aglarien-Literature (EN) @[email protected]

women for female roles in the continent. Both assertions are proved false. Now scholars believe the female roles by boy actors are more of a custom or convenience thing. Also, this practice may reflect the contemporary anxiety of women speaking in public spheres as well as the English public stage's emphasis on homosocial relationships and homo-erotic/hetero-erotic appeal. (2/2)

Stephen Orgel posited a famous question in early modern theatre studies decades ago: "why did the English stage take boys for women?" Years later, the academia's honest answer is, we still don't know. Yet the scholar consensus has progressed a long way since Orgel's question. For example, in the past, people inclined to assert that the female actresses on public stage was unlawful in Shakespeare's time, or England simply had little to no knowledge of the popular acting practices using real (1/2)

Attended a hybrid lecture online yesterday about boy actors on the Renaissance stage. The lecture was given by a Cambridge academic to his fellow scholars. Not a very in depth one in general. But it argued intriguingly that the boy actors might integrate elements of their childish play onto the stage. That explained the high playfulness of some plays (esp. some Jonson, Dekker, Lyly) and some physical and musical aspects of them.

Eh, hi, sorry for the long break of my posting. I changed my phone and kind of lost the way to log onto two accounts on Mastodon. Now I'm back! I'll continue to post about English Literature here, if only as my own way of praticing English.

Early Modern Publisher didn't distinguish "i" and "j", though we're almost certain (almost) that British people back then pronounced sound "j" in the same way as we did. Thus the name Benjamin Jonson went "Beniamin Ionson" in published texts and Jonson signed "B.I." under his epigram on Shakespeare's portrait.

I'm doing another presentation this week. This time it is still the form study: how/why Chartist poets called for social change in their epic poems. There are many intriguing findings in the textual analysis, among which there is a main point I'd like to write down here: by "conquering" the epic form, the oldest and the most prominent form in English Literary history, these working-class poets reclaimed the literary "canon" for their own class.

I mean it. As an experienced narrative designer of video games, I dare say video game scripts have much more in common with play scripts than with prose fiction. Games are like immersive plays. You lead the players through a journey, play with them, grant them satisfaction, make them sympathize with your own characters and so on. Mostly they just watch what you present. Sometimes they interfere (in a very limited and contrived way). Audiences participate in a play in a very similar way to that gamers do games.

Be like Jonson. Still bullying generations of scholars 400 years after his death. How many people managed that?

What's drama and video games have in common? They're both plays.

The preface of "Daphnis and Chloe" described the story as, "a delightful possession for everyone,/that will/heal the sick/and cheer the desponding,/bring back memories to those who have loved/and give needful instruction to those who have not".

However, as to Comedy of Errors this specific play, we should note that the only two performance record entries of Comedy of Errors in Shakespeare's time were both in private housings. One in a small pub(?), another in the court. Before we evacuate solid evidence of this play performing in public theatres, it is still unsafe to say Shakespeare meant to write a tragic comedy in the first place if only by depicting the sufferings of servants.

Earlier today I did a pre regarding servants, servitude and Shakespeare's farce. In Shakespeare's time, 60-70 percent of the population had the experience of working as a servant in someone else's household. Thus, a large part of his audience in the public theatre would feel related to his abused servants. With that perspective, we may have a new view of how the practical jokes worked out when the servants were bottom of the joke in his farce.

Savouring was a phrase Ben Jonson loved to use when he described his relationship to books. In life, he's a big eater and was terribly overweighted. To him, books are food. He's greedy, spitually. He digested, defecated and became fatter and fatter.

Shakespeare is a right bastard on this genre thing, ok? Even in his early career he started to mock genres. He might have learnt a thing or two from his teacher Plautus, who arrogantly declared "I can write this play a tragedy, but…" in one of his prologues. Shakespeare loved transgression and mixtures, if nothing else. His most "farcical" play Comedy of Errors is regarded tragic comedy by some scholars, and in his Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare made Berowne complained about how Berowne's own story failed to be a comedy due to the cold hearts of ladies and how the time limit of a play forbids him to pursue his lover further.

“Poetic Influence-when it involves two strong authentic poets-always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence...is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse wilful revisionism...” (The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom)

I'm asking myself: why am I obsessed with Early Modern Writer anecdotes so much recently? I think one of the reason is that the knowledge I get from studying these authors's lives is endlessly emanicipating. You can write for money and write well (almost every early modern dramatists, especially Shakespeare). You can be cynical and jealous of your fellow writers's works yet still do a good job yourself and even be half-decent to them on a personal level(Jonson). You can write profane things while being a clegyman(sorry that's a joke, Mr. Donne). Most importantly you can be anyone you like, try your best to earn your bread by your pen, enjoy your life to the full and on the off chance still be one of the greatest writers in history. It's extremely comforting, really. Art is art, no mystyfing, for once.

Shakespeare's insufficiency of real sense of humor in his comedy is usually (and easily) pardoned by the contemporary audiences for his excellence in language and his legacy. "It was written 400 years ago. What did you expect? Naturally most jokes were worn out!" Some say. And admittedly, I'll buy tickets to see Benedick/Beatrice, Rosaline/Berowne. and Kathrine/Petruchio bickering all day. His comedy does not even need to be funny in plots and in characterizations in the first place (for me). There're so many other aspects to be praised.
However, works of Ben Jonson, e.g. the devil is an ass, remind me that the Jacobean comedies can actually be funny, with their timeless jokes criticizing human beings' foul plays. A good sense of humor can be appreciated even when the playwright was long buried (standing up).
All hail Ben Jonson the satirist. I hope I can see one production of his plays live one day.

Opinions are my own. Comedy: Jonson vs. Shakespeare
Ben Jonson's comedies are actually, unexpectedly funny. Many jokes in these plays will really make sense in the 21st century with or without some minimal changes. In his comedies almost all characters suffer from their own avarice, vanity and jealousy. That aspect of people never change and is even more true in today's society. That's what the playwright jabbed us with and that's timeless.
On another hand, I can count the times I did laugh at a line in any one of Shakespeare's comedy single - handedly. Some contemporary productions of Shakespeare are quite funny, but that's more the contribution of the director and the actors. The original playtexts by Shakespeare are deep, meaningful, witty, yet less funny than that of Jonson to today's audiences (at least, to me).

And Oscar Wilde basically wrote a Shakespeare fan fiction called the portrait of Mr. W.H.

…And I think the most difficult thing here is that Jonson's almost emotionless in his writing. That's why romantics rebuked him and that's exactly why we find it difficult to determine his motives and his feelings to these writers/patrons/people of "gentle sex". He's a son of brick-layer who seeked homage and shelter in the courtiers's home. That power dynamic in many ways had a stronger effect on his relationships than gender issues.