Podcast and slides for Professor Paul Cartledge’s kickoff lecture
Professor Paul Cartledge delivered a wonderful lecture for the launch of Marathon2500, Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at NYU’s Center for Ancient Studies.
If you missed his talk, you can listen to the podcast and view his slides here.
Podcast:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38433301/Marathon2500-Professor-Paul-Cartledge-s-ki…
Thanks – Phil
Podcast for Professor Paul Cartledge’s Marathon2500 inaugural lecture
Listen here to Professor Paul Cartledge’s terrific inaugural Marathon2500 lecture held Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at NYU’s Center for Ancient Studies with a live audience and a remote network of more than 45 organizations, colleges and universities around the world.
Special thanks to Pietro Liuzzo, graduate student at the University of Bologna in Italy and her fellow students of the non-profit cultural association, Rodopis-Experience Ancient History for this podcast. They made a backup recording that we are now using because our main recording of the event was damaged.
– Phil
Paul Cartledge “The Context and Meaning of the Battle of Marathon” – Marathon2500 Lecture #1
Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor Greek Culture, Cambridge University and Hellenic Parliament Global Distinguished Professor in the History and Theory of Democracy at New York University, delivered on September 28, 2010 in front of a live audience at New York University’s Center for Ancient Studies and around the world to the Reading Odyssey’s remote lecture network, the Marathon2500 kickoff kickoff lecture.
Professor Cartledge’s Marathon2500 launch lecture, “The Context and Meaning of the Battle of Marathon: Why we are celebrating the 2,500 year anniversary”, a sometimes funny and always scholarly talk, set the stage for the yearlong Marathon2500 program.
Listen here to Professor Cartledge’s kickoff lecture delivered September 28, 2010:
See the slides:
About Marathon2500
With the support of several of the world’s best Hellenic scholars and sports historians, Marathon2500 commemorated the 2,500-year anniversary of the Battle of Marathon with nine lectures between September 2010 and September 2011 on the cultural, intellectual and athletic legacy of the battle. Delivered before live audiences, webcast online and archived for listening on demand, Marathon2500 was a program of the Reading Odyssey chaired by Professor Paul Cartledge. To multiply the impact around the world, the Reading Odyssey worked with libraries, community centers, universities, colleges, high schools, museums and sports organizations to create satellite listening centers (see more about the remote lecture network here).
Marathon2500 Podcast Library
Professor Paul Cartledge and the Reading Odyssey have preserved the Marathon2500 lecture series in podcast format for readers, students and scholars.
To access the whole library, click here: http://www.marathon2500.org/podcasts
Professor Paul Cartledge Biography
Clare College, Cambridge CB2 1TL
Email: pac1001@cam.ac.uk
Tel: 01223 335163 (Faculty)
Paul Cartledge, Hellenic Parliament Global Distinguished Professor in the History and Theory of Democracy at New York University and A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek History, the A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture and a Fellow of Clare College at Cambridge, is a world expert on Athens and Sparta in the Classical Age and has been described as a Laconophile. He was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series The Greeks and the Channel 4 series The Spartans, presented by Bettany Hughes. He is also a holder of the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour (Greece) and an Honorary Citizen of (modern) Sparta. Besides the posts at Cambridge, he holds a visiting Global Distinguished Professorship at New York University, funded by the Greek Parliament.
He has written a wide number of scholarly articles, books and books for the general public. He has a real passion for reaching the general reader and is a longtime advisor to and board member of the Reading Odyssey. He was the chief advisor and chair of Marathon2500.
BOOKS
1. Sparta and Lakonia: a regional history 1300-362 BC, 2nd edn (London & NY, 2002; Ist edn, 1979)
2. CRUX. Essays in Greek History presented to G.E.M. de Ste. Croix on his 75th birthday (London, 1985) [co-editor & contributor]
3. Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (London & Baltimore, 1987; reprint 2000)
4. Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: a tale of two cities (London & NY, 1989, corr. pb. 1991) [co-author] (repr. with bibl. add. 2002)
5. Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd (Bristol & London, 1990; updated edn, 1999) [Greek tr. 2006]
6. NOMOS. Essays in Athenian Law, Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1990, repr. 2002) [co-editor & contributor]
7. Religion in the Ancient Greek City, by L. Bruit-Zaidman & P. Schmitt-Pantel (French original 1989, Cambridge, 1992 & many repr. with bibliogr. updates) [editor & translator]
8. The Greeks. A Portrait of Self and Others, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2002; original edn, ‘OPUS’ series, 1993, rev. edn 1997) [enlarged German trans. 1998; Japanese trans. 2001; Greek trans. 2002]
9. Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in culture, history, and historiography (Berkeley, L.A. & London, 1997) [co-editor, contributor]
10. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece rev. edn (Cambridge, 2002; original hb edn, 1997; US 1998; [creator, editor and contributor] [German trans. by W. Nippel, 2000; Greek, Korean, Portuguese & Chinese transl., 2004] [won John D. Criticos Prize of London Hellenic Society, 1998]
11. Xenophon: Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises (London, Classics, 1997, rev. reissue 2005) [co-author, trans. & comm.]
