Richard Hardin - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Richard Hardin

It was part of Marlowe's scandal that he was a university man. The fact, without the scandal,... more It was part of Marlowe's scandal that he was a university man. The fact, without the scandal, has continued to weigh upon criticism in our century. On the one hand, sheer factual problems about Marlowe's education must be settled before we tan draw conclusions about the influence of that experience on his work. On the other hand, any such conclusions will rest on an arguable view of this education: "Protestant," "humanist," "scholastic" have become more elusive terms than they were (at least in Marlowe studies) a generation or two ago. In this essay, I would like to explore once again the "fruitful plot of scholarism" (to quote the prologue to Faustus) in Marlowe's imaginative landscape, especially in the light of evidence regar~g his Cambridge education. From 1580 to 1587 Marlowe lived a scholar's life within a discipline that is revealed in a strangely neglected document pertaining to his life at this time. This is one of the...

Viator, 2012

Although Plautus enjoyed a modest reputation in earlier transalpine Europe, between 1500 and 1530... more Although Plautus enjoyed a modest reputation in earlier transalpine Europe, between 1500 and 1530, he rose to major status owing mainly to the work of German humanists building on that of fifteenthcentury Italians. These humanists also fostered the production of Plautine comedies and imitations on stage. Despite the qualms of Erasmus and others, who preferred the milder comedies of Terence, appreciation of his plays soared, especially at the University of Leipzig, where Plautus's great editor Camerarius studied under Veit Werler (1480s-1520s?). Werler's poems on Plautus help explain the reasons for the new enthusiasm, soon to be enhanced, counterintuitively, by the Reformation confessionalization of humanism. Newly understood, then recognized as the quintessential comic dramatist, Plautus rehabilitates comedy as a worthwhile art.

The work is made available for download in PDF, ePub, Docx, and HTML formats. This work may be fr... more The work is made available for download in PDF, ePub, Docx, and HTML formats. This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose. Conditions and Exceptions apply: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/Admin/Copyright.phpThis collection celebrates a comic artist who left twenty plays written during the decades on either side of 200 B.C. He spun his work from Greek comedies, “New Comedies” bearing his own unique stamp. In Rome the forerunners of such plays, existing a generation before Plautus, were called fabulae palliatae, comedies in which actors wore the Greek pallium or cloak. These first situation comedies, Greek then Roman, were called New Comedies, in contrast with the more loosely plotted Old Comedies, surviving in the plays of Aristophanes. The jokes, characters, and plots that Plautus and his successor Terence left have continued to influence comedy from the Renaissance even to the present. Shakespeare’s Com...

Renaissance and Reformation

The age of the Tudors and Stuarts is one of continuous rebellion in religious worship, as success... more The age of the Tudors and Stuarts is one of continuous rebellion in religious worship, as successive generations of Protestants broke with the vestments, ceremonies, and even sacraments of medieval Christianity. Especially important in these developments is the argument frequently voiced in Puritan attacks on orthodox worship, and just as frequently assumed, that the physical worid is at best a feeble reminder, and more likely a pollutant, of the spiritual. William Perkins went so far as to correct St. Paul on this subject. Concerning the apostle's exhortation, "Glorifie God in your bodies and in your spirits" (I Cor. 6. 20), Perkins * A version of this paper was presented at the English I Section of the 1976 Midwest Modern Language Association meeting. I wish to acknowledge a grant from the General Research Fund of the University of Kansas which assisted me in writing the paper.

Moreana

More responds strongly to Tyndale’s insistence that ritual, like Scripture, must be interpreted p... more More responds strongly to Tyndale’s insistence that ritual, like Scripture, must be interpreted plainly by the worshiper: the chief purpose of ritual is to bring us closer to God, not to enlighten the intellect. In The Apology he declares that we should meditate on the Bible and the forms of worship (which must be observed as forms) in order to stir the imagination, not to seek out the “things intended” by God, which are beyond our capacity to know. This controversy touches all the major points of English debate on the subject for over a century to come, and some historians now see that it is worth attention in itself.

Early Theatre, 2002

It remains uncertain whether the English folk drama known as the mumming play coexisted with the ... more It remains uncertain whether the English folk drama known as the mumming play coexisted with the drama of Shakespeare's age. Flourishing in the United Kingdom and elsewhere since the 1700s, this curious event enacts a 'hero combat' wherein a champion (often St George) boasts of his battle skill to an enemy (often a Turkish or Egyptian knight). After one opponent has killed the other, a doctor, sometimes at the urging of a young or old woman, raises the dead combatant; several unrelated characters then give brief comic speeches; the play ends with a collection of money for the players. 1 While it is impossible to say with certainty that Elizabethans practiced this folk custom, we ought to consider that elements of the play may date back to older, if now-vanished, forms of popular entertainment. On the continent, analogues to the mumming play claim a widespread and very ancient existence. Chambers writes of folk-plays representing combat, doctor, and cure existing throughout Europe, surviving still in Greece and the Balkans in the early 1900s. 2 In 1928 a folklorist reported the existence, in the French Pays Basque, of an entertainment in which a barber shaved 'the Master Grinder' (knife-sharpener) and cut his throat. The doctor who is summoned to bring the grinder back to life enters with a speech about his wide travels, not unlike the typical entrance lines of the mumming play doctor. 3 In Russia the comic doctor, with 'a long and complex pedigree in the world of popular entertainment', appears in Christmas folk plays, where he resuscitates a knight killed by the Czar's champion. 4 In the Western Russian folk ritual that is the basis for Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring a doctor attempts to revive a dead virgin. In Hungary the folk-doctor appears in wedding plays, where he enters with a cure, like his mumming counterpart, at the turning point near the play's end. 5 These doctors tend to share certain features with their colleague in the mumming play: they have a medicine that will bring the dead to life; they brag about their achievements, travels, or high fees; they use an often preposterous medical jargon. Several

