Primrose Road

Did anybody else catch last night's performance of Act I, Scene I of Hamlet in Second Life? I don't regularly "play" Second Life (way too much to manage in Life #1), but since I'm writing a dissertation on Early Modern drama and new media, I had to check this performance out.

(Hat tip to Intute Arts and Humanities Blog for sending this one our way.)

Convergence, convergence, convergence: Second Life avatars on a virtual stage playing for an audience of actors in a fairly accurate-looking replica of the Globe theater with an interface that permits users to view the scenes from a variety of "movie camera" angles.

A fellow audience member brought up an interesting logistical issue: performances should have taken place during the day, as they did in the "first life" Globe. Without any "natural" lighting (and despite the full moon), the area was somewhat difficult to navigate.

They have a slew of performances going on this week and next in case you want to take your avatar out for some Shakespearin'.

Quite a few sites about the Law of Attraction and The Secret reference the following quote from our favorite Nice Danish Boy:

"For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Talk about a contextotomy: the full line is "Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison" (Ham 2.2). Hamlet's arguing that "Denmark's a prison"; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the 'friends' who will eventually participate in an attempt on his life, tell Hamlet it's not.

I'm not sure that a line from a scene in which a man who is having "bad dreams" because his uncle may have murdered his father tries to convince his not-very-loyal friends that his country is a prison.

This is why I tell my students not to refer to quotes as "quotes" in their papers: it tells their readers that they're performing contextotomies and reflecting on 'sound bites' instead of plot and character points. (College comp teachers, you've all seen it: "This quote says Hamlet thinks Denmark's a prison." Major pet peeve on my part.)

Meanwhile, I'm going to go manifest a dissertation.

I received an email from Amazon.com saying that they needed me to update my tax information for my Associates account so that they could pay me what I'd earned last year. Since I don't sell books through my site (if I link to something on Amazon here, I'm not earning money from it), I automatically figured it was just another instance of phishing.

Later, when I was on Amazon's website, I saw the same message. So, I logged in to see if there had indeed been a mixup.

Apparently some years ago I had an astrology website called "Star Gazing." Do I remember this? No. Is it highly plausible that I had an astrology website? Absolutely.

I tried the Internet Archive to search for remnants of the site, but to no avail (though the site address does include a screenname I used around eight years ago, so it's definitely mine all the way). Which is why I'm baffled as to how someone was able to click through a link on a nonexistent page.

In any case, I'm 54 cents richer now.

The best part of this: the book purchased was Astronomy for Dummies.

While I'm hardly one to agree with an "Oxfordian," I've got to admit that Mark Anderson, author of an Oxford-as-Shakespeare bio, is, well, right when he says that it's "rather bizarre" that a free class offered at the New York Public Library requires:

"1. A conviction that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Shakespeare. 2. A belief that the works of Shakespeare constitute one of the cornerstones of world literature."

It's likely that the NYU professor who heads up this program didn't intend to convey a notion of Shakespeare-as-faith, but, in, my view, she unfortunately did. Since the 1970s (at least), many scholars have rejected Bardolatry in favor of history-grounded explorations of Early Modern authorship, and have rejected the "cornerstone of world literature"/universality view in favor of historical contingency and ideological critique.

And besides, how could one have a "conviction that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Shakespeare" prior to studying his works and Early Modern culture?

Reading this semester:

1) Burt (ed.), Shakespeare After Mass Media.

2) Hockey, A Guide to Computer Applications in the Humanities (1980).

3) Rotman, Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero.

4) Kastan, Shakespeare After Theory.

5) McAlindon, Shakespeare Minus "Theory".

6) Craik, Reading Sensations in Early Modern England.

To read post-hibernation period when seminar and semester are over:

1) Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination.

2) Elkins, Six Stories from the End of Representation.

3) van Dijck, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age.

4) Jenkins, Convergence Culture

5) Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-Image (and probably a re-read of Cinema 2: Time-Image).