12. KOSMOS. Essays in Athenian Order, Conflict and Community (Cambridge, 1998, repr. 2002) [co-editor and contributor]
13. Democritus and Atomistic Politics (London, 1998) [Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, Japanese trans.]
14. The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization (N.Y., 2000; London, 2001) [Spanish trans., 2001]
15. Spartan Reflections (London & Berkeley/L.A., 2001) [a collection of 13 essays, revised/updated and new; Greek trans. 2004]
16. Money, Labour, and Land. Approaches to the economies of ancient Greece (London & N.Y., 2001)[co-editor and contributor]
17. The Spartans: An Epic History (London, 2002, pb 2003; N.Y. York, 2003; pb. 2004 [Greek trans. 2004]
18. Alexander the Great: the Hunt for a New Past (London, & NY, 2004, pb 2005) [Greek, Bulgarian,
Korean trans, 2005]
19. Thermopylae: the Battle that Changed the World (London & NY, 2006; pb 2007)
20. I Symvoli tis Arhkaias Spartis stin Politiki Skepsi kai Praktiki/ The Contribution of Ancient Sparta to Political Thought and Practice (Athens: Alexandria, 2007), [co-ed. with N. Birgalias, K. Buraselis]
21. Eine Trilogie uber die Demokratie (Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag, 2008)
22. Ancient Greek Political Thought In Practice (Cambridge, 2009)
23. Ancient Greece. A History in Eleven Cities (O.U.P., 2009, OUP NY 2010)
24. Forever Young. Why Cambridge Has a Professorship of Greek Culture (A.G. Leventis Professorship Inaugural Lecture, Feb. 16 2009, C.U.P. December 2009)
25. Responses to Oliver Stone’s *Alexander*: Film, History, and Cultural Studies (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010) [co-ed. with F. Rose Greenland]
ARTICLES (refereed journals and books) include:
1. ‘The Second Thoughts of Augustus on the res publica in 28/27 BC’ Hermathena 119 (1975) 30-40
2. ‘Toward the Spartan revolution’ Arethusa 8 (1975)
3. ‘The enlightened historigraphy of Edward Gibbon, Esq.: a bicentennial celebration’ Maynooth Review 3 (1977) 67-93
4. ‘Hoplites and Heroes: Sparta’s contribution to the technique of ancient warfare’ JHS 97 (1977) 11-27 [German trans., with add., in K. Christ (ed.) Sparta (WdF 622, Darmstadt 1986) 387-425, 470]
5. ‘Literacy in the Spartan oligarchy’ JHS 98 (1978) 25-37
6. ‘The peculiar position of Sparta in the development of the Greek city-state’ Proc. Royal Irish Academy 80C (1980) 91-108 [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
7. ‘Spartan wives: liberation or licence?’ CQ 31 (1981) 84-105 [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
8. ‘The politics of Spartan pederasty’ PCPhS 27 (1981) 17-36 [repr., with add., in A.K. Siems (ed.) Sexualität und Erotik in der Antike (WdF 605, Darmstadt 1988) 388-415; and in W.R. Dynes & S. Donaldson (eds.) Homosexuality in the Ancient World (Garland, N.Y. 1992)] [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
9. Sparta and Samos: a special relationship?’ CQ 32 (1982) 243-65 [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
10. ‘”Trade and Politics” revisited: Archaic Greece’. In Trade in the Ancient Economy, ed. P. Garnsey, K. Hopkins & C.R. Whittaker (Hogarth P. & U. Calif. P., 1983) 1-15
11. ‘The Greek religious festivals’. In Greek Religion and Society, ed. P.E. Easterling & J.V. Muir (C.U.P., 1985) 98-127, 223-6
12. ‘Rebels and Sambos in Classical Greece: a comparative view’. In CRUX [Book, no. 2, 1985] 16-46
13. ‘The “Tacitism” of Edward Gibbon (200 years on)’ Mediterranean Historical Rev. 4 (1989) 251-70
14. ‘Herodotus and “the Other”: a meditation on empire’ EMC/CV 9 (1990) 27-40 [Greek translation in A. Melista & G. Sotiropoulou eds Herodotos. Dekatessara Meletimata, Athens 2005]
15. ‘The importance of being Dorian: an onomastic gloss on the Hellenism of Oscar Wilde’ Hermathena 148 (1990) 7-15 [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
16. ‘Fowl Play: a curious lawsuit in Classical Athens (Antiphon frr. 57-59 Thalheim)’. In NOMOS [Book, no. 6] (1990) 41-61
17. ‘Early Lakedaimon: the making of a conquest-state’. In PHILOLAKON. Lakonian studies in honour of H.W. Catling, ed. J.M. Sanders (Oxbow P. & British School at Athens, 1992) 49-55
18. ‘A Spartan education’. In APODOSIS. Essays presented to Dr W.W. Cruickshank on his eightieth birthday (St Paul’s Sch., 1992) 10-19 [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