Comparative Drama, 2003

... Lidio is thought to be a hermaphrodite; the last scene of the third act (crowning the &am... more ... Lidio is thought to be a hermaphrodite; the last scene of the third act (crowning the &amp;amp;amp;quot;impediments and perturbations&amp;amp;amp;quot; that mark the third ... La Moglie (which folds in Andria and Trinummus as well), Aretino&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s Lo Ipocrito, Pietro Buonfanti&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s Errori Incogniti, and Gigio Artemio Giancarli&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s ...

Studies in Philology, 2012

Plautus's Amphitruo exemplifies remarkably the process whereby, over a period of millennia, o... more Plautus's Amphitruo exemplifies remarkably the process whereby, over a period of millennia, old texts enter into new ones. In the Renaissance, with its reference to "tragicomedy," the play contributed to the wide European interest in the possibilities of mixing dramatic genres. In England this developed into a mingling of comic, romantic, and mystical strands of drama perfected in Shakespeare's Cymbeline.

Cea Forum, 2012

During the last ten years before I retired in 2009, I often taught a course in narrative and dram... more During the last ten years before I retired in 2009, I often taught a course in narrative and dramatic comedy. I justified my affection for comedy by lamenting the usually heavy stuff in undergraduate English fare-tragedy and the literature of victimage. I admit I may well be a trivial person. Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes appeared the same year as The Great Gatsby; Mary Chase's Harvey had its premier the same year as The Glass Menagerie. If only one text from each year could survive, I'm not sure how I would vote. My course was organized somewhat historically: students always read, beside Loos and Chase, a few Plautus plays, Twelfth Night, and The Importance of Being Earnest. I also assigned a changing assortment of texts (by, e.g., Aristophanes, Molière, Hrabal, Nabokov, Flann O'Brien, Thurber). We took account of contemporary plotted comedy with class reports on comedies that students themselves selected, usually from television and film, though there was the occasional book (Catch-22). For these reports, incidentally, the most popular and soughtafter topic was Seinfeld. But beyond that, selections were surprisingly varied and I never had to go back to students for more choices beyond the three they initially submitted. Theory of comedy in the class came in small doses, with glimpses of Bakhtin, Bergson, Frye, Susanne Langer, and James Wood. I also provided input with a handout, "Tools for analyzing comedy." This began as a simple list of questions and later became a more discursive, though still largely interrogative, handout. That is the origin of the present writing (thanks to THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2012 79 WWW.CEA-WEB.ORG Kristin Bovaird-Abo and Theresa Buchheister for help with the early handout). Rather than pose a single theory of comedy here, I assemble the kinds of questions one can raise whether in class or just in thinking about comedies. This can be considered a tool or heuristic for those who take comedy seriously and want to go beyond "why is this funny?" in the work of analysis. Needless to say, every viewpoint quoted in what follows can become a question for discussion. When leading a class discussion of a tragedy, teachers often find it useful to fall back on criteria or "rules" offered in Aristotle's Poetics (hubris, "tragic flaw," reversal or peripety, fall from greatness, etc.). Aristotle's book on comedy does not survive (see Eco's Name of the Rose for speculation as to its fate), but other smart people since have come up with good and applicable theories and valid questions. It seems useful to consider undertaking the formal analysis of this genre especially if, as James Wood has claimed, the very heart of modernity has been characterized by an interest in "irresponsible" comedy (Wood 16-18). Questions that comedy shares with other genres: 1. Historical, Biographical, and Literary Historical Données The usual historical, biographical, and literary historical données and what can be inferred from them. Questions arise about the times, reception history, sources, authorial obsessions, and textual interrelations. In this category, a special problem for comedy might concern the historical determinants of humor: a comic moment can depend on class differences no longer understood, or on differences no longer seen as laughable. Sir Philip Sidney says in An Apology for Poetry that "we" laugh at cripples. A more civilized era finds Henry Fielding, in the preface to Joseph Andrews, declaring that it uncivilized to laugh at the unfortunate. Ugliness or lameness, he says, is no laughing matter, unless the ugly person would pretend to be beautiful or the lame person to be agile. Then there are matters of social class no longer evident. In Plautus's Asinaria (memorably staged in

Ariel a Review of International English Literature, Jul 1, 1999

Contemporary Literary Theory, 1989

Sixteenth Century Journal, 1992

... was acquainted with Shakespeare's ideas on Geoffrey, for both men knew Francis Manners E... more ... was acquainted with Shakespeare's ideas on Geoffrey, for both men knew Francis Manners Earl of Rutland, who enrolled at the Inner Temple with several ... was probably one of the early editions by Joss Bade (1508 or 1517), since he quotes a preface to this text by Ivo Cavellatus ...

Renaissance Quarterly, 2001

Love in a Green Shade IDYLLIC ROMANCES ANCIENT TO MODERN RICHARD F. HARDIN University of Nebraska... more Love in a Green Shade IDYLLIC ROMANCES ANCIENT TO MODERN RICHARD F. HARDIN University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London -iii-.