Paper Session 8

Peter Hyland (Huron University College), "Hot Properties: Chettle's Hoffman"

"A footnote to Gail Paster's paper, or a fungus growing thereon." He was surprised by Jude Law's demand that a real skull was necessary for Hamlet, reminding him of the real skull (Tchaikovsky?) donated to the RSC, which actors had refused to use. Records indicated that Hamlet was the first play of the era to use a skull, so such a prop was likely not in the properties of any of the established Elizabethan communities. The ontological relationship between stage properties and "real" properties. A table made in a stage workshop is not so different from a table made in a factory for simple furniture use. Whereas a real skull has a peculiar dramatic resonance not possessed by a mocked-up prop. The skull as connection between past and future. The constitutions of playgoers in the early-modern area were, if not iron-clad, certainly not so squeamish as our more modern sensibilities (they did watch bear-baitings, etc.)
A skeleton is revealed in the first ten lines of Hoffman wearing a burning crown. The two properties are paired in the production. The voice of Hoffman as similar/identical to the structure of the play. Chettle as inspired by (not parodic of) Hamlet. Would Henslowe have gone to trouble of contracting the manufacture of a skeleton when real specimens were available? Doubtful, besides , the thing itself would have an unmistakable authenticity. Hoffman's persuasive depiction of death ironically assured its long life. The play performed a version of reality beyond what is possible today, but demands attention from scholars nonetheless.

Melissa D. Aaron (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona), "Weddings, Funerals, and Garters: The 1612-13 Revival of 1 Henry IV, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Much Ado About Nothing"

Confession: "Yes, it was all about the hats!" (Hamlet and Osric) Debt of gratitude to Gurr.
Economic reading as "core sample". Things we should know when we are doing Shakespeare now: money, props, costumes, physical appurtenances and expenditures. (Money embarrasses scholars more than sex.) King's men formed syndicate to control Blackfriars in 1608. Play closures in the first two decades of 1600s took a toll on producers' wallets. Palatine's wedding to Princess Elizabeth was lavish affair (9,000 pounds). Court work becomes a larger slice of sharer income after the 1590s. 20 plays at court may have brought in 150 pounds, in comparison with the 140 pound total revenue of previous entire seasons. Much Ado, 1 Henry IV, Merry Wives were performed before royalty. Henry and Wives make sense politically and practically. But why Much Ado? Recycling of costumes. Pistol and Benedick may have worn the same clothes. Reusing masque-ing props, out-fits, possibly even the rack of horns (mentioned by Benedick). The company may have deemed the plays compatible commercially. Take away lesson: stockpile costumes and props, use plays that may complement one another, and appeal to a wide audience.

Ian Borden (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), "How Shakespeare Trained the West: Mail-Order Shakespeare As Cultural Object in Nineteenth-Century America"

Show and Tell (period documents of Mail-Order Shakespeare stuff from the 19th century) Shakespeare as paramount cultural object available. Mail as only means of cultural transmission. Commodities as means of social movement: chiefly books. Erudition as social status. Prominent display of books. Family surrounded by mud and livestock, photographed with their piano. African-American man and woman staged behind three books on a table. Grand Island, Ne, stopover for touring Shakespeare groups (though the population of the town was a mere 3,000 at the time). Women's clubs aided rise of Shakespeare. Weekly forums (in winter) for reading/discussion of literature, plays, etc. Arrival of books as impetus for informal social gathering. Reading aloud as formative experience for children's education, not only grammatically, but ethically (?). Patriotically American to read Shakespeare. Our appropriation of him: we appreciate him more than the Brits. Editions compiled by "competent, distinguished" scholars and editors. Elegance of form, purity of text, valuable editorial matter. Elimination of material deemed extraneous for popular consumption. Clearly, the text has been adjusted and perhaps corrupted for everyday American appreciation. Montgomery Ward devoted an entire column to Shakespeare, who outstrips even American authors in cultural and printed prominence. An intrinsic part of cultural grown of America.