19. ‘The silent women of Thucydides: 2.45.2 re-viewed’. In NOMODEIKTES. Fest. M. Ostwald, ed. R. Rosen & J. Farrell (U. of Michigan P., 1993) 125-32
20. ‘”Like a Worm i’ the Bud”? A heterology of Classical Greek slavery’ Greece & Rome 40 (1993) 163-80
21. ‘”We are all Greeks”? Ancient (especially Herodotean) and modern contestations of Hellenism’ BICS n.s. 2 (1995 [1996]) 75-82
22. ‘Vindicating Gibbon’s good faith’ Hermathena 148 (Summer 1995 [1996]) 133-47
23. ‘Comparatively Equal’. In Demokratia: A conversation on democracies, ancient and modern, ed. J. Ober & C.W. Hedrick (Princeton U.P., 1996) 175-85 [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
24. ‘La Politica’. In I Greci: storia-cultura-arte-società, ed. S. Settis (Einaudi, 1996), vol. I: 39-72
25. ‘La nascita degli opliti e l’organizzazione militare’. In ibid. II.1 (1996) 681-714 [publ. in original Eng. version, with add., in Book no. 15]
26. ‘Utopie et Critique de la politique’. In Le Savoir grec. Dictionnaire critique, ed. J. Brunschwig & G.E.R. Lloyd (Flammarion, 1996; E.T. Harvard UP, 2001 = no. 44) 200-17
27. Some 35 articles in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn (1996) incl. ‘Economy, Greek’, ‘Slavery, Greek’, Trade, Greek’, ‘Industry’
28. ‘Introduction’ and ‘Historiography and ancient Greek self-definition’ in M. Bentley (ed.) Routledge Companion to Historiography (1997) 3-10, 23-42
29. ‘Agathoergoi’, ‘Agelai’, ‘Agoge’ in Der Neue Pauly 1 (1997)
30. ‘”Deep Plays”: theatre as process in Athenian civic life’, Inaugural chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. P.E. Easterling (C.U.P., 1997) 3-35
31. ‘Introduction’ to [Book, no. 10, 1997] 1-19
32. ‘Editorial Introduction’. In [Book, no. 12, 1998] 1-12
33. ‘Writing the history of Archaic Greek political thought’ in N. Fisher & H. van Wees (eds.) Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence (Classical P of Wales/Duckworth 1998) 379-99
34. ‘Enomotia’, ‘Freigelassene [I, Griechenland]’, ‘Gymnetes’, ‘Heloten’, ‘Homoioi’, ‘Krypteia’ Der Neue Pauly vols 2-3 (1998)
35. ‘The economy (economies) of ancient Greece’ DIALOGOS 5 (1998) 4-24 [repr. in W. Scheidel & S. von Reden eds The Ancient Economy (2002) 11-32]
36. ‘Cambridge Classics for the Third Millennium’ in S. Ormrod (ed.) Cambridge Contributions (C.U.P., 1998) 103-21
37. ‘Classics: from discipline in crisis to (multi)cultural capital?’ in Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning, ed. Y.L. Too & N. Livingstone (C.U.P., 1998) 16-28
38. ‘The machismo of the Athenian empire – or the reign of the phaulus?’ in L. Foxhall & J. Salmon (eds.) When Men Were Men: Masculinity, power and identity in classical antiquity (Routledge, 1998) 54-65
39. ‘City and chora in Sparta: Archaic to Hellenistic’ in W.G. Cavanagh & S.E.C. Walker (eds.) Sparta in Laconia (Proc. 19th B.M. Classical Colloquium, 6-8 Dec. 1995) (London 1999) 39-47 [repr. with add. in Book no. 15]
40. ‘The Socratics’ Sparta and Rousseau’s’ in S. Hodkinson & A. Powell (eds.) Sparta: New Perspectives (London 1999) 311-37
41. ‘Democratic politics ancient and modern: from Cleisthenes to Mary Robinson’ Hermathena 166 (Summer 1999 [2000]) 5-29
42. ‘Utopia and the Critique of Politics’ in J. Brunschwig & G.E.R. Lloyd (eds) Greek Thought. A Guide to Classical Kn
owledge (Cambridge, MA & London 2000) 163-79
43. ‘The Historical Context’. Inaugural chapter of The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. M. Schofield & C. Rowe (C.U.P., 2000) 11-22
44. ‘Introduction’ to George Grote A History of Greece: From the Time of Solon to 403 BC, ed. M.O.B. Caspari and J.M. Mitchell (Routledge, 2000 [originally 1907])
45. ‘Martin Bernal et la fureur Black Athena’ in F.-X. Fauvelle-Aymar et al (eds) Afrocentrismes: l’Histoire en jeu (Karthala, Paris, 2000) 47-63
46. ‘Boeotian Swine F(or)ever? The Boeotian Superstate, 395 BCE’ in P. Flensted-Jensen et al. (eds.) Polis & Politics. Studies in Ancient Greek History presented to M.H. Hansen on his sixtieth birthday (Copenhagen 2000) 397-418
47. ‘Spartan justice? or “The State of the Ephors”?’ DIKE 3 (2000) 5-26
48. ‘Peloponnesian War aftermath’, in D. McCann & B.S. Strauss (eds.) War and Democracy. A comparative study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War (Armonk, NY, & London 2001) 104-23
49. ‘Pausanias in Laconia’ in S.E. Alcock, J.F. Cherry & J.R. Elsner eds, Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (NY 2001)
