Pater Familias » Literature

SEAM AND GREASE (COMMENT).

Philip — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:29:17 +0000

SEAM AND GREASE (COMMENT). I think that Professor Liberman’s association of “unseaming” with “guts” remains valid. My OED gives the usage of “seam” for “fat” or “grease” going back to 1200, with examples from 1483, 1513 and 1541. I think that for an Elizabethan audience, “unseaming” would evoke visions of a butcher at work. I also think that this meaning of “seam” would be evoked by the passage from Troilus and Cressida (II, iii, 183-189) and that this association would be reinforced by the later lines in the speech (lines 194-195):

By going to Achilles.
That were to enlard his fat-already pride….

In both cases, I think the metaphors operate in two different ways at once. I like this conclusion because, as I posted here, I read William Empson’s SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY when I was young and love it.

SEAMS AND SEWING (COMMENT).

Philip — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:28:12 +0000

SEAMS AND SEWING (COMMENT). I posted here on Professor Biberman’s observation that in the phrase “he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops”, Shakespeare’s audience would be familiar with the use of “seam” to refer to “guts.” Trent commented that the sewing analogy is logical when applied to both the phrase from Macbeth and to another passage from Shakespeare. The passage is from Troilus and Cressida, and I am retyping it here because the quotation in the comments was garbled by the software. In the passage (II, iii, 183-189)), Ulysses is speaking about Achilles and his pride:

Shall the proud lord
That bastes his arrogance with his own seam,
And never suffers matter of the world
Enter his thoughts, save such as doth revolve
And ruminate himself, shall he be worshipp’d
Of that we hod an idol more than he?

I like to think of Shakespeare as a glovemaker’s son, so I am happy to have these sewing metaphors. (Note that the idea of unseaming by ripping out stitches and the idea of basting or preliminary sewing fit with the process of making gloves).

“THE SEAMY SIDE” IN SHAKESPEARE.

Philip — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:35:19 +0000

“THE SEAMY SIDE” IN SHAKESPEARE. I sent Mary Jane Professor Biberman’s article, and she was reminded of some of Emilia’s lines in Othello. (Mary Jane played Emilia in college). Emilia is protesting to Iago against the accusation that Emilia has slept with Othello: “Some such squire he was/ That turned your wit the seamy side without,/ And made you to suspect me with the Moor.” As the footnote in the Riverside Shakespeare says, “seamy side without” means “wrong side out.” Mary Jane has long thought that it was apt for a glovemaker’s son to use the metaphor.

UNSEAMING IN SHAKESPEARE.

Philip — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:32:53 +0000

UNSEAMING IN SHAKESPEARE. Professor Biberman gives the example of the word “unseamed” in Macbeth, in the phrase “he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops.” This is the only appearance of the word “unseamed” in Shakespeare. We saw a very good performance of Macbeth over the weekend at Curtain Call, and the phrase struck me then. as it always does. I did not know what Professor Biberman adds: “Shakespeare’s audience was familiar with the notion that men are made of guts, OR SEAM [my emphasis].” “Nave to th’ chaps” was graphic enough.

SHAKESPEARE’S INVENTED WORDS.

Philip — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:31:29 +0000

SHAKESPEARE’S INVENTED WORDS. The discussion of Sarah Palin’s use of the new word “refudiate” led to this informative article by Professor Matthew Biberman about Shakespeare’s neoligisms. (link via realclearpolitics). (My position on the controversy is that I am in favor of new words). Professor Biberman makes the valuable statistical point that Shakespeare gets credit for coining a lot of new words simply because the creators of the Oxford English Dictionary, in creating its history of word usage, relied on Shakespeare’s works as an archive.

THE BEST COLLEGE HOUR I EVER SPENT.

Philip — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:06:33 +0000

THE BEST COLLEGE HOUR I EVER SPENT. The best single hour I ever spent in college came in the winter quarter of my sophomore year. I was in a full-year seminar where every reading assignment was in great literature. The students discussed the works, and the professor guided us. There were fifteen of us, and the discussions were lively. And then one day, we all came in unprepared. We were reading GULLIVER’S TRAVELS. Professor O’Malley allowed the silence to grow. Nobody had anything to say. Every so often Professor O’Malley would suggest a question that we could have asked, but it was almost an hour of uncomfortable silence. After that everybody came in to class armed with enough questions for a full hour of discussion.

