakespeare's Sonnets
Here is Shakespeare's sonnet 50:
How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say:
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed, being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side.
For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
Did I say something about projecting fantasies? By what stretch of the imagination does Peter Hadorn’s interpretation of the last few lines fit into the theme of this sonnet? Would any of Shakespeare’s potential readers in his time be able to interpret this sonnet as a 20th century sex fantasy? What audience did Shakespeare have mind for Hadorn’s sonnet 50 simultaneously with say, sonnet 18? To me, Hadorn’s interpretation is just another example of taking something out of context and making it mean whatever you want it to mean.
Here is Philip Sidney’s sonnet 98, written before Sidney’s death in 1586:
Ah bed, the field where joy’s peace some do see,
The field where all my thoughts to war be trained,
How is thy grace by my strange fortune stained!
How thy lee shores by my sighs stormed be!
With sweet soft shades thou oft invitest me
To steal some rest, but wretch I am constrained
(Spurred with Love’s spur, though galled and shortly reined
With Care’s hard hand) to turn and toss in thee.
While the black horrors of the silent night
Paint woe’s black face so lively to my sight,
That tedious leisure marks each wrinkled line:
But when Aurora leads out Phoebus’ dance
Mine eyes then only wink, for spite perchance,
That worms should have their Sun, and I want mine.
I'm afraid to know what Peter Hadorn think’s about “care’s hard hand”, or “love’s spur”. Was Sidney secretly relishing a masochistic sex fantasy with Penelope Devereux? To what lengths of absurdity is Peter Hadorn willing to go?
Here is Sidney's sonnet 49:
I on my horse, and Love on me doth try
Our horsemanships, while by strange work I prove
A horseman to my horse, a horse to Love,
And now man’s wrongs in me, poor beast, descry.
The reins wherewith my rider doth me tie,
Are humbled thoughts, which bit of reverence move,
Curbed in with fear, but with gilt boss above
Of hope, which makes it seem fair to the eye.
The wand is will. Thou, fancy, saddle art,
Girt fast by memory, and while I spur
My horse, he spurs with sharp desire my heart,
He sits me fast, however I do stir,
And now hath made me to his hand so right,
That in the manage myself takes delight.
Who exactly is that horse, spurring Sidney “with sharp desire”? And what is the nature of that “delight”? Inquiring minds want to know, but not me. I would say Shakespeare’s sonnet 50 is like most of his sonnets: just his take on a familiar theme.
Jim Carroll
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sidney Lubow <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 1:22:17 PM EDT
Subject: The Feathered Creatures of Shakespeare
Jim Carroll, why can’t you recognize what the bard is saying in his youthful dream instead of looking at irrelevant sonnets written by others. For heaven’s sake study the couplets that are the connections in the bard’s choo choo train. For God’s sake, you are on the wrong train. The bard, Will, is about to talk about the epilogue, The Phoenix and the Turtle, the Muse, as mother, the “treble-dated Crow” who breathed inspiration into his “spongy lungs” in the last part of A Lover’s Complaint. The Passionate Pilgrim, herself, “that Muse” kissed him too long and hard inspiring him and got too emotionally involved.
Look into The Passionate Pilgrim poetry and try to figure out why he wrote “thus smothered be” and changed it to “thus flattered be” in sonnet 138. Please notice that i stick to Shakespeare. And
Shakespeare Sonnet 143:
Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch
One of her feathered creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
So run'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind,
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind.
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
If thou turn back and my loud crying Stijl
.
You wrote, “The idea that some real person or persons is portrayed in the sonnets is belied by the fact that most of the sonnets are modeled on earlier efforts by other writers, and Shakespeare borrows phrases and lines lock stock and barrel for his own sonnets. For example, the “beauty’s rose” phrase in Shakespeare’s sonnet 1 is taken verbatim from Barnes’ sonnet 45.”
“The sonnets are in fact a potpourri of ideas governed by the central idea of mocking the conventions of romance in literature as they were conceived in his day. In my view, modern attempts to find real persons as the addressee trivialize his great literary achievement.”
Jim, give the bard some youthful credit, it is after all, his sexual dream with a woman, one who could conceivably create a “child.”