50. ‘Odysseus in Auschwitz’, Foreword to F. Hartog, Memories of Odysseus: Frontier tales from Ancient Greece (Edinburgh U.P., 2001) vii-xi
51. ‘Ellines kai Barbaroi’ in A-Ph Christidis (ed) Istoria ti Ellinikis Glossas (Thessaloniki 2001)
52. ‘The political economy of Greek slavery’ in Money, Labour and Land [book no. 16] 156-66
53. ‘The reliability debate: truth, fiction, polarity’ in H. van Wees ed. A Companion to Herodotus (Leiden 2002) ch. 19 [with E. Greenwood]
54. ‘Greek civilisation and slavery’ in T.P. Wiseman ed. Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (London: British Academy 2002) 247-62
55. ‘What is Social History Now?’ in D. Cannadine (ed.) What Is History Now? (Basingstoke 2002) 19-35
56. ‘Raising hell? The Helot mirage – a personal re-view’ in N. Luraghi & S.E. Alcock (eds) Helots and their Masters in Laconia and Messenia. Histories, Ideologies, Structures (Washington, DC, 2003) 12-30
57. ‘Some (More) Talk of Alexander’, preface to Cl. Mossé, Alexander. Destiny and Myth (2004) vii-xi Games in Antiquity. Bring Forth Rain and Bear Fruit, Athens, 2004, 22-39 (parallel Greek-English texts)
59. ‘What have the Spartans done for us?: Sparta’s contribution to Western civilisation’ Greece & Rome 2nd ser, 51.2 (2004) 164-79 and [slightly different] in Rivista Storica dell’ Antichità 34 (2004) 129-46
60. ‘Gibbon, Edward’ and ‘Hammond, Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière’ in R.B. Todd ed. Dictionary of British Classicists (2004)
61. ‘The Greeks for All? The Media and the Masses’ Greek Art in View. Fest. B.A. Sparkes, ed. S. Keay & S. Moser (Oxford, 2004) 159-67
62. ‘Why/How Does Classics Matter?’ in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 4.2 (June 2005), ed. S. Ormrod, 185-99
63. Numerous entries in G. Shipley et al. (eds) The Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization (C.U.P., 2006)
64. ‘Sparta and the Spartans in Thucydides’ in A. Rengakos & A. Tsakmakis eds The Brill Companion to Thucydides (Leiden 2006) 559-87 [with P. Debnar]
65. ‘Democracy, origins of: Contribution to a debate’ in K.A. Raaflaub & R. Wallace (eds.) Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece: interpretations and controversies (U Cal. P, 2006) ch. 6
66. ‘Spartan traditions and receptions’ in Fest. G.L. Huxley, ed. B.C. McGing & M. Humphries (special issue of Hermathena 181 [Winter 2006, publ. 2007]) 41-9
67. ‘Greeks and “barbarians”‘ in A.-F. Christidis ed. A History of Ancient Greek. From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2007) ch. 21
68. ‘Economy of Ancient Greece’ in S. Durlauf & L. Blume eds New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
69. ‘Black Sparta(n)?’ in C. Gallou, M. Georgiadis & G.M. Muskett eds DIOSKOUROI. Studies presented to W.G. Cavanagh and C.B. Mee on the anniversary of their 30-year joint contribution to Aegean Archaeology (B.A.R. Int. ser. 1889, 2008) 329-33
70. ‘Introduction: the Spartan tradition – a personal re-view’ in W.G.Cavanagh, C. Gallou & M. Georgiadis eds Sparta and Laconia From Prehistory to Pre-Modern (BSA Studies 16, London 2009) 1-4
71. ‘Foreword’ in S.Goldhill & E. Hall eds Sophocles and the Greek Tragic tradition (Cambridge, 2009) xi-xii
72. ‘”Rights”, Individuals, and Communities in Ancient Greece’ in R. Balot ed. A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (Malden, MA, & Oxford, 2009) 149-63 [with M. Edge]
73. ‘Taking Herodotus Personally’ Classical World 102.4 (2009) 393-404
74. ‘Hellenism in the Enlightenment’ in G.R. Boys-Stones, B. Graziosi, & P. Vasunia (eds) Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (O.U.P., 2009) 166-72
75. ‘Sparta’s Apollo(ne)s’ in L. Athanassaki, R. Martin & J. Miller eds. Apolline Politics & Poetics (Hellenic Ministry of Culture-ECCD 2003, Athens, 2009) 643-54
76. Appendix E , ‘Spartan Government and Society’, 347-58; Appendix F, ‘The Spartan Army (and the Battle of Leuctra)’, 359-63; Appendix G, ‘Agesilaos’, 364-68, in R. Strassler, ed. The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika (trans. J. Marincola) (Pantheon, 2009)
Link to Discussion of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Dear friends,
We had a magical discussion of Twelfth Night last night to conclude Shakespeare in the Spring’s inaugural odyssey. You may listen to the discussion by downloading the .mp3 file:
I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!
