Paper Session 3

Welcome back to the Blackfriars conference, everyone. We start off bright and early with Paper Session 3. I don't think anyone is jumping for joy at the start time, but there's plenty of coffee in the lobby, and attendance doesn't seem to be taking too much of a hit. Maybe the promise of coffee helped with that. Margaret Jaster of Penn State will be moderating for us this morning.

Fred Franko: Unseemly trickery in Measure for Measure and Plautus' Amphitro

Measure for Measure: comedy or tragedy? Discuss. Franko begins by offering just such a thing happened over drinks at the Stonewall Jackson following ASC's performance of Measure for Measure, and this leads us to an exploration of Roman comedy (specifically Plautus). Franko proposes that, in Measure for Measure, the Duke himself serves the role of the Plautine trickster. He can, for example, talk to others (and the audience) without anyone else hearing him. The problem is that the Duke is not a low-class character, and his resort to "trickery rather than majesty" is what is disturbing.

Amphitro is similarly Plautus' problem play. Jupiter plays the role of the trickster, and this is the problem: the sennex is the trickster. In both cases, the audience doesn't take great delight in the established ultimate authority getting his way; especially through trickery. The structure of the comedy is that the ultimate authority can simply have what they want by command, and thus the Duke's Trickery in Measure for Measure and Jupiter in Amphitro are unseemly.

Brian Chalk: "Murdering Sleep": Macbeth, Dreams, and the Boundaries of Theatrical Reality

From the moment the play begins, Shakespeare immerses the audience in a series of dream like images. No one who's seen a good production of it will have anything to disagree with here. Macbeth's encounter with the witches sets him on a path of interpreting life as an allegory, and blur the line between fictional and actual events. Chalk proposes that Thomas Nash's Terrors of the Night is an uncredited source for the play.

Macbeth, tempted to sleep, is afraid to do so. While Banquo "longs for the moral clarity that the day allows," Macbeth seems to be unable and unwilling to escape the ambiguities of night time terrors. The dagger, banquet, and sleep walking scenes are some of the most memorable scenes of the play, and these clearly blur the line between reality and nightmares. The dagger, ghost of Banquo, and blood on Lady Macbeth's hands are real only in the mind of the observer, but the ghost of Banquo is the only one the audience sees, and thus the audience is drawn into the world of Macbeth's dreams via the presence of the only other character who has seen the witches.

Macbeth in this sense becomes a collective dream. Happily resolved for the audience, but not so for Macbeth.

I designed lights for a production of Macbeth for which the concept was "Macbeth's Nightmare" a couple years ago. I guess that concept wasn't as wonky as I thought.

Donald Hedrick: Actor Wagers and London' Inner Vegas

Hedrick opens by producing a bottle of wine. A little bit too early for me, but this is a theatre, after all. Since Hedrick is discussing gambling as an entertainment option, it might be appropriate for the circumstances. Gallants were, in 1603, thought to risk their wealth by spending time with actors.

He cites The Knight of the Burning Pestle and the betting on the plot that happens in the George the Grocer plot as evidence that Elizabethan audiences would bet on the plots of the plays. "The practice was not universal, but not rare." Hedrick makes a point of clarifying that we do not know how the wagers were placed.

Hedrick now offers us the experiment of two actors for whom we will place wagers on who will win the role of Hamlet. Paul and Jeremiah. They are introduced by a role they have performed here, and a moderator than gives them a line to begin performing. Betting begins. Paul is chosen to play Hamlet by a coin toss. This reminds me of an anecdote Professor Cohen related about a production of Richard II where the titular character is chosen by a coin toss.

Matt Kozusko: Why is Hamlet Such a Shitty Poet

Hamlet establishes himself as his world on language arts, but he is unable to write a love poem. This raises a question of which of the lines in the Moustrap Hamlet has written. Kozusko thinks he sees some shades of Hamlet's writing in the character of the Player Queen, who "protests too much."

The difficulty in understanding Hamlet is that the world is purposefully muddied. "The world is Catholic, it is Protestant, and it is Agnostic." No one ever seems to know who is in charge of the universe, and other certainties are similarly blurred. It is the audience that is left to make meaning of the world.

Kozusko proposes that Hamlet is our best analog in the play, but only when he's not being himself.

Brett Gamboa: "Like doth quit Like": Barnadine, Ragozine and Shakespeare's Double-Dealing

Does Ragozine have something to teach us about the way that roles may be doubled in Measure for Measure? We don't have a doubling plot, but Gamboa feels that there are thematic indications within the play that would suggest doubling, and offers that there are only two rules that we must assume governed doubling on the early modern stage: 1) Roles doubled cannot meet one another on stage. 2) Changes of roles are indicated by changes of garments.

Gamboa cites textual examples within the play indicative of doubling. Certain lines, he proposes, seem to serve no other purpose than to distinguish a given character from another, which raises the distinct possibility than the audience needs assistance in keeping track of which character is which. This is especially true of a play that relies on disguise and trickery.

Christine Schmidle: Adaptation or Translation? English Comedians and Der Bestrafte Brundermord

Schmidle opens with an introduction in German which she has one of her actors translate. I don't know German, but I don't think "welcome" quite covered it. The pitfalls of translation thus illustrated, Schmidle offers that English actors had found touring on the continent, especially Germany, quite profitable.

Apparently only three of Shakespeare's texts in German survive, Titus, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet (Der Bestrafte Brundermord, or "Fratricide Punished"). It would, however, be a mistake to think of them as translations. They are more like adaptations, which feature simpler vocabulary, greater physicality, and removing speeches that describe events with portrayals of those events.

Her actors then offer us a scene from Hamlet in German, and then a scene from Fratricide Punished (also in German), as further illustration of the need of adaptation. Important plot points are lost without the inclusion of the new scene, but even when the audience (meaning me) can't understand what is being said in the Fratricide Punished scene, it is easy enough to understand what happens.

Schmidle will be staging a production of Der Bestrafte Brundermord in January, so if you're in the area, stop by and give it a look. It will be interesting to see just how well her experiment plays out.

So there's our first paper session for the day. Next up is a keynote by Gail Kern Paster of the Folger.