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Intent but only vaulting ambition which were leaps itself and falls on the other. Actually what I don't say here is that I because I was so flabbergasted by what by Clinton's response. I think that's a great play about someone whose immense ambition is an ethically inadequate object. That I said unbelievably lamely having first you know I was like Winston Churchill first that like the Germans first that you're at the at your throat or at your feet. I suddenly was down at his feet. I said I said to you Do you still remember what you learned the lines from that oh yeah I mean what a pathetic thing to say. And he said Oh yes and then he started to say if it were done to stun than to well it was done quickly. If the assassination could Tramel up the consequence and catch with your sissy success that but this blow might be the be all and the end all here but here on this bank and shoal of time we jump the life to come. And on that he actually went on quite a bit longer I don't think I can go on much longer. You know the whole damn thing. I couldn't believe it. But as everyone says he has that kind of
quirky memory. I left the White House that evening with a thought that Bill Clinton and Mr. Voc. line that that Ryan quoted which was of course to be an English professor but the profession he actually chose makes it all the more appropriate to consider whether it's possible in Shakespeare to discover an ethically adequate object for human ambition and then I launch myself. So partly it's just the effort too. There's always the question of how to begin these you begin anything beginning once an essay or anything. This is partly a way of launching myself into a beginning but it was also a way of as I try to do in different ways in the course of the book to try to link what I take to be 16th century 70 century preoccupations with what we take to be our own preoccupations and there's something behind this something else behind this opening anecdote which I didn't put in them to tell you that. I tell my readers about tell you which was that that I had a friend who was in the
Clinton White House and an economist.
Collection
Harvard Book Store
Series
WGBH Forum Network
Program
Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare's Freedom
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-zk55d8nw9m
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Description
Description
Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt discusses his new book, Shakespeare's Freedom.Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes--of claims for the absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the young, and the gentle over the baseborn. Stephen Greenblatt, author of the best-selling Will in the World, shows that Shakespeare was strikingly averse to such absolutes and constantly probed the possibility of freedom from them. Again and again, Shakespeare confounds the designs and pretensions of kings, generals, and churchmen. His aversion to absolutes even leads him to probe the exalted and seemingly limitless passions of his lovers.Greenblatt explores this rich theme by addressing four of Shakespeare's preoccupations across all the genres in which he worked. He first considers the idea of beauty in Shakespeare's works, specifically his challenge to the cult of featureless perfection and his interest in distinguishing marks. He then turns to Shakespeare's interest in murderous hatred, most famously embodied in Shylock but seen also in the character Bernardine in Measure for Measure. Next Greenblatt considers the idea of Shakespearean authority--that is, Shakespeare's deep sense of the ethical ambiguity of power, including his own. Ultimately, Greenblatt takes up Shakespearean autonomy, in particular the freedom of artists, guided by distinctive forms of perception, to live by their own laws and to claim that their creations are singularly unconstrained.
Date
2010-11-15
Topics
Literature
History
Subjects
Art & Architecture; History
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:02:18
Embed Code
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Credits
Distributor: WGBH
Speaker2: Greenblatt, Stephen
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: ff0ceb451adf1d634bf1befe4d1cbddbe092fc20 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Duration: 00:01:38
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Citations
Chicago: “Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare's Freedom,” 2010-11-15, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 30, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-zk55d8nw9m.
MLA: “Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare's Freedom.” 2010-11-15. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. September 30, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-zk55d8nw9m>.
APA: Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare's Freedom. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-zk55d8nw9m