All best,
Rich
The King Lear with the Happy Ending
Dear friends,
During our discussion of King Lear, I mentioned that for more than 150 years beginning in 1681 English theatergoers experienced a very different version of King Lear, one with a “happy ending” supplied by one Nahum Tate. In this version of the play, King Lear regains his throne, Cordelia marries Edgar, and all live happily ever after. Samuel Johnson, the 18th century polymath (you may know him as the author of the Oxford English Dictionary) compiled an edition of Shakespeare’s plays; he used the original version, but he personally preferred Tate’s. In fact, he recalled being so horrified by the injustice of Cordelia’s death as a child (!) that he didn’t look at the play again until deciding to compile his edition. So while Shakespeare’s version of King Lear was widely available in print, it wasn’t until about 1838 that English theatergoers had the opportunity to see, or as they said “hear,” the original thing.
Here’s a link to Nahum Tate’s version of King Lear:
http://ethnicity.rutgers.edu/~<wbr/>jlynch/Texts/tatelear.html
Scroll down to the final scene, which takes place in the prison, and where King Lear stabs the soldier who has come to hang Cordelia…
Happy reading,
Rich
Xenophon’s Hellenika July 2010 Book 7- Audio Recording
Here’s the audio recording for the Xenophon’s Hellenika Book 7 discussion. Listen online or download the mp3 file and listen to it as a podcast on your ipod.
Discussion Questions for Twelfth Night on Tue, July 20
Dear friends,
The shakespeare@readingodyssey.org address is temporarily down, so I have sent a copy of this post to everyone through eventbrite.com, which you used to register for Shakespeare in the Spring.
Our next and final discussion will take place on Tuesday, July 20 at 8pm EST. This time, we will be looking at Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies–and a work, I will argue, that self-consciously tests the boundaries between comedy and tragedy…
You may remember that the RSC edition of Twelfth Night had not been published when our Odyssey began. It was finally published in early May, so if you haven’t bought a copy already, you may do so now on Amazon.com:
Below are several discussion questions to consider as you read and re-read the play. As always, I’d like one volunteer to prepare a kickoff response for each question. This month, I’m going to be a little more insistent about this and draft folks if I don’t get enough volunteers. 🙂
I’d also like to invite all of you to submit your own discussion question ahead of time, if there’s something you’d like us to think about before we convene. Feel free to post it here. If you could also email me your question (by next Sunday, July 18), I’ll collate them and send them around to the group. I’ve been amazed and inspired by your insights this spring (trickling into summer), and I hope to step back a little on the 20th and let you guys run the show.
Finally, while there are several film versions of Twelfth Night out there, one that I would especially recommend is the BBC production from 1980, directed by John Gorrie. The actor who plays the “madly-used Malvolio” gives a sublime performance, and I am perfectly in love with Sinead Cusack, who plays Olivia.
All best,
Richard
*****
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, PLAY ON…
“…Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die” (1.1.1-3). These are the famous first lines of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Moved to the core by a few bars of music, Orsino orders his musican(s) to play them: “That strain again, it had a dying fall” (1.1.4). As the musicians find their place, Orsino describes the music’s effect on him: “O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound / The breathes upon a bank of violets, / Stealing and giving odour” (1.1.5-7). But the music isn’t as sweet the second time around. At the musicians play, Orsino complains, “Enough, no more, / ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before” (1.1.5-8). In the lines that follow, he reflects on the peculiar inconstancy of human appetites. “O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou, / That, notwithstanding thy capacity, / Receiveth as the sea. Nought enters there, / Of what validity and pitch soe’er, / But falls into abatement and low price / Even in a minute” (1.1.9-14).
Thus, in fourteen lines–not coincidentally, perhaps, the length of a love sonnet–Shakespeare introduces one of Twelfth Night’s central themes: the paradoxical nature of human desires, which frequently disappear the moment we attain our objects. How does Shakespeare develop this theme across the play? Where else do you see him grappling with it? More importantly, what questions about human nature and morality does it raise? Are our appetites and desires something to be embraced or rejected? Trusted or distrusted? How can we live in the moment without becoming bored with life? How can we forestall pleasure without becoming a “puritan” like Malvolio, whom the play and its characters mock wholeheartedly?
