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Post by shaxper on Apr 2, 2002 13:56:19 GMT -5
I have to catch myself sometimes.
As a former English major and aspiring Professor, I'm always drawn to discussing things like problematic endings and subtexts, but in doing so, I often forget to see these plays as plays; dissecting them as if they were closet dramas instead.
When I get to thinking like this, my concern is always whether or not a Renaissance dramatist in Shakespeare's situation ever would have bothered to plan such buried and problematic meanings into his works. Shaky's plays were written quickly, rehersed even quicker (often before the play was complete) and performed for a large audience, consisting largely of uneducated masses, and rarely of anyone (educated or otherwise) who would be educated in such a way as to pick up on these subtexts.
Would Shakespeare really have written his plays to be this complex? One might argue that the answer must be yes since he also meticulously uses language and meter throughout the duration of his works, but this is a performance oriented feature. Rhyme and meter are things that an audience responds to, whether consciously or otherwise. But subtext, such as the kinds explored in the bulk of the last century's Shakespearean criticism, is less necessary for a performance, and Shaky didn't seem to have any plans for publishing his plays (such a thing was rarely done in his day, even when the First Folio was produced).
So, did Shaky put all that delightful subtext in the plays? Were they placed by an editor later on (as suggested by MSDirector's thought-provoking post in the "What Draws You to Shakespeare?" discussion), or are we putting it there ourselves?
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MsDirector
Money Lender
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice... s'hath seal'd thee for herself...
Posts: 24
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Post by MsDirector on Apr 2, 2002 15:27:37 GMT -5
Fascinating question. And a very valid one, considering Shakespeare's actual playwriting process, as you so clearly described. I've had the joy (and agony) of being a collaborator in the development of a number of new plays, working closely with several very good playwrights, and ultimately staging both staged readings and the premiere productions of their plays. The process is a complex one, and it's indicative of Shakespeare's genius that he could produce such amazing work under such conditions as you describe. But one thing I've found about many playwrights is that they often have little idea of the quantity and quality of the subtext inherent in their plays. In staging plays, with the playwright present, they have often been surprised and amazed at what we (myself, as director, and the actors I work with) have discovered within their plays. The best writers seem to create it instinctively, along with complex plots and multi-layered characters. Not saying that it doesn't take work, but rather that the process isn't always a conscious, deliberate one. We need to remember that Shakespeare's intention was to write plays for the stage, not great literary works. Theatre is a collaborative medium. It is never meant to be the work of just the playwright. When we study a play such as Shakespeare's, whether for literary analysis or for performance, we contribute our own vision to the playwrights. Which is why there are so many differing interpretions of his plays, both by scholars and directors. We each bring our own individual experiences to our interpretation. And it is that experience which allows us to explore the script from our own unique viewpoint, and to discover subtext which may not be obvious to someone else, even the playwright. Interesting that you say that, to paraphrase, "subtext... is less necessary for a performance". I disagree completely. I think that subtext is vitally important for a performance. But subtext, in the sense that is normally used in theatre - that is, complex emotional and psychological motivations and intentions that are unspoken but very present for the characters and relationships, is less present in Shakespeare's plays than in modern drama. That's because, very often, Shakespeare's characters actually speak their feelings and thought directly, making much of what would nowadays be considered "subtext", text. What you may be refering to is the complex analysis of structure and content that were " the kinds explored in the bulk of the last century's Shakespearean criticism". And yes, I'd guess that kind of analysis was almost certainly entirely absent from Shakespeares's thoughts when he wrote his plays. He just wanted to entertain his audiences. Scholars are the ones who have dissected Shakespeare's plays ad nauseum. Too bad. It is those types of analyses that tend to make people, especially young people, think that these plays are dry, boring, overly complicated, difficult to understand, outdated, old dinosaurs, when they are actually wonderfully exciting, modern, fun, bawdy, sexy, dramatically intense, psychologically complex explorations of what it is to be human.
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Post by Ganymede on Apr 6, 2002 12:31:56 GMT -5
I think scholarly interpretations can be exciting or dry depending on who has written them. Many people write essays just to show off or because they have to to keep their professorial positions. For my own sanity, I tend to avoid the dull, excessively pretentious criticism.