Alice Dailey & Shawn Kirschner (Villanova University), "Fifteen Women and Nick Sly the Astrophysicist: Staging Critical Engagements with Shrew"

Handout of flyer from the Taming of the Shrew. What happens if Shakespeare is approached from a heretical direction. Take close critical work, transfer it to the stage. Instead of using mechanisms of performance to interpret textual matter; begin from a critically informed position, and take the theory into practice (Davies). Acts of interpretation as dramatic content. Survery of secondary literature. Staging the play requires drawing conclusions about misogyny, skewed by the population of the class (15 women & Nick, the astrophysicist). Use of one male actor is critical by virtue of his demarcation as Other. Should he be Kate? Petrucchio? Does "the love relationship triumph" at the end of the play? Or is Kate's life finished, with the abdication of voice necessitated by her marriage? Performance at Actors' Renaissance season. Relationship between body, text and voice.

Production notes: Working script based on the students' edited projects. Retaining moments which speak most directly to core, vexed issues. Generally standard approach to blocking, etc., but because the text was edited with attention to critical analysis there was inherent bias, or predisposition. What to do with Sly? Keep him as on-stage voyeur. Nick Sly becomes the meta-theatrical, on-stage director of the production in question (the induction was eliminated). The only man in the class became an advocate for a traditional interpretation of the show. The female actors, in the production, became gradually discontent and rebellious. The tension between the historicized feminism and the contemporary "popular" interpretation is foregrounded and draws attention to the self-conscious direction of the show. ASC actors perform a somewhat Pirandello-esque scene as an exemplar of the technique. First time through, Kate is sympathetic, innocent; second time she is demonized, a "harpy". Disciplinary reinforcement of masculinist reading was required by the one male participant. Culminates in a staged debate re: Kate's final monologue, expressing the performers ambivalence about the text. Did Shakespeare mean to be sexist? What is Kate's agency? What is the relationship between our interpretations and our stagings?

Darlene Farabee (University of Delaware), "Experiencing Location in Macbeth"

Lady Macbeth's response to Duncan's murder: "Here, in our house?" Why can't she say something more clever? Control of stage space may show how narrative movement drives movement on stage. Captain (I.ii.) describing Macbeth as creating a passage, violently. Macbeth and Banquo enter a space already inhabited by the witches. Location is established aurally. Pageantry and aural clues set stage, literally. Conflation of time and space increase gradually over the course of the play. "If it 'twere done...here, but here upon this bank and shoal of time",
"he's here in double trust". "Here" as marker of time, then later as marker of place. Macbeth's inability to locate the "air-drawn" dagger permits him to find his path with the physical dagger he carries. "Thou marshal'st me..." Inability to locate source of knocking as indication of Macbeth's difficulty locating himself in space and time. He is literally disoriented. He becomes completely unable to differentiate location in space and time once his wife is dead. "She should have died hereafter..." Eventually, he is "tied to a stake", fixed to a location.
Demonstration by ASC actors. Offstage actions must take place elsewhere to dislocate the audience from the positive movement of the narrative, producing the same disorientation experienced by the title character.

Andrew Fleck (San Jose State University), "Teach You Our Princess English": Linguistic Conquest in the Early Quartos and Performances of Henry V"

Nostalgia for polyglot Elizabeth. Performance of Katherine's language lesson is more effective as the audience is drilled in some of the vocabulary that she is learning.

I struggled to keep up with the pace of this scholar.

Long prose paragraphs responded to by single lines. Eventually, the language barrier is overwhelming. Hal attempts French. This levels the playing field a bit. Otherwise "he speaks, and she looks on." (She gets 20 of 150 lines.) This is not the case in the quarto. She seems to know more English, and gets a greater proportion of the lines. She can translate Hal's faulty French into faulty English. Why the discrepancy between the texts? Why is she more competent in the Folio? Perhaps because Elizabeth, although in the twilight of her reign, managed to hold her own with a Polish ambassador around this time (not sure when...sorry). Her facility with language was inspiring and confirmed her queenliness to her subjects, thereby increasing her legend. Kate becomes more like Elizabeth in the quarto, teaching Hal French even as he teaches her English.