Stratford's the Merchant of Venice and Alabama Shakespeare Festival's the Winter's Tale
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Vol. XVI THE • VPSTART • CR.OW Editor James Andreas Clemson University Founding Editor William Bennett The University of Tennessee at Martin Associate Editors Michael Cohen Murray State University Herbert Coursen Bowdoin College Charles Frey The University of Washington Marjorie Garber Harvard University Walter Haden The University of Tennessee at Martin Chris Hassel Vanderbilt University Maurice Hunt Baylor University Richard Levin The University of California, Davis John McDaniel Middle Tennessee State University Peter Pauls The University of Winnipeg Jeanne Roberts American University Production Editors Tharon Howard, Suzie Medders, and Deborah Staed Clemson University Editorial Assistants Martha Andreas, Kelly Barnes, Kati Beck, Dennis Hasty, Victoria Hoeglund, Charlotte Holt, Judy Payne, and Pearl Parker Copyright 1996 Clemson University All Rights Reserved Clemson University Digital Press Digital Facsimile Vol. XVI About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong. - T. S. Eliot What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions. -Walter Pater The problems (of the arts) are always indefinite, the results are always debatable, and the final approval always uncertain. -Paul Valery Essays chosen for publication do not necessarily represent opin ions of the editor, associate editors, or schools with which any contributor is associated. The published essays represent a diver sity of approaches and opinions which we hope will stimulate interest and further scholarship. Subscription Information Two issues- $14 Institutions and Libraries, same rate as individuals- $14 two issues Submission of Manuscripts Essays submitted for publication should not exceed fifteen to twenty double spaced typed pages, including notes. Follow journal format for notes. Quotations should be single spaced in typescript. When submitting manuscripts, send two copies-the original and one xeroxed copy-and SASE. Allow six months for readers. Along with hard copy, please also submit floppy disk, preferably in Macintosh format. Mail to James Andreas, Editor, Upstart Crow, Department of English, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-1503, e-mail [email protected]. Information about The Upstart Crow, the Clemson Shakespeare Festival, and the South Carolina Shakespeare Collaborative is avail able online at http:/ /people.clemson.edu/ -jmobley /upstart/ and http:/ I www.math.clemson.edu/faculty/Warner/Shakespeare. ii Clemson University Digital Press Digital Facsimile Vol. XVI From the Editor This issue of The Upstart Crow is dedicated to the memory of Frank Windham who died on June 17, 1997. Frank was a charter "crow nie" who served as an associate editor until his retirement some years back. iii Clemson University Digital Press Digital Facsimile Vol. XVI Contents See If You Like It ...................................... 1 by Arnold Kruger The Universal Shakespeare? ............................. 4 by Jeanne Addison Roberts "By two-headed Janus": Double Discourse in The Merchant of Venice ............................. 13 by Joan Hutton Landis "Foremost in report": Social Identity and Masculinity in Much Ado About Nothing . ........................... 31 by Robert Lane Richard II and Theories of the Subaltern Magistrate ........... 48 by Alzada J. Tipton King of the Revels or King of the Rebels?: Sir John Falstaff Revisted ............................ 70 by Anita Helmbold Henry Chettle and the Unreliable Romeo: A Reassessment ..... 92 by Jeffrey Kahan Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet and the Uses of Cultural Translation .......................... 101 by Robert F. Willson, Jr. "Lear, Lear, Lear!": Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the Third ..... 108 by Lisa Hopkins Disjunction and Subjectivity in The Winter's Tale ............ 124 by Martha Ronk A Lightweight Elephant Slept Here ....................... 141 by Robert Anson A Tale of Two Shakespeare Festivals: Stratford's The Merchant of Venice and Alabama Shakespeare Festival's The Winter's Tale . ........................... 