However, I've read interpretations by people of a different sort, who are genuinely excited by new ways of reading AND performing Shakespeare. Essays by those people make Shakespeare even more exciting to read. For instance, for a project on Shakespeare's cross-dressing heroines (Rosalind and Viola in particular) I had to read lots of criticism about gender and cross-dressing in Shakespeare. Believe me, these interpretations were anything but dull! And, more importantly, they got me to thinking about Shakespeare in new and fascinating ways. They also could be used to inform a modern-day performance of Shakespeare's plays, in which cross-gender casting could be used to explore gender relations as they are today.
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Post by shaxper on Apr 6, 2002 15:47:41 GMT -5
Excellent points on both sides. I think the idea of literary criticism has grown stale, in general. Most folks who publish do so because they are professors and are expected to publish, or because they are looking to build their own reputations in the field. Honestly, when you get right to the point (and this is not a direct response to either of your arguments, but it is relevant), I'm not sure most people understand why criticism even exists, or why literature is treated academically. It becomes a self-sustaining existance. You teach literature to create more professors to teach literature. You publish to maintain your position as a professor. I've given it a lot of thought, and have decided that for me, the goal of publishing is to offer readers new ways to approach and enjoy the text. It shouldn't be about furthering a socio-economic cause, a gender cause, or any other sort of cause. It should be about enjoyment. As for why literature is academic, I don't have a good answer. Perhaps people were afraid that the great classics were being lost and tried to make them academic as a way of maintaining their popularity. In some ways, that seems to have backfired though, and alienated readers who aren't required to read "academic" literature for a class. For me, as an aspiring professor, I love literature, I love talking about literature, and if I can get paid for it, so be it! So, to get back to the discussion (sorry for the tangent), I feel that literary criticism should be written and read for the sake of enjoyment. If we could all stick to that rule, "academic" literature would be more approachable and more fun, and perhaps there would be five thousand Renaissance Literature discussion boards on the internet instead of just one
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Post by Bardolph on Apr 29, 2002 18:47:34 GMT -5
Perhaps the sub-text in the works of WS are the result of a symbolic prodigy. Nobody doubts that Mozart was able to compose by direct communication between his imagination and the page. Why should there not be a literary manifestation of this creativity? If so, the rapid transit from idea to page to stage is perhaps evidence of this mastery. The sub-text across a large body of work by one man would be evidence of the clear views of the man himself, before the creative process even began. Perhaps WS simply knew himself, and this provides the consistent sub-text. This might account for the complexity as well.
I'm not sure that literary criticism should be for entertainment. That's what stage reviews do. Literary criticism has provided a tremendous volume of scholarship on WS. I do find though that I prefer the literary criticism of those who can actually write. Maynard Mack's Everybody's Shakespeare is an excellent example of first rate criticism written well. I find his writing approachable and fun even though he occupied Bloom's chair long before Bloom.
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Post by shaxper on May 20, 2002 12:19:23 GMT -5
I'm not sure that literary criticism should be for entertainment. That's what stage reviews do. Literary criticism has provided a tremendous volume of scholarship on WS. Well then I guess the larger question would be what the purpose of literary scholarship is, if not entertainment. I started a discussion about this in the criticism discussion quite a while ago (http://boarshead.proboards9.com/index.cgi?board=criticism&action=display&num=1019171299), and I'd appreciate hearing your perspective on the matter. I look forward to your response, Bardolph. As for the issue of Shakespeare's subtext, I'm begining to wonder more and more if Shakespeare's genius (and yes, I do agree with Bardolph that he had extraordinary capabilities) was in being able to create intelligent ambiguity; issues that were designed to work more than one way so that each member of his incredibly diverse audience could agree with the play. We've spent a lot of time discussing Caliban here (one of Shakespeare's most ambiguous characters), and it seems that he may have been intentionally designed so that the high class could view him as a detestable rogue slave, and the grouldings could identify with him and see how Prospero had wronged him until the end. Such skillful ambiguity explains why Shakespeare has continued to gain popularity throughout some incredibly different times and social contexts. Surely, the Victorians saw something a little different in Hamlet than we did; yet both time periods loved the play.
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Post by Harry on May 21, 2002 23:08:34 GMT -5
First, on the subject of authorship, I do find it unlikely that complex hidden messages were buried in Shakespeare's plays. Messages that were understood only by certain members of his audience and completely hidden to others. For one thing, people aren't all one thing or another. If some in the audience could read authorship messages in the plays, then it is certain that some of the "wrong" people could read them and that the cat would be out of the bag. Nor do I think that Shakespeare was attempting to communicate authorship messages to the future. If he had, then he might have given more attention to publishing his plays.