MY VOTE ON THE SOCRATIC METHOD.

Philip — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:05:42 +0000

MY VOTE ON THE SOCRATIC METHOD. On their blogs, which I check, law school professors Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit), Ann Althouse, and Stephen Bainbridge are discussing the merits of the Socratic Method. (The comments have lots of interesting opinions as well). Professor Althouse asks: “Would you want a Socratic professor? Would you want to be one?” Put me down as a big fan of the Socratic Method for all subject matter. I was a fan of the Socratic Method in literature courses long before I got to law school. Sitting and answering questions to oneself is a lot more interesting than just listening and taking notes. I also found it more effective. Imitating the process of research in a field does, I think, teach a student to think like an economist or like a mathematician or a lawyer. There are special advantages in law where a lawyer needs to see all sides of an issue.

ANOTHER NOVEL PRODUCTION CONCEPT FOR SHAKESPEARE.

Philip — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:50:37 +0000

ANOTHER NOVEL PRODUCTION CONCEPT FOR SHAKESPEARE. I posted here on a director’s concept of Prospero as a pizza chef who’s lost his position. The Onion has a report on another novel concept. To quote the director: I know when most people hear The Merchant Of Venice, they think 1960s Las Vegas, a high-powered Manhattan stock brokerage, or an 18th-century Georgia slave plantation, but I think it’s high time to shake things up a bit. The great thing about Shakespeare is that the themes in his plays are so universal that they can be adapted to just about any time and place.” The novel setting he has chosen: 16th century Venice.

A NOVEL I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND AT ALL.

Philip — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:47:56 +0000

A NOVEL I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND AT ALL. I reread THE DEMONS because it was the first novel I read as a freshman in college (The title was translated as THE DEVILS or THE POSSESSED at the time). I could tell then that it was a great book, but I didn’t have a clue what the novel was about. Now, I see why I didn’t. To begin with, as noted, it is a comic novel, and I missed that. Another problem I had was that, as this wikipedia article says, the genre of THE DEMONS is “philosophical novel”, and I was even more out of my depth in philosophy than I am now. (THE WHOLE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE REQUIRES A SPOILER ALERT). Worse, Dostoyevsky had Slavophil leanings, which I could not comprehend. I was rooting for the wrong characters. The ideas I had encountered until then were those of the Western liberal tradition, and I took the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers for granted. Here was Dostoyevsky, as wikipedia puts it, “portraying their ideas and ideological foundation as demonic….” There were other philosophical issues that left me floundering. One of the characters plans to commit suicide because he believes that “a man who can do this becomes the true God.” Huh. It’s a wonderful book, and, I have to acknowledge, a good introduction to literature and ideas for a naive freshman. But I still feel sympathy for my baffled self.

A DOSTOYEVSKY COMIC NOVEL—THE DEMONS.

Philip — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:46:37 +0000

A DOSTOYEVSKY COMIC NOVEL—THE DEMONS. An 11 1/2 hour production of Dostoyevsky’s THE DEMONS is going to be performed this weekend on Governor’s Island off New York City. I would be tempted to go if we lived in New York, especially because I reread THE DEMONS a couple months ago. It’s a great book. Joanne Kaufman had an article about Peter Stein, the man behind the production, in today’s Wall Street Journal. Stein read THE DEMONS recently after a lifetime of disliking Dostoyevsky, and I was struck by this quote from Stein: “I started to read and I thought it was nothing for me. It was ridiculous, something that could have been written by Noël Coward or Terence Rattigan. It was kind of a light comedy. Who marries who is nothing that has interested me very much.” The quote struck me because when I reread it, I also experienced the book as in large part a comedy, a drawing room comedy. Think of it. Dostoyevsky. A comic novel. Of course, the novel has some very dark parts, since it is also about terrorism.

“THIS IS THE WAY OLD ‘CASEY’ STENGEL RAN….”

