-Jay-

One must never mention the name of the "Scottish Play"!

Hot potato, off his drawers, Puck will make ammends! Owww!

Somebody here had better get that reference...

regards,

NinJay

Lucretius

Blackadder reference of course
I am always puzzled about that superstition that the name of the play cannot be spoken on stage as surely MacBeth's name is mentioned many times in the course of the play on stage.
They cant say (paraphrase ahead )
"Look her comes the Scottish Play"
when MacBeth approaches can they ?

-Jay-

No fair. You're in England.

Isn't the superstition that the name can't be spoken outside of the context of the play?

regards,

NinJay

Clivedurdle

Yegads! Are you saying you non tea drinking revolting colonialists are not supping of the glorious Blackadder?

But are we then best approaching Jesus in a special category of religious myth, mystery play? Where are these categories defined? I thought legend was a made up story about a real person.

How are the stories of Jesus going to Glastonbury defined? And did those feet?

-Jay-

Blackadder has a strong following on the left side of the pond amongst the segment of the population that's likely to frequent Biblical Crit forums. Or engineering schools. Or both.

(Of course, there are a lot of folks over here who think that Hugh Laurie is as American as the character he plays on House...)

regards,

NinJay

Clivedurdle

Maybe we have a change of type over time - a morphing, starting with a religious Christ myth, representing these ideas in a play, the construction of legendary (or whatever the word is where the base is mythical) accretions - Pilate etc, and then a return to the current picture of religious myth - sitting by the right hand - with a further morph with the idea of the second coming.

Gamera

Hamlet was apparently an historical character (I believe from the 11th or 12th century, going from memory). Shakespeare was familiar with some writings about him, which I beleive derive from a certain Amleth mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus. His play encorporates some of the historical facts with his fictionalization of particular events.


Similarly MacBeth is clearly an historical figures, around whom various legends accumulated that were of interest to Shakespeare and which he developed in his play.

So these characters have historicity their meaning (to us) derives from Shakespeare plays. Let me suggest that a similar relationship exists with the gospels.

Clivedurdle

I don't remember Shakespeare claiming Macbeth and Hamlet being gods and doing godly things like miracles and resurrections.

-Jay-

One must be careful with this, though. It's one thing to say that <X> was an historical figure and later stories and legends built up around <X>, and another thing entirely to state that <X> was an historical figure, and therefore the stories and legends built up around <X> are true.

Strictly speaking, <X> the historical figure and <X> the embellished legendary figure are two different entities that happen to share the same name.

regards,

NinJay

Gaga

and, just to throw my humble € 0.02, shouldn't we look outside the context of the legends to check for the historicity of those characters? I mean if Hamlet and Macbeth were indeed historical figures (and I don't have a clue about it, sorry) we would not have reached this conclusion solely from the plays of Shakespeare, right?
cheers, Gaga