Subject: BHA: Re: Aristotle the joker
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 18:44:54 +0200


Hi Marshall--

>To be fair to old Aristotle, I think Greek drama allowed for far less
>artistic license than contemporary theater.

Good point.  In fact, if my memory of the chronology is right, around that
time a law was instituted which made it illegal for actors or anyone else to
change words in the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides.  This might
plausibly be a sign of a very conservative approach to poerformance, or at
least to the performance of these playwrights.  Of course, this means
historicizing Aristotle's ideas....

>   Do you think I also need to go back and read the original Shakespeare,
>or are the Cliffs Notes better Bill's work than they are for Jim's?

Actually, for Bill you should use Monarch Notes.  As the period of
absolutism ends and Romanticism begins, switch over to Cliff Notes.  (For
postmodernism, maybe someone will start a new series called EndNotes.)

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net *or* tobin.nellhaus-AT-helsinki.fi
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---