Primrose Road: scaring Internetters out of going to grad school since 2007.

In my view, the "anti-Stratfordian" argument (i.e. William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays attributed to him; someone else wrote them) needs to be addressed in schools because (1) it's all over the Internet, and students researching Shakespeare are likely to encounter it, and (2) there are parallels between this argument (essentially a conspiracy theory) and pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical theories such as creationism, Holocaust denial, and anti-vaccination. Sites like Doubt About Will concern me as a teacher because of the ways in which they can contribute to the dulling of our students' critical reasoning skills.

The parallels between anti-Stratfordianism and creationism are fascinating at times: this week's Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast, for instance, featured an interview with biologist PZ Myers, who noted that creationists arguing against evolution will accuse their opponents of ad hominem attacks, then go on to make their own ad hominem attacks. The victim of most creationist attacks is Charles Darwin, who, according to the creationists, is unequivocally worshipped by "evolutionists." The problem, Myers seems to suggest, is that straw men are being set up everywhere:scientists do criticize Darwin because he (like anyone) wasn't perfect, and "worshipping" any one scientist or theory would be anti-scientific.

Here's an ad hominem attack courtesy of DoubtAboutWill.org:

"Are authorship doubters just conspiracy theorists?
It is absurd to think that all of the many outstanding authorship skeptics are conspiracy theorists. Too many highly credible people have expressed serious doubts, focusing just on this one author. This ad hominem argument is a red herring used by defenders of orthodoxy to change the subject. Those who resort to it should be asked for evidence that independent experts support this charge. It is a convenient way for them to avoid having to deal with evidence that does not support them. In writing our declaration, we have focused on evidence. Those who disagree should do likewise."

Let me take this apart:

1. "Too many highly credible people have expressed serious doubts, focusing on just this one author."
-- The 'doubters' aren't clear here on what they mean by "highly credible." They excitedly report, for instance, that "More stars declare their doubt of Shakespeare". What evidence do these "stars" have for their doubt? (I will return to the issue of evidence momentarily.) And yes, some university professors have signed the declaration; see the National Center for Science Education's Project Steve for an excellent counterargument to what I'll call the argument from "a handful of scholars say so."

2. "This ad hominem argument is a red herring used by defenders of orthodoxy to change the subject."
-- This ad hominem argument is used by proponents of an ahistorical theory to make Shakespeare and Early Modern scholars look like stodgy old men who regularly bow to the bust of Shakespeare sitting on their mantles. Especially since the introduction of film theory and adaptation theory into our field, we are not Bardolaters: many scholars acknowledge the fact that Shakespeare is only "special" because he's the most published (though not the most prolific) Early Modern dramatist. We also acknowledge (unlike Kenneth Branagh ...) the fact that every word printed inside the BOOK we call "Hamlet" was not written by William Shakespeare. Finally, we are aware that the concept of "authorship" in the Early Modern era did not exist in the form it does today: play development was a collaborative process among author(s), actors, and theater managers; the printed versions of plays "belonged" to printers, not to authors. The argument that someone authored the entire text of someone else's plays is ahistorical and simply does not make sense in light of 16th and 17th century cultural practices.

In fact, "orthodox" scholars do make authorship arguments: recently, it was discovered that Thomas Middleton likely wrote parts of Macbeth and Measure for Measure.

3. "In writing our declaration, we have focused on evidence. Those who disagree should do likewise."
-- Unfortunately, unlike our counterparts in the sciences, we can't offer much more than anecdotal evidence; scholars tend to acknowledge, however, that they are piecing together arguments from a handful of documents. But we do have considerable documentary evidence that Shakespeare was indeed who we think he was, and we do have very good reasons for not using the plays themselves as biographical evidence: even supposed 'true believer' Sigmund Freud thought that good authors don't write autobiographical romans-(or dramas-)a-clef.

