From: "Jud Evans" <Jud-AT-sunrise74.freeserve.co.uk> Subject: Re: Shakespeare Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 17:04:43 -0000 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Elden" <stuart.elden-AT-clara.co.uk> To: <heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu> Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2001 12:13 PM Subject: Shakespeare Even Shakespeare's well known: "To be or not to be" is a rhetorical and poetic ellipsis of: "To be alive - or not to be alive, that is the question." I, at least, am glad that Shakespeare didn't feel a need here to add 'alive' twice in this line. For one thing, it would spoil the poetry. For another it needlessly limits the scope of the line. I read and studied Shakespeare long before I did the same with Heidegger, and even then did not feel the line needed to be 'explained'. Stuart Jud: The reason that I mentioned the line was because it often crops up in people's responses to my messages, particularly because of the two hanging, predicate-less BEs, a phenomenon which I am often asked to explain in the light of my explanations of the functions of BE..[ a construction which only happens twice in the whole of Shakespeare's works.]. Seems that old Bill was an AITist too! There is no question that William Shakespeare was haunted and obsessed with time. As one of his biggest fans, [Shakespeare is my bed-time reading,] with an interest in the concept of time, I am intrigued with the vehemence with which he endows time with an almost devilish anthropomorphical vindictiveness. In Shakespeare's sonnets alone it is a constantly reoccurring theme, and in almost every instance time is reified into a mortal enemy who constantly seeks to undermine the happiness of mankind with a malevolent glee. Shakespeare's hypostatisation of time puts one in mind of man's follies and sins with the inevitable pay-off of time's revenge awaiting with the pitchforks, like Hieronymus Bosch's hideous devils pricking the tortured souls as they cower naked in Beelzebub's cooking pots. For Shakespeare it is as if Time is Hell's bagman in the upper world - the domain of the transient human attendance-mode during their pathetic, cruel, brutal and short dalliance with existence. With our greatest poet, swift-footed Time is a slut, the bringer of disease, the giver that takes away, a deceiver, this bloody tyrant, a place of wastes, a wielder of the scythe, a devourer, a thief and a tyrant. There is not ONE instance of the word 'BEING' as used in the Heideggerian sense in the whole of Shakespeare's work's. In every instance the word 'being' is used in the normal grammatical employment, as the present continuous tense of the modal processant 'to be.' It is interesting from the sample below that Shakespeare thought quite differently about 'Being' to Heidegger which is amply indicated by Shakespeare's coupling of 'being' with 'extant' Here is an example from Shakespeare's Sonnets: Sonnet 83. I never saw that you did painting need, And therefore to your fair no painting set, I found (or thought I found) you did exceed, That barren tender of a poet's debt: And therefore have I slept in your report, That you your self being extant well might show, How far a modern quill doth come too short, Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. In the following excerpt from THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH we can see that Shakespeare understands that 'being' is simply a mode of existence - in this case the existential modality of Humphrey's dead body. "For Humphrey being dead, as he shall be, And Henry put apart, the next for me." I see that you studied Shakespeare as I did at University [probably many years before you were born.] and whilst it is true that in the light of your superior education in this area of literature, this particular brilliant little gem of Shakespeare's and the reasons for its employment needs no explanation in your case, that is not to say that everyone on this list has studied Shakespeare in such detail. It is probably prudent therefore on my part not to shape my output in strict conformity with what the good Doctor Stuart Elden may know or may not know - or to go to the trouble of mailing you privately before posting to the group in order to ascertain whether something in my proposed posting will already be known to you. Surely that would be too time consuming on both our parts? It is also true that there are many things that you have written in the past that myself and doubtless other members of the group have already known about - in fact on a list such as this there must be many instances of this kind. If you have time to spare perhaps it would help if you forwarded an extensive list of all the things you already know, so that I and other list members can consult your list in advance, so that we can delete any items of which you are already aware or shape our contributions in another way less onerous for you to read, and in order not to offend your sensibilities by the needless repetition of facts already known to you? :-) Best wishes, Jud. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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