Essays on
Shakespeare

by G.L. Horton

G.L. Horton's newest essays are now being posted on her stageblog.

Shakespeare, Pericles & Language
R wrote: "In Kathryn Hunter's production of Pericles, the narrator tells Old Pericles, 'You shrunk, Papa.'" GLH replies: Gawd, I'd hate that! I might even boo!!!!

Shakespeare & Motivation in Measure for Measure
SF asks: "Why does Duke Vincentio care about Mariana?" GLH replies: Maybe he has an interest - as distant relation, friend of her father, religious pilgrimmage or (scandal!) sexual - and it was he who brought Mariana and Angelo together...

Shakespeare and Female Nudity
MH wrote: "Othello will be the first place we've used female nudity since 1996. Maybe it'll sell tickets, maybe it won't..." GLH replies: I'd be very interested to hear your post-show assessment ... I'm on the alert for evidence supporting or disproving my notion that female nudity is a mistake in Shakespeare...

Shakespeare & Nudity
There must have been some convention about or acceptance of nudity, because there had been wide spread stagings of Mystery plays featuring naked Adams and Eves. Presumably, Eve was played by a male. But the Fall plot stipulates that our first parents must begin naked...

Shakespeare, the Bawdy Bard
PC writes: "Shakespeare can be bawdy ...Yet I get the impression that Americans are uncomfortable ..." GLH replies: Pooh! How soon you forget! Last time you launched this...

Shakespeare & His Wife
JD writes: "Will Shakspere, who left no book, no MS, no letter when he died but only the memory of his mean heart to his faithful wife." GLH replies: If Ann was faithful to her notoriously and publicly unfaithful sonneteer husband, it could only be out of perverse spite or puritan self-righteousness...

Shakespeare & Ideas
DC writes: I know it is convenient, when it suits your purpose, to say [Shakespeare] had no ideas ... and when it suits your purpose, to say he was intelligent and thoughtful..." GLH replies: Unbelievable-- examining ideas through a dramatic confrontation between differing points of view has long been part of the process of doing philosophy: e.g., Plato's Dialogues, Zen Buddhist stories, Sophocles's plays...

A Sleeve By Any Other Name
MS writes: "Not in *Julius Caesar* ... In the second scene, Cassius instructs Brutus to 'pluck Casca by the sleeve' (The Romans didn't wear sleeves)." GLH replies: None of these details would yank the historically-minded out of the narrative ... The Romans had craftsmen who made sandals and boots...

Shakespeare & Homosexuality
GK writes: "Do we? Personally, I have no idea how the Elizabethans reacted to homosexuality or bisexuality. Do you?" And PC replies: "Yes. They reacted with horror. When a sailor was found in another's bunk, both were executed almost immediately." GLH replies: Haven't we been down this road before??? Check the library -- there are books by experts maintaining that homo or bisexuality was rampant in this period. They may be mistaken, or you may be: but they certainly marshall more evidence than this of yours! Men slept with other men all the time...

Shakespeare & Illiteracy
W writes: "... many dyslexic people read quite well, once their condition is diagnosed and they undergo treatment. People do overcome all sorts of things..." GHL replies: As you say, WS was not a star-- merely an actor good enough to play roles with VERY long speeches, like the Ghost and the principal role in a play of Ben Jonson's. So WS isn't likely to have been one of the illiterate acting geniuses...

Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare
I am appalled that the NYTimes would publish this lunacy, and adding insult to injury, publish it under a title that implies that there is historical evidence that Oxford-- or anyone other than the actor William Shakespeare whose name is on the published plays and poems and on the monument in his home town of Stratford-- wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare. There is no such evidence, and the article cites none...

As You Like It & Love's Labours Lost
AYLI is very beautiful, but a bit bland, and what directors do to counteract the blandness tends to piss me off. A nymphomanical Phoebe...

Shakespeare Influenced by Coventry Cycle?
AJ writes: "Have you considered, very speculatively, whether there may be some influence from the Mystery Plays? The Coventry Cycle...?" GLH replies: This seems so clear to me ... that I almost wish I had the skills and access to scholarly material to try to demonstrate it!...

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