I sat down this morning to re-read Plato's Symposium, the Rouse translation, prompted by Stephen Greenblatt's introductory essay to Romeo and Juliet in The Norton Shakespeare.
Themes and images from the love treatise find their way into various speeches in the classic tragedy. I'm certain someone must have explored this in depth somewhere, but it's not easy to find the right sources. I want to intelligently discuss both with my students--but want to give credit, academically, where it's due. (Given that my students are closely reading R&J rather than Plato, superficiality is inevitable--but the goal here is to provoke thought and further study.)
As less than an amateur in understanding ancient Greek, I'm not sure if Rouse's translation effectively captures the spirit of the text.
So, this is a call for help from my well-read and intelligent audience (if I may flatter myself):
1. Among scholars, which translation of Symposium is preferred?
2. Are you aware of any scholar who has delved into this connection in great detail? If so, how/where?
3. What is love? (Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.)
Sorry, I only play an educated person on the Web. About the best I can recommend is to stay away from the older editions that are full of highlighting.
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteI hope this is in time to help you. As you know, I've been computer deficient lately.
I'm no expert on which translation is preferred--my experience with Symposium has all been in discussion classes where we used multiple translations (which is usually best). I don't have mine with me right now, but I can get you the name of the one I like most later night.
Regarding Shakespeare and Plato, as far as I know, there has been very little research done on the direct connection. It's not at all clear that he read Symposium, and if he did, it is most probable that he read Ficino's commentary (which is difficult to find in translation). My own thesis is that he has picked up his neo-platonic language and ideas from Burton, Sidney and Spenser, especially Spenser (see his Hymne in Honour of Beautie & Hymne in Honour of Heauenlie Beautie: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/hymnes.html). I tend to think the connection is most manifest in Midsummer's Night Dream, but in searching for articles that discuss the issue directly, I came across one that argued that Misums is after R&J and that the play at the end is a mock-R&J. But any direct connection with Plato or Ficino is tenuous.
As for #3, I have no idea.
As for my qualifications, I wrote a paper in Oxford on the Neo-Platonic underpinnings of Midsums and the Tempest. I think they're most obvious there, but I haven't read R&J for a while. I'll be spending this summer going through the Shakespeare canon in an effort to write a paper on this (or a related) topic.
1. I used some juicy quotes from Jowett's (public domain) translation, just to broach the subject. Alas, I can't turn my freshfolks into neoPlatonists on the public dime. But they were very interested, even with such a brief and superficial introduction.
ReplyDelete2. I'm surprised, given a close reading of R&J (I'll have an essay up later this week, if time permits, since I have the background work done).
The "Pyramus and Thisbe" play is an obvious self-parody (after all, from Hamlet we know that Shakespeare's best comic target was the theater), and a prior date for MidSum seems likely because the oxymorons--
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
--echo Romeo's Act I sentiments--
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Mercutio references Thisbe as an ironically exemplary lover in Act II as well.
More later. Thanks.
Sorry but this has got to be some kind of sick joke. Those are clearly paradoxes, not oxymorons. As for Shakespeare encountering Neoplatonism in Burton, Sidney and Spenser one would have to be an idiot of the highest order in order to overlook the most obvious culprit, that writer of no small repute and one could say "not-exactly-negligible" influence on William's work, a man by the name of GEOFFREY CHAUCER. Saying that Shakespeare's connection to Plato, particularly vis-à-vis R&J or MND, is "tenuous" is quite frankly moronic.
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