As a non-English major myself, I do think that criticism sometimes finds things that aren't really there. It isn't that Shakespeare doesn't have layers and complexities, just that 400 years of armchair quarterbacking can develop a whole lot of interpretations that Shakespeare never dreamed of. Modern psychoanalysis of Shakespeare's characters is rife with this. Hamlet's "Oedipus Complex" is a prime example.
All that said, I think you may be underestimating Shakespeare, and his audience. Despite the characterization of the groundlings as uneducated boobs, it's my understanding that a lot of them were city apprentices, not common laborers. That is, they were young, fairly intelligent (it was an era when all of the smart kids didn't automatically go to college--witness Shakespeare), and not overly well-off. I understand that one reason that London merchants and tradesmen objected to the theater is that they didn't like seeing their apprentices spend time and money on anything that didn't benefit their masters.
The ability to compose verse was more general in less literate society. The printing press changed that. It made us readers and not versifiers. In Chaucer's England everyone, even the coarse Miller, could produce passable verse to entertain his betters. Shakespeare's England was changing, but it was still a more verse sensitive society than in these later days.
I don't see why Shakespeare couldn't have written with multiple audiences in mind. He must have known he was writing for royalty (at least after he became an established playwright whose work was regularly performed at court) in addition to the groundlings. I think his audience, at least the better educated portion did pick up on the nuances, at least the ones that were really there.
That audience seems to have been much more attuned to hearing the nuances than we are. Elizabethans went to the theater to "hear" a play rather than see one.
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Post by shaxper on May 22, 2002 2:22:54 GMT -5
First, on the subject of authorship, I do find it unlikely that complex hidden messages were buried in Shakespeare's plays. Messages that were understood only by certain members of his audience and completely hidden to others. For one thing, people aren't all one thing or another. If some in the audience could read authorship messages in the plays, then it is certain that some of the "wrong" people could read them and that the cat would be out of the bag. True, but people do tend to hear what they want to hear. One might ascertain that King Harry is both England's greatest king in every sense of the world, and a dishonest, calculating politician, and then decide that whichever version he agrees with must have been what was intended. Even Elizabeth seemed somewhat reluctant to draw the parallel between herself and Richard II. The proof being that the deposition scene was merely removed, and the play continued to be performed without the company ending up in any sort of trouble. I fully agree And, as an English major, I can confirm this. I've read too much trash that seems to treat the actual play as a mere tool with which to carve an interesting argument that only works when the original piece is horribly perverted. Fascinating. I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Even still, educated or otherwise, there still wasn't much of a middle class, and as a result, though people are essentially individuals, there were certainly some hot issues in which most of those sitting above would have strongly disagreed with most of those standing below. And even if the play didn't address any issues in which the two classes were directly opposed, perhaps James might identify with Prospero and see Caliban as being the ungrateful Irish whom he has attempted to conquer and convert for their own good, while a disgruntled apprentice might identify with Caliban and see Prospero as his master who profits from his hard work and treats him worse than is appropriate for his station. These are just examples. In fact, I know absolutely nothing about James' campaigns against the Irish, but the point is that ambiguity can easily be adapted to satisfy many different people and viewpoints. Part of Shakespeare's craft (in my opinion) was in creating ambiguous situations that seem to strongly support conflicting viewpoints. 400 years later, the verdict still isn't in as to whether or not Kate is tamed at the end of Taming of the Shrew; yet most people who feel strongly about the play will tell you, without a doubt, that they know which outcome is the correct one. Good to hear from you again, Harry!
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Post by Bardolph on May 22, 2002 11:00:43 GMT -5
Even Elizabeth seemed somewhat reluctant to draw the parallel between herself and Richard II. The proof being that the deposition scene was merely removed, and the play continued to be performed without the company ending up in any sort of trouble. I'm going to disagree. Elizabeth made it quite clear that she saw herself as Richard II. Her reluctance was that the public should be exposed to this idea in a way that made use of Richard's deposition as a stepping stone to her own deposition. History doesn't tell us what trouble came to the company beyond changing it. They may have suffered some fairly strict probationary measures. It may have been their good fortune that immediately after the Essex rebellion Elizabeth began to fall apart emotionally and physically.
