In case you haven't been able to tell, I am in favor of opening the treasure chest of civilization and taking out and admiring the gold circlets, silver studs, and precious beads cached therein. Even at the risk of turning up a cliché (or two).
Our entire heritage hangs in the balance. Will the digital information age lock away knowledge that we can then unlock at any time, if only we know what to look for? Or will it make green our past, so that new and wonderful things can leaf and blossom from it as they have since its beginning? I don't know.
Consider this most beautiful description of love in the spring.
Song of Solomon, Chapter 2
10 My beloved spoke, and said unto me: 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
11 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtle[dove] is heard in our land;
13 The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Note that I have emended turtle to turtledove in chapter 2, verse 12. I happen to know that, even though I unfortunately do not read ancient Hebrew, the word for turtle should read turtledove. How do I know this? I cannot remember and have not been able to find out, in a rather summary search of the King James Bible (1611), the Revised Standard Version (1901), the English Standard Version (1971), the Living Bible (also 1971), and the Oxford Annotated Bible (1973), from which I learned so much about textual criticism.
I already know that my next post will (or maybe, given my changeable nature, I should say may) be headed "Spring Training." Which, for the record, I thought of before I knew that Major-League baseball announcer Ernie Harwell (1918-2010) opened the first Detroit Tigers Grapefruit-League game of the season by reciting the Song of Solomon, 2:12. He always said "turtle."
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Friday, April 18, 2014
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
To Be, Or Not To Be
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright and poet, gave us an immortal body of work. He was born in Stratford-on-Avon to a Catholic family (an outlawed affiliation at the time), married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and had three children, and wrote 38 plays, 124 sonnets, and some odd bits between 1589 and 1613. We don't know much more about him, and of some of what I have said we are not certain.
Historical criticism, a movement with its beginnings in the Protestant Reformation, gave us the tools to study the Bible not so much as if it were the literal truth, but as if it were the truest document human beings could write, edit, and collect. The idea of studying texts this way was eventually applied to secular works. So, by the mid-1800s, the question arose: did Shakespeare write these plays and poems? Or did somebody else?
Instead of assuming that Shakespeare, among the most creative geniuses the world has ever known, revised his manuscripts on the fly and did not necessarily keep track of all of his emendations as well as he might, Joseph C. Hart, in the Romance of Yachting, 1848, put forth the notion that several authors had worked on the manuscripts we have. I am belittling his case by my language, but the idea gained ground and a group of scholars still believes we should look at Shakespeare's authorship this way.
We have even had a movie about this lately, Anonymous (directed by Roland Emmerich, performed by Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, and others, Columbia Pictures, 2011, Film), in which Edward De Vere, one of the top contenders for Shakespeare's slot in the alternate-Shakespeare view, is proposed.
What do I think about all this? Well, of course, I have already given you a hint, but my idea is that we have no real evidence to support this theory. For introducing this problem, the alternate-Shakespeare scholars should be locked up in their offices all day with nothing to read but gossip magazines.
As far as I am concerned, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (The Oxford Shakespeare: Hamlet, William Shakespeare, edited by G. R. Hibbard [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]), and this and his other works will continue to delight us from opening night to the present day to the "Conscience of the King" (Season 1, Episode 13, Star Trek, Desilu Productions, December 8, 1966, Television), star date 2817.6, and beyond.
Historical criticism, a movement with its beginnings in the Protestant Reformation, gave us the tools to study the Bible not so much as if it were the literal truth, but as if it were the truest document human beings could write, edit, and collect. The idea of studying texts this way was eventually applied to secular works. So, by the mid-1800s, the question arose: did Shakespeare write these plays and poems? Or did somebody else?
Instead of assuming that Shakespeare, among the most creative geniuses the world has ever known, revised his manuscripts on the fly and did not necessarily keep track of all of his emendations as well as he might, Joseph C. Hart, in the Romance of Yachting, 1848, put forth the notion that several authors had worked on the manuscripts we have. I am belittling his case by my language, but the idea gained ground and a group of scholars still believes we should look at Shakespeare's authorship this way.
We have even had a movie about this lately, Anonymous (directed by Roland Emmerich, performed by Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, and others, Columbia Pictures, 2011, Film), in which Edward De Vere, one of the top contenders for Shakespeare's slot in the alternate-Shakespeare view, is proposed.
What do I think about all this? Well, of course, I have already given you a hint, but my idea is that we have no real evidence to support this theory. For introducing this problem, the alternate-Shakespeare scholars should be locked up in their offices all day with nothing to read but gossip magazines.
As far as I am concerned, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (The Oxford Shakespeare: Hamlet, William Shakespeare, edited by G. R. Hibbard [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]), and this and his other works will continue to delight us from opening night to the present day to the "Conscience of the King" (Season 1, Episode 13, Star Trek, Desilu Productions, December 8, 1966, Television), star date 2817.6, and beyond.
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