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Lynne Kinder <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 6:07:20 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Sonnets
I fail to see how Peter Hadorn (Oct 21st re Shakespeare’s Sonnets) can equate sonnet 50 with anal sex. I doubt that Shakespeare had any inkling that his work would be studied so diligently in the 21st century that he felt the need to think up pun after pun just to baffle his future readers. I think that the puns that are there are current references which people from the time would understand without consciously having to think about it, which is the way play and script writers write today. I am no academic or expert, just a keen enthusiast, but is it not remotely possible that the sonnet could be just what it seems to be? A man going somewhere he doesn’t want to go, from somewhere he doesn’t want to leave? Even if this is not so and I’m missing something, I truly believe that there is no way, the line, ‘My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.’ is indicative of anal sex, apart from anything else, it’s quite possible to have heterosexual sex from that position. However, I don’t believe that a sexual connotation to that line makes any sense. It does not have to be about sex just because it has the word ‘behind’ in it. Sometimes I really believe that people try to interpret too much.
Lynne Kinder.
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ian Steere <
Date: October 23, 2015 at 5:49:56 AM EDT
Subject: Shakespeare's Sonnets
Responding to Peter Hadorn’s invitation to comment (SHAKSPER, 22 October):
The underlying nature of a work should not be presumed without substantiation. I am not steeped in Sydney’s sonnets, but from what I have gleaned the question of autobiography (or not) remains open (in the absence of sufficient evidence either way). The primary theme of his sonnets appears to be one of frustrated love. To address the point made by Peter’s students: frustration is a more powerful driver of persistence than achievement - and one would expect many more sonnets when the poet’s motivation and/or inspiration remains perpetual.
As for Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the weight of evidence for much autobiography therein is now substantial. Some of that evidence has been brought out in this thread - by reference to material in which Shakespeare is indisputably speaking in his own voice. More is available if Peter or his students are interested. In summary, there is too much correlation between the content of the sonnets and abnormal history associated with the author for this phenomenon reasonably to be regarded as a fluke. By contrast, as also brought out earlier in this thread, there is nothing to show that the poems are substantially fiction.
Of course, the Sonnets are far more than declarations of love (sincere or otherwise). They contain servility, rebellion, reproach, appeals, complaints, humour, beauty, wit, infidelity, defensiveness, rejection and more. Underlying the quantity of the poems is, I suggest, the same driving force of frustration: that of a poet who tries with mixed success to curry favour with (and hence benefits from) a mercurial young patron who loves himself, the arts and minority sexual practices: a patron who ultimately matures and rejects one whom he sees as disloyal. It’s an extraordinary story - like the history which it parallels in considerable detail.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.501 Friday, 23 October 2015
[1] From: Steve Roth <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 3:08:43 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Turner Ham
[2] From: John Drakakis <
Date: October 23, 2015 at 6:56:58 AM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Turner Ham
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Steve Roth <
Date: October 22, 2015 at 3:08:43 PM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Turner Ham
My two cents on the NT/Cumberbatch/Turner Hamlet:
I agree with most everyone here. A very disappointing effort.
Expanding on Peter Holland: not just reassigning lines gratuitously but juggling the order of scenes, apparently under the impression that Turner knows more about constructing a compelling narrative structure than Shakespeare did. The story still got told, but these rejiggerings, at best, didn’t help anything. At worst, just showing off what to me was a meager understanding of the play’s tapestry. (To note: I don’t categorically object to any of this; one of the most impressive, moving, funny, and deeply-understood Hamlets I ever saw involved only three actors, and massive, wholesale reassignment of lines and scenes, every which way from Sunday. It was brilliant, and full of Aha! moments—even (especially?) for a Hamlet dweeb like me.)
Some very odd choices about what not to cut. Two examples, they gave us (almost?) all of the Hecuba and the Player King’s “Full thirtie times” speeches. Really? I like hearing them, but I’m not representative of the audience.
On the acting: there was a great deal of shouting in this show. Especially but not only Cumberbatch. I don’t need to school theatrical types here on this being a classically lame substitute for good acting. “...passion to tatters” and all that.
I thought there were some good artistic choices in depicting Hamlet’s manic, antic side. The massive, dark set created a (potentially) useful and effective, overpowering and oppressive atmosphere—which wasn’t taken advantage of.
My closing comment to my companion as the curtain came down: “I don’t think there’s a wet eye in the house.” It just wasn’t moving, at all. If Horatio’s “goodnight sweet prince...may flights of angels...” doesn’t elicit at least a (threatened) tear...for me, the production failed.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Drakakis <
Date: October 23, 2015 at 6:56:58 AM EDT
Subject: Re: SHAKSPER: Turner Ham
I have a degree of sympathy with Peter Holland’s account of the Lyndsey Turner Hamlet. I think that the best way of approaching it is to forget about the architecture of the play that Shakespeare wrote and to treat it as a cross between theatre and film. I rather liked Ciaran Hinds’ Claudius, and Anastasia Hille’s Gertrude, and I was surprised to find that I was more impressed than I expected to be with Cumberbatch’s Hamlet (better than David Tennant, I think). The set was interesting and versatile, but some of the subtleties of the play seem to have been lost on Turner. Why, for example cut the anonymous ‘Gentleman’s “Antiquity forgot, custom not known, the ratifiers and props of every word?” after having gone to such lengths to highlight the ‘language’ problem in the play?
