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Tag Archives: Shakespeare
Shakespearean Scandals
Although William Shakespeare is central to our cultural canons, his plays are full of the worst sort of social ills, including racism and sexism. Stephen Greenblatt talks about these literary scandals.
Shakespeare’s Stings
From name-calling and caterwauling to general abuse, Shakespeare’s 38 plays include more than 10,000 insults. Wayne Hill and Cynthia Ottchen, authors of Shakespeare’s Insults: Educating your Wit, provide a livlely and colorful sampling.
Reading for Difference
A discussion of the sonnets of William Shakespeare.
Political Shakespeare
Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield discuss their book, Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (1985).
Two Williams
Maynard Mack recently spent a fellowship year at the National Humanities Center working on a forthcoming study of Shakespearean tragedy, his most recent book is a biography of Alexander Pope, published in 1986.; During her year at the Center, Aileen Ward worked on forthcoming biography of William Blake. She won the 1964 National Book Award for John Keats: the Making of a Poet.
Shakespeare’s ‘Green-ey’d Monster’
Othello is the most popular of Shakespeare’s tragedies, yet the object of continuing critical disparagement. Why is this so? How do the themes of human sexuality, love, betrayal, and jealousy combine and diverge to produce Othello’s popularity with theatre-goers and its disapproval on the part of literary critics?
The Play’s the Thing: Shakespeare Then and Now
April 1985, marks the anniversaries–dating back to the years 1564 and 1616–of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, the world’s most popular poet and playwrght. What account’s for Shakespeare’s popularity? Why is Shakespeare a cultural reference point?
From Plautus to Tootsie
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the young Danish prince remarks of tragedy and comedy that Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light, a comment that indirectly acknowledges Shakespeare’s dramatic debt to classical sources, some of which reached him by of sixteen-century Italian Renaissance literature. What are these sources, how are they transformed by Renaissance Italian and English writers, and do they reach academic popular audiences in the 1980s?
Louise George Clubb discusses the origins, development and influences of Italian Renaissance comedy noting that Italian theatrical comedy was the earliest in Europe and describing it as an outgrowth of the humanist movement’s revival of classical models, an attempt to rival classical comedy using contemporary vernaculars. She points out that Italian Renaissance comedy was the product of a cultural avant-garde, intended for aristocratic audiences. Clubb lays out the plot of Cardinal Bibbiena’s La Calandria, and notes its importance as representing a new kind of sophisticated secular entertainment. Addressing the influence of Italian comedy on Shakespeare, Clubb describes Italy’s allure for the English, and mentions contacts between English dramatists and the Italian theater. She argues that Shakespeare’s early comedies are strongly Italianate, and suggests that Italian comedy’s lack of illustrious authors has led to its relative neglect, obscuring the extent of Italian influence on European theater. The interview concludes with a discussion of the common threads linking Italian Renaissance comedy and contemporary comedy.
At the time of this interview, Clubb was professor of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, and general editor of the Biblioteca Italiana, a bilingual series of Italian classics published by the University of California Press.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
Rare Books in the Electronic Age
The centrality of books and printing to the world’s cultural and social order is indisputable, and institutions such as the British Museum, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Library of Congress house vast collections. Among these are rare or unique items notable for scarcity and special characteristics of printing, binding, illustration, ownership, or publication. What will become of rare books as cultural documents or aesthetic objects in a time increasingly affected by electronic and computerized writing, publishing, record-keeping and communication?
John L. Sharpe and Paul S. Koda discuss these questions and note that books universally considered important by rare books librarians include the Gutenberg Bible, the First Folio of Shakespeare and the first edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Individual items can be important not only for their rarity, but also for their inclusion in unified collections. The panelists emphasize the value of the physical form of original editions of texts for understanding the circumstances of their creation and the status of their authors.
On the technological revolution and its effects on rare books librarianship, Sharpe envisions using computer technology to provide customized lists of rare books for library users, which might include additional information on the books’ provenances. The speakers discuss rare book theft, emphasize the value of original materials for the study of art, and argue that physical originals convey an immediacy which reproductions cannot replace. Both speakers offer anecdotes showing how study of the physical characteristics of texts can reveal information about their history, mentioning investigations of nineteenth-century pamphlets and medieval Greek manuscripts. Concerning exceptionally rare books, Koda and Sharpe assert that books are artifacts which contribute to an understanding of the culture in which they were created. They describe attempts to anticipate which books will be rare or valuable in the future and include non-traditional types such books with jackets by African-American artists, autobiographies of inmates in mental institutions, and utopian literature. The interview concludes with a discussion of the monetary value of rare books and their value as the objects of research.
At the time of this interview, Koda was curator of rare books at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sharpe was curator of rare books at Duke University.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
Notions of the Tragic in Western Literature, Part 3 of 4
Peter Smith, Robert Ter Horst, Peter Burian and Eugene Falk discuss how literary and dramatic conceptions of tragedy in Western literature broadly connect to personal issues such as the family and religion and to wide cultural issues such as social classes, institutions, and beliefs. Is there such a thing as the tragic vision? Through a discussion ranging from Aeschylus to Shakespeare and from Calderon to O’Neill, the panelists offer some answers and insights about Christian and bourgeois tragedy, about some literary and philosophical influences upon tragedy (such as determinism and naturalism), and about some connections between notions of the tragic and values such as honor, responsibility to state and self, and sacrifice.