2. WOMEN AND MEN IN LOVE
In Act 2, scene 4, Orsino and Viola (disguised as Cesario) discuss Orsino’s hopeless passion for Olivia, before turning to a more general discussion on the finer points of love. Olivia/Cesario hints at the love “she” bears for Orsino: “Say that some lady, as perhaps there is, / Hath for your love as great a pang of heart / As you have for Olivia. You cannot love her. / You tell her so. Must she not then be answered?” (2.4.93-6). Orsino is dumbfounded by the idea that a woman could love as deeply as he loves: “There is no woman’s sides / Can bide the beating of so strong a passion / As love doth give my heart, no woman’s heart / So big, to hold so much. They lack retention. / Alas their love may be called appetite, / No motion of the liver, but the palette, / That suffer surfeit, cloyment and revolt. / But mine is all as hungry as the sea, / And can digest as much…” (2.4.97-105).
In essence, Orsino redefines a woman’s love as “appetite,” something that “may sicken, and so die.” (1.1.3). A man’s love, he says, transcends the vicissitudes of human appetite. But wait, hasn’t Orsino just advised Viola/Cesario to marry a woman younger in years than s/he, precisely because a man’s affections are less likely to stick?
What questions is Shakespeare trying to raise through this debate? Whose side do you think he takes? Whose side do you take?
3. LOVE, LITERATURE, AND FALSEHOOD
The deeper we read into Twelfth Night, the harder it appears to identify, pin down, and define abstract ideas like “love.” One place we see this is in the play’s treatment of the very stuff the play is made of: words shaped into art. The “immortalizing power of literature” is a common theme in our literary tradition; many of Shakespeare’s love sonnets focus on it. Other sonnets bring it into question, though, and there is no greater instance of this in his work than the moment in 1.5 where Olivia jocularly announces her plan to “leave the world no copy” (i.e. not marry and have children) and instead “give out diverse schedules of [her] beauty” (1.5.223-5). Does she really believe this will work? No, and it’s clear what she’s doing: by drawing attention of the impossibility of language to “capture” reality, she’s reinforcing her earlier point that Olivia/Cesario’s passionate message “from” Orsino (it’s not entirely clear who wrote it, but it seems Viola/Cesario did) may be just that–words–and that the more “poetic” they are, the more likely they are to be false. Consider this exchange a little earlier in the scene:
Viola/Cesario: I will on with my speech in your praise, and then show you the heart of my message.
Olivia: Come to what is important in’t. I forgive you the praise.
Viola: Alas, I tool great pains to study it, and ’tis poetical.
Olivia: It is the more like to be feigned. I pray you keep it in. (1.5.176-81).
Can you identify other moments in the play where Shakespeare calls into question the integrity of his artistic medium? Can you connect them with moments in other plays we have read this spring? How do you account for all these doubts Shakespeare casts on the character of words? How would you characterize Shakespeare’s relationship language?
4. LOVE AND PLAY
Twelfth Night invites us to look at language, especially “poetic” language, with great skepticism. At the same time, though, it clearly relishes in the play of language–just as Hamlet enjoys his witty interchange with the first gravedigger, and the fool in King Lea
r exults in his verbal gymnastics. Furthermore, this love of wordplay we see time and time again in Shakespeare extends to something even bigger: the love of play, of plays, of play-acting, of impersonation, of disguise. How do you account for this? Is it Shakespeare celebrating his artistic medium? Questioning the nature of human identity (maybe we are all just a collection of roles)? Drawing attention to some deep need in the human spirit?
Additionally, for all the gaps highlighted by the play between the real world and the world of play, there is one absolutely beautiful moment when the two come together. As you may have noticed while reading Twelfth Night, Sir Toby’s expressions of love for Maria are often inspired by her cleverness in managing and directing the “play” on Malvolio. Is Maria’s dramatic genius the reason Sir Toby falls in love with her and marries her–the only marriage actually to occur during the play?
5. COMEDY AND SADNESS
Scattered throughout this comedy are moments of intense hurt, frustration, and sadness. Some are obvious. The play begin’s with Orsino’s sadness; Olivia, the woman he pines for, can’t return his or any man’s love while she moans for her dead brother. Cast upon the shores of Illyria, Viola, too, believes she has lost her brother–likewise, her twin Sebastian believes he has lost a sister. Some of these moments of sadness are less obvious. Take the song “O Mistress Mine,” a love song sung by Feste in 2.3; in this song, pleasure tasted today is tinged with grief by the uncertainty about what tomorrow holds in store for us: “Present mirth hath present laughter. / What’s to come is still unsure” (2.3.46-7). At least, that’s how I read it. How would characterize the tone of the song? Can you find other moments in the play where you detect an undercurrent of sadness or grief flowing beneath the play’s antics? What is their dramatic purpose? Is it to provide “tragic relief,” as some readers like to say that scenes of mirth in tragedies provide “comic relief” for their audiences, or is Shakespeare doing something else?
