{"id":1598,"date":"2014-01-09T13:08:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T13:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/?page_id=1598"},"modified":"2014-01-31T22:29:26","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T22:29:26","slug":"from-the-editor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/issues\/current-issue-2\/from-the-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Print as pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

This fifth volume of the <\/span>Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference<\/i> features five of the most accomplished essays of our 2012 conference, \u201cExtreme(ly) Shakespeare(an).\u201d Dr. Joseph Sullivan, OVSC president and 2012 Conference Chair, organized the October 18-20 meeting at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. The Marietta College Departments of English and Theatre, as well as the college\u2019s Office of Academic Affairs, generously supported the conference; the meeting\u2019s success is due in large part to the efforts of Tim Catalano, Janet Bland, Jeff Cordell, Andy Felt, Gama Perucci, Mark Miller, Angie Stevens, and Alyssa McGrath.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conference served as a venue for papers exploring the notion of extremes in Shakespeare\u2019s work, and the first essay in this volume embodies this mission on multiple levels. What if, Byron Nelson asks, instead of concluding the grouping known as the \u201cproblem plays,\u201d All\u2019s Well That Ends Well <\/i>could be seen as marking the beginning of Shakespeare\u2019s final phase of work? His essay \u201cHelena and \u2018the Rarest Argument of Wonder\u2019: All\u2019s Well That Ends Well<\/i> and the Romance Genre\u201d shows how, once the plays are realigned, \u201cThe thematic motifs consistent with the late romances suddenly seem apparent: the plot of All\u2019s Well<\/i> begins where Pericles<\/i> ends, with a long-suffering maiden healing a sick monarch; it ends where The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/i> begins, with a pregnant wife.\u201d In this light, Nelson argues, \u201cHelena seems to have more in common with the plucky, put-upon heroines of the romances, like Marina and Imogen, than she does with the otherworldly Isabella.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kirk Hendershott-Kraetzer\u2019s essay, \u201cA Hot Mess: Knowing Juliet <\/i>through Accidental Encounters in Popular Culture,\u201d tracks the often unexpected echoes of Juliet in television dramas to show how the medium reflects changes in her character\u2019s cultural resonances. Hendershott-Kraetzer surveys eight different television characters described as \u201cJuliets\u201d; these surprising manifestations then become the essay\u2019s basis for outlining the qualities that have made their way into popular conceptions of the iconic character. Today\u2019s scholars may tend to see the Shakespearean Juliet as manipulative, Hendershott-Kraetzer writes, yet it is nonetheless \u201cstartling [to see] how far some of the TV Juliets will go in their attempts to manipulate others and the social systems in which they are embedded\u2014to say nothing of the damage they wreak as a result of their choices.\u201d His essay shows how those qualities mix with the more traditional image of a sweet, star-crossed Juliet in the associations that the character\u2019s name conjures for students and internet commentators alike.<\/p>\n

Next, in \u201cJean-Fran\u00e7ois Ducis: Re-Creating Shakespeare for an Eighteenth-Century Audience,\u201d Amy Drake considers Ducis\u2019s modifications to Macbeth<\/i> as he revised it for the Parisian stage. Eighteenth-century France, she argues, \u201cprovided an especially auspicious time for Ducis to introduce his Shakespearean adaptations, because audiences were open to experiencing new forms of theater.\u201d Ducis may be unknown to many Shakespeare scholars, yet this essay shows that his work has influenced drama well beyond his native France. Looking at the plays in the context of the French revolution\u2014and the cultural preferences in heroism it came to inspire\u2014Drake explores Macbeth<\/i>\u2019s metamorphosis into a redeemable character. In the process, Drake considers Ducis\u2019s presentation of Lady Macbeth, whose transformation into Fr\u00e9d\u00e9gonde gives her a mythic aura and unrepentant manner that proved meaningful to the era\u2019s audiences. Drake\u2019s exploration considers French theatergoing habits to reveal how Shakespeare\u2019s works took on a different life on the other side of the English Channel.<\/p>\n

A second distinctive performance venue\u2014the wrestling cage\u2014provides the backdrop for Aaron Hubbard\u2019s essay, \u201cWhen Words Defile Things: Homoerotic Desire and Extreme Depictions of Masculinity in Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus<\/i> and Mixed Martial Arts.\u201d There, Hubbard reads the battleground hostility of Coriolanus<\/i> alongside the relationships fostered between fighters in the newly-popular sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Hubbard\u2019s essay shows that both the play and MMA construct the male body as a site of unspoken desire, and that the aggression of combat provides a culturally protected mode of expressing fantasies of penetration. Calling upon the vocabulary of MMA to unpack the obsessive rivalry between Coriolanus and Aufidius, Hubbard shows how Coriolanus<\/i> mirrors modern ideas of masculine friendship forged through violence. Both Coriolanus and MMA fighters \u201cdistrust language because they think it lacks the clarity of a fight,\u201d Hubbard argues. \u201cIt is not that fighters are or are not homosexual,\u201d he explains, \u201cbut that homoeroticism is built into the action of the fight, just as it is built into the dramatic structure of Coriolanus<\/i>, only to then be actively suppressed and denied.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cExtremes of Gender and Power: Sycorax\u2019s Absence in Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest<\/i>,\u201d Brittney Blystone examines Prospero\u2019s verbal representation of Sycorax in the drama\u2019s opening. Noting that Caliban\u2019s mother never appears on stage, Blystone shows how Prospero\u2019s descriptions of Sycorax shape the ways Ariel and Caliban\u2014not to mention audience members\u2014envision her character. Prospero\u2019s words make clear that \u201cSycorax symbolizes all of his negative assumptions about women; therefore, he constructs her sexuality in ways that oppose his patriarchal views on virginity.\u201d As Blystone argues, Caliban realizes Prospero\u2019s lingering worries about the female power Sycorax represents, calling on her to strengthen his claims to the island. The emphasis that Prospero and Ferdinand place on Miranda’s chastity provides a vivid counterpoint to Sycorax\u2019s enigmatic but nonetheless condemned pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Without Joseph Sullivan\u2019s dedication to the OVSC, neither this issue nor the 2012 conference would have ever materialized. The members of the editorial board once again offered dedicated service and thoughtful input to this collection, as did Co-Editor Gabriel Rieger, whose commitment to the journal has been much appreciated.<\/p>\n

This issue has benefited enormously from the work of Assistant Editor Kevin Kane, whose patience, good humor, and relentless attention to detail somehow lasted through the entire publication process. Edmund Taft and Marlia Fontaine-Weisse provided an invaluable infrastructure for the journal; without their earlier work, this issue would have been impossible. For a second year, Kenny Cruse came to the rescue on technical matters too numerous to mention. Richard Wisneski\u2019s ingenuity made the issue\u2019s cover possible, and Thea Ledendecker provided much-needed moral support. The University of Akron Department of English graciously sponsored our efforts as well\u2014something much appreciated in times when projects like this one often go underfunded. And, lastly, I would like to thank all those who contributed their work for consideration for publication in this issue. Without their generosity and faith in our efforts, this volume could never have come into existence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Print as pdf This fifth volume of the Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference features five of the most accomplished essays of our 2012 conference, \u201cExtreme(ly) Shakespeare(an).\u201d Dr. Joseph Sullivan, OVSC president and 2012 Conference Chair, organized the October 18-20 meeting at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. The Marietta College Departments of English […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":0,"parent":1262,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1598","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1598"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2030,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1598\/revisions\/2030"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ovsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}