I was irritated by omissions, re-ascriptions of speeches and parts of speeches, but the acting held my attention, and after a shaky start I found myself warming to the efforts of the actors. Jim Norton’s Polonius was good and Karl Johnson’s Ghost/Gravedigger was engaging and Sian Brooke’s Ophelia grew on me (despite the severe pruning of her lines). There are times (e.g. in the Mousetrap performance) when I thought I was in the middle of Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’, and some of Cumberbatch’s naturalistic touches occasionally made some sense of the dialogue. Horatio as nerd seems to me to have been a modernisation too far, and convinces me that there are very few directors that one can trust with Shakespeare these days.
This is a bit like the Michael Fassbender ‘Macbeth’ that is heavy on atmosphere, has more visual resource since it is shot on location, but does considerable violence to the play.
Cheers
John D
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.500 Friday, 23 October 2015
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: Friday, October 23, 2015
Subject: Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory
Gabriel Egan’s Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory, a work in the Shakespeare and Theory Series, Editied by Evelyn Gajowski, has just been published.
http://bloomsbury.com/uk/series/shakespeare-and-theory/
Shakespeare and Theory
Series Editor: Evelyn Gajowski
This series provides a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical developments that have dominated Shakespeare studies since the advent of postmodernism, as well as those that are emerging at the present moment.
Each volume provides a clear definition of a particular theory; explains its key concepts; surveys its major theorists and critics; situates it in the context of contemporary political, social, and economic developments; analyses its significance in Shakespeare studies; and offers a wealth of suggested resources for further investigation
Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory
By: Gabriel Egan
About Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory
Combining the latest scientific and philosophical understanding of humankind’s place in the world with interpretative methods derived from other politically inflected literary criticism, ecocriticism is providing new insights into literary works both ancient and modern. With case-study analyses of the tragedies, comedies, histories and late romances, this book is a wide-ranging introduction to reading Shakespeare in the light of contemporary ecocritical theory. - See more at: http://bloomsbury.com/uk/shakespeare-and-ecocritical-theory-9781441145529/#sthash.jLl66srk.dpuf
Table of Contents
Series Editor’s Preface
Introduction: Done and Undone
1 The Rise of Ecocriticism
2 Shakespeare and the Meaning of 'Life' in the Twenty-first Century
3 Animals in Shakespearian Ecocriticism
4 Crowds and Social Networks in Shakespeare
Conclusion
Index - See more at: http://bloomsbury.com/uk/shakespeare-and-ecocritical-theory-9781441145529/#sthash.jLl66srk.dpuf
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.499 Friday, 23 October 2015
From: Hardy M. Cook <
Date: Friday, October 23, 2015
Subject: Death of Tom Berger
Many of you may have heard already, but for those who have not. Tom Berger died a few weeks ago. He was a friend to many of us both personally and though his work. Tom was also highly active in the Malone Society. Here is the Malone Society’s official announcement of his death.
http://malonesociety.com/blog/
Professor Thomas L. Berger
It was with deep sadness that members of Council received the news, at their meeting on October 17th, of the death of Professor Thomas L. Berger the previous week.
Tom Berger became Malone Society Treasurer for the United States (a position he held for nearly thirty years) at a particularly turbulent period in the Society’s affairs. The chaos into which the Society had fallen in the early 1970s had been restored to a degree of order in America through the sterling work of Professor G. E. Bentley, but it fell to Tom, as his successor, to return the US sphere of the Society’s activities to their once-flourishing state. Characteristically, he brought not only considerable energy and enthusiasm to the task, but a whimsical humour designed to attract younger scholars to an organization associated with scholarship of the most exacting (and superficially uninviting) kind. It is to Tom that we owe the ‘Malone Ranger’ badges and Tee shirts (the latter recently revived), the ‘Malone Society Fun Run’, and a host of highly inventive conference stalls acquainting the uninitiated with the joys of belonging to a quirky, dynamic and highly idiosyncratic organization. For those of us who worked with him he was a tower of strength on a range of fronts – ready to conjure up money when needed, to offer advice as we confronted a host of problems arising from the Society’s near-demise, and to bring his own scholarly expertise into play in the editing of three of our publications (and making a signal contribution to a fourth). He was a relaxed presence at Council meetings on his visits to England, a witty and charming correspondent, and a firm believer in the value of the Society’s work. We shall miss him very much.