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Post by Harry on May 22, 2002 23:23:22 GMT -5
Yes, it is the ambiguity that makes Shakespeare so accessible to so many. There isn't one answer, but many. And, it can be fun to go out on a limb with a wild interpretation.
I once had an interesting discussion with a French woman about Henry V (the play) and, necessarily, about Henry V (the real monarch). Needless to say, the French don't view Henry as a national hero. Indeed, there's quite a bit to not like about Henry. Some of it's in the play, some not. I find it interesting that Shakespeare seems to have caught the ambiguity despite a play that's been described as "a national anthem in five acts).
I wonder if Shakespeare's success here was to provide real people as characters. Real people are complex and are not all one thing or another. Not for Shakespeare were cardboard characters or "humourous" characters in Jonson's sense. When Shakespeare wanted a melancholic he gave us Hamlet, a character so real no one has yet fully described him. When Shakespeare wanted a villain, he gave us Richard III, Shylock, and Macbeth. What a trio of humanity! When Shakespeare wanted a hero he gave us Henry V--flawed and doomed to die too soon.
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Post by shaxper on May 23, 2002 21:18:53 GMT -5
Absolutely. Though I don't necessraily agree with Harold Bloom's assessment that Shakespeare invented the human condition, I do believe he is the first and only author/playwright to have captured it so thoroughly and consistantly. His characters are rarely one thing or another. Given enough stage time, they are all multi-faceted.
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Post by MelanieS on Sept 22, 2002 13:10:39 GMT -5
I think different people see different facets in the same thing...as an actor, one is forced to dig deeper into the character one is playing, and build up a whole personality around the text, which another actor might interpret in an entirely different way. The genius of Shakespeare is that one will always find something that rings true, that sounds familiar, that one has experienced oneself, somewhere in his plays. Shakespeare's audience in the Globe was very mixed, royals plus middle class plus workers. At the Blackfriars it was a more sophisticated audience, and there Fletcher and Beaumont became more successful. I think especially the comedy scenes between some bumpkins were written not only as transitions from one scene to another, but also to entertain those who preferred a belly-laugh from time to time. With regard to the comedy scenes, for example in Romeo and Juliet, just after Juliet is discovered apparently dead, there is a blustering comic scene which almost set my teeth on edge, but this was for dramatic reasons...otherwise the whole play would have become one dark, tragic, lugubrious event from that moment onward, and people get tired of that after a while...by introducing a comic scene the audience has a chance to dry their tears and draw a breath, and the next tragic scene will hit them harder...if you understand what I mean (probably not ). As far as cross-dressing and gender-changes, much is made of these nowadays in this day and age of sexual discovery and coming out and all that, but I always felt that the only way a woman could get out of the house and go on an adventure and mix with men on a neutral basis at that time would be to disguise herself as a young man, not an older he-man who might be a threat to other males, but an almost neutral young fellow who doesn't even have a beard yet, who would be the "lad" one allows to move around in ones vicinity, and to whom the other males might even feel protective, as an older brother might feel towards his kid brother. Shakespeare always showed the audience first that here was a girl who was dressing up as a man in order to set forth in a men's world, never once does he have a character who from the start of the play appears as a man and then suddenly reveals himself to audience and characters that "he" is in reality a girl. So the audience was looking at a girl dressed up as a boy talking to the man she loved, and not at two men having an intimate emotional scene. MelanieS
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Post by Ganymede on Oct 9, 2002 16:58:25 GMT -5
Excellent point, although I often wonder how Renaissance audiences dealt with the play-boy convention, especially since Shakespeare often reminded them of the boy underneath all the women's costumes. It probably would have been taken for granted, at least by the men. I have read at least one woman write on the subject who lamented the portrayals of women on the stage, calling them false and overdone. And too, I'm sure they'd recognize the difference between a play, in which a woman can dress as a boy and then simply crawl back into her female garb without so much as a slap on the wrist, and reality, where if a woman were so discovered she could be put to death.
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Post by shaxper on Nov 17, 2002 18:11:06 GMT -5
I suppose the power of men playing women is that they don't play real women; they play women as men see them. If you had two female parts in a Renaissance play, one played by a man acting as a woman as men (typically) saw them and the other played by a real woman trying to bring greater complexity to the role, the men in the audience might be likely to find the man's performance more convincing, because it is closer to their own understandings of the gender.
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