Smith begins by discussing the earliest extant Greek tragedy, Aeschylus’s Persians, describing how the play presents a historical conflict between Asia and Europe as a family conflict. The discussion turns to the role of religion in tragedy. Ter Horst discusses how plays written in Christian environments reconcile pagan and Christian elements, mentioning Shakespeare’s King Lear and the plays of Calderon; then Burian draws parallels between Christian tragedy and bourgeois tragedy, suggesting that both bourgeois social institutions and the redemptive ideas of Christianity offer potential solutions to tragic situations which could be seen as undercutting their tragic element. Smith proposes that both rationalism and religious faith conflict with the tragedy’s emphasis on ignorance. The discussion turns to how tragedy can exist in a rational and scientific modern environment. Burian argues that O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra employs rationalist determinism as earlier tragedies used destiny. Falk suggests that classical tragedies are marked by the inevitability of their events and the inseparability of characters’ destinies from their identities, while bourgeois tragedies often allow us to hypothesize alternate outcomes.
The panelists address the idea of pessimism in American literature. Ter Horst points out that American literature is marked by determinism and naturalism, similar to the social determinism of Emile Zola, and that this determinism is central to the tragic element in O’Neill. Burian suggests that the tragic element in Arther Miller’s Death of a Salesman lies in the conflict between the ideology of the American dream and the reality of the protagonist’s life. In response to the question of what constitutes the “tragic vision,” the panelists propose elements such as a confrontation with horror, conflict between incompatible values, and conflict between equally blameless parties. The interview concludes with a discussion of Calderon’s tragedy The Surgeon of his Honor as an example of a tragedy revolving around values, in this case the competing values of life and of honor.
At the time of this interview, Burian was professor of classics at Duke University. Falk was professor of comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and had recently completed a fellowship at the National Humanities Center (1982-83). Smith was professor of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ter Horst was a scholar at the National Humanities Center (1982-83), and professor of Spanish at the University of Arizona.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
The State of the Language Part 2; Back to Nature
In the series’ second part, Connie Eble, Margreta DeGrazia, Michael Montgomery, and Ronald
Butters describe the state of the English language and standards. In particular, they discuss who decides standard English usage, how these measurements changed and have evolved since the days of Shakespeare, whether contemporary English usage is in decline, and some of the connections between the usage of language and larger cultural considerations. The speakers begin by outlining the lack of linguistical standards in the Elizabethan era, when there was a higher tolerance for malleability and variance in English language, vocabulary, and syntactic structure (homonyms are mentioned in particular). There is a discussion of whether Elizabethan English is the high point of English language or literature, followed by a debate about connections between literarature and language in the Elizabethan era. This segues into a conversation about the ties between modern literacy standards, literacy levels, and criticism of English language standards. The speakers discuss Americans’ perception of linguistic history (Appalachian slang is mentioned in particular), the debate between standards and eloquence (the views of drama critic John Simon are described), and “pop grammarians.” The interview’s conclusion is that change is the natural state of language, and no human language is completely fixed.
At the time of this interview, Butters was professor of English at Duke University and editor of the journal American Speech. De Grazia was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1982-83) and professor of English at Georgetown University. Eble was professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Montgomery was professor of English at the University of South Carolina.
In the commentary “Back to Nature” [23:50], Werner Dannhauser claims that “it is as forthrightly sexual beings” that people are most natural. He describes the current inaccessibility of sexual information, and how sex has changed in the last 15 years. He cites the women’s liberation movement as responsible for most of the changes to sexual attitudes and behavior in the United States. Women are no longer viewed as mystical, misunderstood, “wondrously strange” creatures whom men try to please. Instead, he says that feminists must be pleased as a group, and he posits that all feminists “distrust nature,” blame a hostile environment, and place their faith in socialization. By distrusting nature, women ignore and are not grateful for the “very special” gifts nature has given them. The speaker notes how American feminists ally themselves to liberal political parties, ignoring the treatment of women in Marxist countries. Feminism calls for sexual equality, yet “forever bends in a direction of assaulting sexuality as such.” Dannhauser calls for sexual reform in American culture.
At the time of this interview Dannhauser was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1982-83) and professor of government at Cornell University.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
Energy from a Cultural Perspective; Shakespeare Today; The Education of Journalists; Review of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Commentary on Ambition
John Opie and John Agresto talk about the ongoing conflict between risk and security in the way Americans think about the energy crisis. They discuss the meaning and value of humanism, and suggest that a historian’s perspective might contribute to our understanding of, and finding solutions to, the energy crisis.
At the time of this interview, John Opie was professor of environmental history at Dusquesne University and a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1980-81), where he participated in a seminar entitled Energy and the Values of Modern Society. John Agresto was a staff member at the National Humanities Center.
The second segment [6:45] features John Sisk, who discusses his career teaching and writing about Shakespeare. Sisk addresses the persistent influence of Shakespeare’s writings on contemporary attitudes toward love, sex, and marriage.
At the time of this interview, John Sisk was professor of English at Gonzaga University,
In the third segment [11:13], three scholars weigh in on the state of journalism education and the value of journalism schools. When this interview was recorded, Pulitzer Prize winner Vermont Royster, the former editor of the Wall Street Journal, taught at the School of Journalism of the University of North Carolina. Hugh Holman was Vice- Chairman of the National Humanities Center Board of Trustees, and Kenan Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Terry Eastland was editor of the Norfolk, Virginia Pilot.
This episode’s fourth segment [19:45] features a review of John Kennedy Toole’s 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces, presented by Kent Mullikin, assistant director of the National Humanities Center.
Finally [26:00], William Bennett, then director of the National Humanities Center, comments on American young people, contemporary attitudes, and the importance of ambition.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond and Kent Mullikin.