6. COMEDY AND TRAGEDY
In addition to its many instances of sadness or grief, there are moments in Twelfth Night where the action of the play comes close, even dangerously close, to something much darker, something much closer to tragedy. The practical joke played on Malvolio turns into something that has disturbed many readers: imprisonment in a makeshift “asylum” where everything Malvolio says in his defense is willfully construed as further evidence of his madness. (How would you direct this scene? Would you do it as straight comedy? Or would you draw attention to its darker features? How?) Near the end of the play, Malvolio storms off the stage vowing to “be avenged on the whole pack of you” (5.1.381). And then there’s the moment a little earlier in the final act where Orsino seems quite intent on killing Viola/Cesario, rather than allowing “his” love for Olivia to continue. Reread Orsino’s monologue at 5.1.15-29; Orsino’s language is really, really dark. This, I think, is where Twelgth Night veers closest to tragedy, and you see this kind of trajectory in other comedies as well, for example A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Shakespeare tests the boundary between comedy and tragedy in other ways as well. For example, there seems to be a recurrent question about whether mirth or sadness, happiness or sorrow serves as the “baseline” of human experience. Consider Feste’s songs: “O Mistress Mine” (2.3.30ff), “Come Away, Death” (2.4.54), and the deeply enigmatic closing song “When That I Was a Little Tiny Boy” (5.1.392ff). Using these songs as starting points, consider the relationship between comedy and tragedy as they pertain to the world we live in? Is it complimentary? Hierarchical? Is the real world, the world we live in, primarily comic or tragic, or does it contain equal amounts of both? Is comedy something that springs from tragedy, allowing us to deal with or forget it? Or is tragedy something that ensues when we let the comic spirit run on for too long?
7. THE ENDING
In Act 1, Viola asks the Captain to disguise her as a man, so she can enter Olivia’s service: “Conceal me what I am, and be my aid / For such disguise as haply shall become / The form of my intent” (1.2.55-7). We never see “Viola” again; at the end of the play, she is still in her disguise, and she is not going to put on her woman’s weeds until her promised marriage to Orsino. What do you make of this? Many comedies are based on disguises and mistaken identities, and these typically end with unmaskings and a clearing up of confusion. In this play, we have a clearing up of confusion, but the unmasking is not complete. Why? We also don’t get to see a marriage, another conventional ending point for comedies. Viola is going to marry Orsino, and her brother is going to marry Olivia, but we aren’t invited to these celebrations. There IS one marriage in the play–Maria’s to Sir Toby–but it happens completely offstage. This “ending” has puzzled critics. What do you make of it?
8. SKEPTICISM
“What’s to come is still unsure” (2.3.47). Is Twelfth Night a skeptical play? Does the play mock Malvolio’s “puritanism” because of his austerity and prudery–“Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale” (2.3.104-5)”–or does the play express a deeper aversion to religion? Why or why not?
Discussion of King Lear
Dear Friends,
We had a GREAT discussion of King Lear tonight. To everyone who called in: thanks for all of your wonderful observations and probing questions. To those of you who couldn’t be on the call: I hope you have a chance to listen to and enjoy the “replay.”
Here’s a link to last night’s discussion:
I look forward to our final discussion next on month on Twelfth Night. Unlike the first two plays we’ve read, Twelfth Night is a comedy, but in some ways it’s a very dark comedy, so it will be worth thinking about the relationship between to genres. And it will be worth asking which genre, tragedy or comedy, more faithfully represents the human experience…
All best,
Rich
Discussion Questions for King Lear
Dear Friends,
I look forward to our discussion of King Lear, which will commence in just a little while. I thought I would post the discussion questions on this blog, in case anyone wants to refer to them in the future. If you’re like me, you know that emails can be a little hard to track down sometimes. 🙂
All best,
Richard
*****
1. ONE WORD?
One way of getting into a play or other work of literature is to identify a single word which, to your mind, captures the heart of the play–or at least your vision of it. As you read through or look back over King Lear, try to isolate this word, and then try to explain to yourself why it feels so important. Trust your instincts, and run with your imagination. Your word may be one that appears many times in the play, or only once.
2. FILIAL PIETY?
William Hazlitt, the great nineteenth-century essayist and critic, wrote that King Lear was Shakespeare’s best play, and that the source of its awful power was its treatment of filial piety, the bond between parents and children. Here is what he says in an essay on the play: “The passion which [Shakespeare] has taken as his subject is that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart; of which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed; and the canceling and tearing to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. This depth of nature, this force of passion, this tug and war of the elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the contrast between the fixed, immoveable basis of natural affection, and the rapid, irregular starts of imagination, suddenly wrenched from all its accustomed holds and resting-places in the soul, this is what Shakespeare has given, and what nobody else but he could give.”
What does the play tell us about the relationship between parents and children? If Lear’s “firm faith in filial piety” leads to his tragic fall, what hope is there for the family? In Shakespeare’s dark portrayal of generational conflict, do you think he sides more with the old or the young? What is your evidence for this?