In sum, anti-Stratfordianism isn't something that teachers and scholars should brush aside simply because we know it's ridiculous; equipping our students with the critical reasoning skills necessary to evaluate arguments like these will also help them to evaluate the conspiracy theories, fundamentalisms, and pseudohistories they're bound to encounter.

1. Who is Vilma and why do I have her dollar?




2. Once upon a time, three Shakespeare scholars found a jalapeño in their chocolate sundae ...




3. Fortunately, a penguin balloon died for our sins. (This blurry cellphone pic is of an upside-down, half-deflated penguin balloon on the ceiling of Union Station.)




4. Forgive the cheese, but the city can be majestic at times ...



(Yes, I took a picture you can get from any postcard. I have failed you all.)

I usually use Amazon.com's "The Page You Made" when I critique naive views of 'interactivity' in my work.

Today, I received the following email with a suggestion based on a previous purchase:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by Roland Barthes, you might like to know that Essential Ways to Relax: M-R-T Massage Therapy is now available. You can order yours for just $14.00 by following the link below.

Book Description
Why is it that the only time some people start to take their health serious is only when there really in pain or laying in a hospital bed? Why are some people stressed out and they do not know how to handle it? Everyone needs to take better care of their body and to avoid stress as much as possible. Essential Ways To Relax by M-R-T Massage Therapy informs people about the danger of stress and the benefits of massage therapy. This book will inform you of ways to relax and unwind. You have to take better care of your body. If you take care of your body, your body will take care of you.

Even better/worse, the book is published by AuthorHouse, a known vanity press / author mill. See, legitimate publishers employ these nice men and women called editors who know when and where to use adverbs ("take their health serious"), especially in book descriptions used to advertise books to a wide audience. Since I'm in the mood to start a new blog-worthy Norse saga, I think I'll email Amazon.com and ask how exactly this content -- an email recommending a scam-publisher published book about massage therapy to customers who purchased books by Roland Barthes -- came to be generated. I will post the results.

Previous posts on publishing scams reside here and here.

Yesterday, I played Arden: The World of William Shakespeare for the first time. (Actually, I watched while a colleague "steered." Characters I control tend to walk into walls.) We encountered several characters from Richard III and the Henriad (and Perdita, who greeted us in the street at one point) and many, many badgers.

Loads of badgers.

Edward Castronova, the telecommunications professor who heads up the Arden project, writes in his blog that

"We are taking our experience with Arden I and putting it into “Arden II: London's Burning," conceived entirely as a game. In Arden II, we are not trying to put Shakespeare in front of anyone, nor are we seeking historical or textual accuracy in any way. We are making a game; monsters everywhere. The Bard is there too, but this time, he is not getting in the way of the monsters."

I'm not sure. I thought there were plenty of monsters (feral pigs and .... badgers) to challenge us whenever we tried to get to an important item, but I couldn't quite understand how Shakespeare fit into the picture. I wanted the characters to be the "monsters." I wanted to disguise my avatar as a tree and fight Macbeth, get on the only horse in the field and crush Richard III, or even get Polonius out from behind the curtain before Hamlet stabs him. One of my colleagues was disappointed that we couldn't "exit, pursued by the" bear we'd encountered.

(The bear didn't even try to attack us, though we did face an angry cow at one point. And badgers. So many badgers.)

I have more to say about this in relation to other Shakespeare "gaming experiences," but it's going into an article / dissertation chapter, which means it won't be posted here. As always, I'm very self-plagiarism-phobic.

Arden is an ambitious and exciting project, and I look forward to seeing what the team does with the next round. Meantime, don't wander off the beaten (primrose?) path late at night, lest you be attacked by angry Early Modern badgers!

According to this site's traffic details for February thus far, someone got to Primrose Road by searching for the phrase "my homework." So Google recognizes personal pronouns now? Perhaps I should search for "my dissertation" and copy and paste the first page that comes up.

Other good ones: "william shakespeare ducky," "cansts," "false doctorates baptist." Looks like somebody's preacher is in trouble.