Prove Me Wrong

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Sarah
Date: Dec 16 2006 8:22 AM

You know how they say that Shakespeare wrote about every possible plot in history? That's there's nothing Shakespeare hasn't written about?

While I disagree on the premise because those who subscribe to the "WS came up with every possible plot" school play loose with "plot" anyway, tell me this:

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol. Guy who realizes that family is more important that work. Is there anywhere in Shakespeare that this is mentioned?

The only thing I can think of is the apparition in Hamlet versus Jacob and Marley. Both use apparitions to convey warnings.


----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Poet
Date: Dec 16 2006 6:27 PM

King Lear... also, Macbeth makes a pretty strong case against professional ambition... The Tempest: Prospero's books or Miranda's happiness... Henry IV: Henry's unpopular loyalty to Falstaff...

Billy never comes out and states his themes: he's more artful. But the balance between personal and private (of which work v. family is a part) is pretty constantly in his plays.


----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Sarah
Date: Dec 16 2006 2:29 PM

But King Lear didn't go nutzo because he lost his family. He went nutzo because he lost his kingdom, ie job. He eventually makes the realization, but doesn't get the happy ending Scrooge gets. Then again, the entire title is "The Tragedy of King Lear," not The Comedy of where everything works out okay.

Also Scrooge doesn't get his agnorisis until he sees the future and consequently learns of his own mortality, which is pretty selfish in and of itself. Lear's knowledge of mortality is what made him give up the kingdom...

Are these the same lines of thinking you had?

And by Jacob AND Marley, I meant Jacob Marley. I was thinking of the Muppets version where there's two ghosts-- the peanut gallery old men...


----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Poet
Date: Dec 16 2006 10:54 PM

Lear doesn't get a happy ending because there are no happy consequences for his actions. Personally, I think the honesty of Lear's conclusion...blind, stumbling the plains, etc...is what prevents the play from being sentimental in the way Dickens is. If sentimentality is understood to be the exhibition of an inappropriate amount or type of emotion (a la J.C. Ransom), then Scrooge's ending is overtly sentimental. Furthermore a deus ex machina is required to get to the happy ending, highlighting the inaccuracy of the story's direction. Of course, Dickens was going less for accuracy than for a Christian morality tale: and, whatever one thinks of Christianity, one has to concede that it is inaccurate to the reality of this world, which generally holds the dead don't rise again, etc.

I'm skeptical about the benefits of comparing works with different goals (apples and oranges, yada yada), but, if I were to compare the stories, I might start with peeking at the language...looking for what corresponds and what does not....how are Scrooge and Lear alike or unlike predicated upon their diction, tone, etc. When it comes down to it, Lear exists in a different world...possesses a different ontology, and a different vocabulary. For that reason, I don't know how fertile the comparison might be: usually a contemporary of the subject character might yield more accurate results, preventing the problem of temporal readings, idiom, etc from rearing its hydra-style heads.


----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Sarah
Date: Dec 16 2006 7:52 PM

I think that was the most intelligent use of MySpace. Ever.