3. A POLITICAL PLAY?
Is King Lear primarily a political play that happens to be shaped by family dynamics, or a family drama that happens to have political repercussions? Does Shakespeare put more emphasis on the political or the familial? Why? Can you identify moments in the play where the emphasis shifts? What is happening in those moments?
4. GOOD AND EVIL?
In his essay about King Lear, William Hazlitt said that Goneril and Regan are “so thoroughly hateful that we do not even like to repeat their names.” Occasionally when we read works of literature we meet characters we absolutely despise. Then there are characters we absolutely love: Lear, Cordelia, Kent, Edgar. Something both literary critics and directors like to do is to read characters “against the grain,” whether by portraying a hateful character sympathetically or a loveable character critically. Choose one character in King Lear whom you strongly liked or strongly disliked after reading the play. Now, try to complicate your reading of the play by playing the devil’s advocate to yourself. Try to find what’s culpable in the beloved, and redeemable in the despised. Can you reconcile your two readings?
5. A HAPPY ENDING FOR LEAR?
In today’s world, if a director wants to put on a (modern) play, s/he must follow the playwright’s script to the “t”. That hasn’t always been the case. Before the era of modern copyright law, plays weren’t protected in this way; theatrical companies could change them pretty much at will, whether to appease the censors or appeal to audiences. It may astonish you to know that, for almost 150 years between 1681 and 1823, King Lear was performed with a “happy ending” supplied by an 17th-century editor named Nahum Tate. In this ending, Lear regains his throne and Cordelia marries Edgar.
The great eighteenth-century critic, essayist, and scholar Samuel Johnson restored the original ending of King Lear in his landmark edition of Shakespeare’s plays, even though Tate’s version continued to be performed, and he found Shakespeare’s morally appalling. In his notes to the play, he writes, “Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles. […] A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life: but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be persuaded, that the observation of justice makes a play worse; or, that if other excellencies are equal, the audience will not always rise better pleased from the final triumph of persecuted vice.”
What do Johnson’s remarks tell us about his views of the purpose of drama and the relationship between life and literature? Are you sympathetic to Johnson’s comments? Would you prefer the happy ending?
6. THREE FILM CLIPS (optional)
If you have time, you might be interested in looking at one or more of the following film clips of Act 2, scene 4, where Lear, having stormed out of Goneril’s house, seeks accommodation with Regan. In a scene remarkable for its dramatic compression, Lear is rapidly stripped of all his followers and then shut out of doors as a storm approaches. The clips are from the 1971 production with Paul Scofield, the 1974 production with James Earl Jones, and the 2008 production with Ian McKellan, respectively.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ajDJ_uEVBo?wmode=transparent]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftW7WcoOuU8?wmode=transparent]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41ZDo9dhNaE?wmode=transparent]
Which interpretation do you like the most, and why? Is making a film of King Lear quite the same thing as putting it on stage? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages, the opportunities and drawbacks, the possibilities and limitations, etc., of each medium?
Ave atque Vale!
To all the participants in Shakespeare in the Spring,
I‘ve never been fond of goodbyes, so I’ll keep this short and sweet.
My most heartfelt thanks to all of you who participated in Shakespeare in the Spring this year, whether you joined one call or all four. For me, reading Shakespeare is always a humbling experience, and learning from all of you made it even more so. So thank you for your time and energy, and for your observations and questions; for the courtesy you showed, and support you gave to everyone in the group. Lastly, a giant thank you to Phil Terry, less for giving me the opportunity to moderate this group–which essentially moderated itself–but for his creativity and vision in making Reading Odyssey what it is.
This morning, I received a lovely email from a participant describing how the supposedly mundane concerns of the last few decades–getting a job, building a career, establishing and supporting a family–had somehow prepared him, in ways he couldn’t possibly have imagined, for reading Shakespeare and other literary works, which he hadn’t encountered since college, and maybe hadn’t appreciated fully then. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us, though. After all, these “mundane concerns” the participant described are really just life and living, and if you take just one thing from Shakespeare in the Spring, I hope it’s the recognition of Shakespeare’s profound engagement, underneath all the poetic language and sparkling wordplay, with life. With read, honest-to-god, often brutally hard, but sometimes absolutely delightful, and always thought-provoking human life.
A poetry professor in college once told me, “When you’re 20 and a poet, you’re 20. When you’re 40 and a poet, you’re a poet.” I wish I could tell him now, “And the same goes for reading, too.”
I’ve addressed you as friends in all of my emails, and I really do mean that. Some people bond over climbing a mountain; well, we’ve read three Shakespeare plays together. Please keep in touch, especially if you decide to continue reading Shakespeare. If you’re ever in the Boston area, don’t hesitate to look me up; it’s always great to put a face to a name. Yet even if we never meet in person, I hope to see you again on another Odyssey.
Ave atque vale,
Richard
21. July 2010 by Arrian
Categories: Commentary, Shakespeare | Tags: Shakespeare | Comments Off on Ave atque Vale!