146 by Craig Barrow iv Clemson University Digital Press Digital Facsimile Vol. XVI See If You Like It by Arnold Kruger Dramatis Personae: THERSITES, a deformed, scurrilous, and somewhat Cynical Greek. ORLANDO, a well-formed, but distinctly Plotinean English lad. Prologue: Hush, please! We are inside the mind of the dreaming Shakespeare. Both Troilus and Cressida and As You Like It are in progress, in different areas (possibly the cortex and the limbic system). Orlando, in a transport of love's delight, strays from the Forest of Arden, poems in hand, in search of new hoardings for his panegyrics to Rosalind. He rounds some trees, rushes through a clearing, and knocks over a thin, twisted figure, bent over defecating in the grass: Thersites. Thersites. Arrgh! Are you blind from the clap, you running fool? Or has your tiny brain already run out at the earholes? Orlando. (sitting up and attempting to both clean and disen tangle himself) I pray your pardon friend. But how come you here, in the open middle of the field, to be about this private duty? Thersites. Private, you lackwit? And what is more natural, necessary, and universal, than to void the bowels? Do you hide your ugly self away to eat a meal? Do you conceal yourself like a pox-ridden thief to digest it? Never! Nor does any man. So, why propose that I seek solitude for the third and final act of the trilogy? Answer me, oaf, or I'll plaster you with this fine, natural compost of my own making. Orlando. Ah friend, to the mind imbued with Love, all things in this wondrous world are fair. Not only is the glorious Rosalind Beauty's own bright star, but even you and the shit in your hair sparkle with the presence of God's spirit! You and I, even these shining blades of grass and this rich earth, are all Love's body all occasions of joy! Thersites. Aha! A dog of a metaphysician, eh? Well then, to happiness: I propose to you, sir, that you have interrupted me in the enjoyment of purest happiness, whilst you are inflamed by an 1 Clemson University Digital Press Digital Facsimile Vol. XVI The Upstart Crow unnatural impediment to joy and satisfaction. Attend: happiness consists in living sparely and cleanly, according to natural neces sity-the man who satisfies all basic wants in the simplest manner possible, thereby lacks nothing, and is, ipso facto, free, satisfied, and happy. I offer as self-evident examples, a good meal, a good shit, and shelter from the rains; for being happily possessed of all three, I am my own master, and a slave to no desires. How say you? Orlando. A philosophy for beasts, friend. For happiness is not found in bodily things, but in the art and being of the mind contemplate, and the soul hypostate. For joy and truth, and all things, pour forth endlessly from the One. We have our being, and our happiness, as we turn and reflect in God's grace. And as I turn within to contemplate the ineffable Rosalind, I return to my source in Love-for God is Love, and Rosalind is love-and as I contemplate love's body, its blessed form molds me, shining, and dance I must, and celebrate this love in poetry.... Thersites. Whoa! This is most unnatural. These intellectual, mystical nonsensicals are not getting you happiness, you dolt, they're getting you exactly nowhere. How does all this rhapsodiz ing and poeticizing actually get you to this Rosalind? Those are poems in your bag, are they not? And to Rosalind, I take it? Aha! How can you be such a great fool? You naturally want to be fucking the woman, and here you are penning poems-a different activity altogether. I say again: satisfy your own natural wants, and thereby find your own full happiness, and freedom from these pullulating desires. I offer the good example of my own master: feeling the same urges as you, he masturbated in the market square, was satisfied, and went about his business. Contemplate that! Orlando. Friend, I do love you as an image of God eternal; but as a man material, I find you materially wanting. As one master said, an ass would prefer chaff to gold, for an ass gets more pleasure from food than gold. So you, friend, mistake your own ass for man's proper end, which consists not in base pleasures, but in the happiness of exercising his highest faculties, in contempla tion of the Beloved. For in meditation is the divine in man freed and bliss eternal lies there, always. So I offer you my example of endless devotion to the beloved Rosalind; and in this contemplate joy, I bear the fruit of poetry; and forcing the blooms, I everywhere hammer my verses forth, on every tree and bush, till all the world blossoms with my reverent Words. The only fruit of yours I see lies there, stinking and rotting on the ground. So mend your 2 Clemson University Digital Press Digital Facsimile Vol. XVI See If You Like It ways, friend; and listen for that still, small voice from within-it will cultivate your virtues, and weed the garden of your life. Thersites: Bah! From a poor philosopher to a worse gardener. What I leave there on the ground will be more use to the world than all your pretty thoughts! University of British Columbia 3 Clemson University Digital Press Digital Facsimile Vol. XVI The Universal Shakespeare?1 by Jeanne Addison Roberts A few years ago I spent some time in Calcutta, an endlessly fascinating city, which bustles with a large spectrum of human and animal life; but, with its open sewers and abject poverty, it is a city which has never completely erased its reputation as a black hole. However, in the middle of the teeming city is a park with lush lawns and sylvan serenity, and at its center is an enormous statue of Queen Victoria.