Philip — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:40:35 +0000

“THIS IS THE WAY OLD ‘CASEY’ STENGEL RAN….” The Wall Street Journal had a squib today on the fact that Luke Scott took 35.7 seconds to round the bases on his home run the other night. (Scott strained his hamstring while jogging round the bases and had to walk part of the way). I was reminded of something my father used to recite at the dinner table. Casey Stengel was a favorite of ours as a manager, with people calling out to each other if he was giving an interview, but what my father recited was about an inside-the-park home run that Casey hit in the 1923 World Series. It was by Damon Runyon, who was covering the event as a sports writer. The full text is here. I don’t recall my father reciting anything close to the whole thing, but here is an excerpt from the New York Post which leaves out some of Runyon’s repetitionsand there fore some of the poetry: ““This is the way old Casey Stengel ran yesterday afternoon, running his home run home in a Giant victory by a score of 5 to 4 in the first game of the World Series of 1923. This is the way — his mouth wide open. His warped old legs bending beneath him at every strike. His arms flying back and forth like those of a man swimming with a crawl stroke. His flanks heaving, his breath whistling, his head far back . . .
“The warped old legs, twisted and bent by many a year of baseball campaigns just barely held out under Casey Stengel until he reached the plate, running his home run home. Then they collapsed.” My father would then add two facts. First, Stengel married his wife Edna the next year, and her parents were supposed to have opposed the marriage because they had read Damon Runyon and thought of Stengel as too old for their daughter.

Second, Stengel was 33 years old.

PLAYWRIGHTS AND STATISTICS.

Philip — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:32:38 +0000

PLAYWRIGHTS AND STATISTICS. A difficulty confronting the statistical analysts of Shakespeare’s plays is that they reach different conclusions. Lukas Erne in his review summarizes the findings of contemporary scholars about Henry VI, Part I.

Gary Taylor: Part I is by Shakespeare, Thomas Nashe and two unknown collaborators. Brian Vickers: It’s by Shakespeare, Nashe and Thomas Kyd. Hugh Craig and Arthur Kinney: It’s by Shakespeare, Nashe (perhaps) and Christopher Marlowe.

I posted here on Richard Feynman’s explanation of how difficult it is to design statistical experiments. As I posted here, “Nature doesn’t run very good experiments.” It looks like Elizabethan dramatists didn’t either.

FIGURING OUT WHO SHAKESPEARE’S COLLABORATORS WERE.

Philip — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:11:20 +0000

FIGURING OUT WHO SHAKESPEARE’S COLLABORATORS WERE. How do scholars determine that Shakespeare had collaborators on a play? One current way is by statistical analysis. Lukas Erne in the Times Literary Supplement (June 4, 2010) writes about the “growing consensus…that Shakespeare repeatedly collaborated with other dramatists….” He was reviewing SHAKESPEARE, COMPUTERS, AND THE MYSTERY OF AUTHORSHIP, edited by Hugh Craig and Arthur F. Kinney. A typical computer analysis is based on word frequency. The study looks at a segment of a play whose authorship is contested and sees whether it contains an above average number of words that Shakespeare used frequently. The word frequency in the segment may instead reflect that of another playwright. Interestingly, the word that Shakespeare used least, compared with contemporary dramatists, is “Yes.” He tended to use “yea” or “aye” instead. The word Shakespeare used most, compared with his peers, is “gentle.”

HOW RAFFISH WAS SHAKESPEARE?

Philip — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 03:00:49 +0000

HOW RAFFISH WAS SHAKESPEARE? I mentioned what I had read about George Wilkins, the brothelkeeper and collaborator with Shakespeare, to a friend of Nick’s who has acted in Pericles. He smiled and said something about how that was consistent with how he thought of Shakespeare. I was surprised. I have always thought of Shakespeare as a respected bourgeois citizen of Stratford.

SHAKESPEARE’S LOW-LIFE COLLABORATOR.

Philip — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:55:57 +0000

SHAKESPEARE’S LOW-LIFE COLLABORATOR. Charles Nicholl wrote a book, THE LODGER: SHAKESPEARE ON SILVER STREET, about Shakespeare’s testimony in a court case involving his landlord. Nicholl has an article in the London Review of Books (June 24, 2010) which contains new information about the landlord. What struck me, however, was the information about George Wilkins, who is thought to have collaborated with Shakespeare on Pericles. (Marjorie Garber says: “It seems clear from internal evidence that most of the first two acts of Pericles were written by someone else, probably George Wilkins….”) Nicholl’s article refers to George Wilkins as a “hack author and brothelkeeper” and says that “Wilkins frequently appeared before the Middlesex magistrates, sometimes on charges of gross violence against the prostitutes who worked for him.” Despite the expertise of Wilkins, Marjorie Garber says that the brothel scenes in Pericles are surely by Shakespeare.”