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Description
This is the final programme in the series. The programme revisits some of the key critical approaches to understanding Shakespeare - especially new historicism and cultural materialism. It includes
... interview material collected at the World Congress on Shakespeare in Los Angeles in 1996.
| 22 | 00:01:52,000 | 00:01:58,000 | and she was a powerful queen, and there was a whole sort of discourse about unruly women, |
| 28 | 00:01:58,000 | 00:02:01,000 | the world it came from, the world it was going to, except in so far as you could… |
| 23 | 00:01:58,000 | 00:02:05,000 | ..is switch the spotlight away from say King Lear to Poor Tom the Beggar, or in Macbeth… |
| 23 | 00:01:59,000 | 00:02:05,000 | and a very very lively and intense debate about what a woman in power should do, |
| 29 | 00:02:02,000 | 00:02:06,000 | ..look at it as a purely formal object and analyse it in formal terms. |
| 24 | 00:02:05,000 | 00:02:09,000 | ..switch the spotlight from Macbeth to The Witches so that the question of gender, |
| 30 | 00:02:06,000 | 00:02:10,000 | It was a very good discipline and a very good way of actually paying attention… |
| 24 | 00:02:06,000 | 00:02:08,000 | or could do, or whether a woman should be in power at all. |
| 25 | 00:02:09,000 | 00:02:13,000 | these marginalised figures on the edges of conventional reality suddenly thrown into… |
| 25 | 00:02:10,000 | 00:02:13,000 | (John Drakakis) If we look at Egypt carefully we find that Egypt is gendered. |
| 31 | 00:02:11,000 | 00:02:16,000 | ..to the literary object. But like all practices it began to feel airless after a while… |
| 26 | 00:02:13,000 | 00:02:17,000 | ..the spotlight, thrown into the foreground. And there's a lot of mileage in that and… |
| 26 | 00:02:15,000 | 00:02:21,000 | (John Drakakis) Rome is male, Egypt is female. The female undermines the male. |
| 32 | 00:02:17,000 | 00:02:21,000 | ..or routine, and new historicism in some sense wasn't very new at all but it was… |
| 27 | 00:02:17,000 | 00:02:21,000 | ..I have great sympathy with it and I use those techniques myself, but there's one… |
| 28 | 00:02:21,000 | 00:02:25,000 | ..fundamental thing wrong with that culture materialist approach which is equally wrong… |
| 33 | 00:02:22,000 | 00:02:27,000 | ..except in so far as an older historical practice, an older interest in where these… |
| 27 | 00:02:22,000 | 00:02:24,000 | (John Drakakis) I mean this is why we like to keep women in their place of course… |
| 28 | 00:02:25,000 | 00:02:29,000 | (John Drakakis) ..because they're very dangerous to a patriarchal society. |
| 29 | 00:02:25,000 | 00:02:31,000 | ..when the new historicists use it , and that is this unargued, unargued unexamined… |
| 34 | 00:02:27,000 | 00:02:30,000 | ..objects come from, where they're going to, what entailments they have, |
| 35 | 00:02:31,000 | 00:02:37,000 | what their situation is, had become outmoded or ignored, and then it was necessary to… |
| 29 | 00:02:31,000 | 00:02:33,000 | Ania Loomba: One of the things I always like to point out to my students... |
| 30 | 00:02:32,000 | 00:02:37,000 | ..assumption that it is self- evident that Shakespeare's plays must have originally… |
| 30 | 00:02:34,000 | 00:02:40,000 | ..is that Cleopatra refuses to call her Anthony 'husband' until after he is dead. |
| 31 | 00:02:37,000 | 00:02:40,000 | ..been intended, and subsequently can only be regarded, |
| 36 | 00:02:38,000 | 00:02:41,000 | ..open the windows again and try to let some air in and think about doing this again… |
| 31 | 00:02:41,000 | 00:02:44,000 | Then he does not threaten her any more now. Throughout the play she's sort of resisting… |
| 32 | 00:02:41,000 | 00:02:44,000 | as reinforcing the status quo of his time. |
| 37 | 00:02:42,000 | 00:02:47,000 | ..so one piece of it was, as I say despite the phrase, not so much new as just recovering. |
| 32 | 00:02:45,000 | 00:02:51,000 | ..becoming Anthony's wife, resisting being a Roman matron, you know, establishing... |
| 33 | 00:02:45,000 | 00:02:50,000 | Reinforcing hierarchy, bolstering the power structure of his day, and that they can… |
| 38 | 00:02:47,000 | 00:02:52,000 | Jerry Brotton: All forms of criticism are underpinned by certain theoretical positions. |
| 34 | 00:02:50,000 | 00:02:54,000 | ..only go on being conservative unless we read them against the grain or de mystify them, |
| 33 | 00:02:51,000 | 00:02:56,000 | ..an alternative style of sexual politics an alternative style of being, and as soon as… |
| 39 | 00:02:52,000 | 00:02:57,000 | People like A C Bradley, G Wilson- Knight, they're all informed by certain theories, |
| 35 | 00:02:54,000 | 00:02:58,000 | or expose the extent to which they 're in cahoots with power, etc. |
| 34 | 00:02:56,000 | 00:03:00,000 | ..he's dead she says you know whatever's good, what's brave, what's noble, let's… |
| 40 | 00:02:57,000 | 00:03:01,000 | we all are, that's how we live our lives, we live our lives by taking… |
| 41 | 00:03:01,000 | 00:03:06,000 | ..a bunch of assumptions, theories , ideas, ideals, and putting them to work… |
| 35 | 00:03:01,000 | 00:03:05,000 | ..do it in the high Roman fashion and husband I come and, of course this is… |
| 42 | 00:03:06,000 | 00:03:10,000 | ..in our everyday life. That's what we do when we read the plays. |
| 36 | 00:03:06,000 | 00:03:09,000 | ..Cleopatra at her supreme actress -like best. |
| 37 | 00:03:11,000 | 00:03:14,000 | John Drakakis: What Cleopatra does she gets hold of a Roman, and she, |
| 38 | 00:03:15,000 | 00:03:20,000 | well I was going to say castrates them but not quite that. Yes, she made proud Caesar… |
| 39 | 00:03:21,000 | 00:03:27,000 | ..lay his sword to bed, he ploughed her, and she cropped. And in fact of course she then… |
| 40 | 00:03:28,000 | 00:03:35,000 | ..produces Caesar's bastard son. Now if you think of a patriarchal society in which… |
| 41 | 00:03:35,000 | 00:03:40,000 | ..continuity is dependent upon the legitimacy of offspring, you can begin to see… |
| 42 | 00:03:40,000 | 00:03:47,000 | ..what kind of threat Cleopatra poses. Where Rome is rather anally retentive, |
| 43 | 00:03:48,000 | 00:03:51,000 | Egypt of course is anarchic and carnivalesque. |
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