Charlie Rose

machngunjoe  12/29/2011 01:50 PM Report

@ shackwell. lol me too! Been watching for years and was wondering if anyone else ever comments?

chawlynose  12/28/2011 07:27 PM Report

ha ha , he owns your souls now.

shackwell  12/28/2011 03:02 PM Report

i've been watching the show for a while now and now almost look forward to that moron remant's comments as much as the interviews lol

firmitas  12/28/2011 04:32 AM Report

I think Remant thought is dumb, if only because nobody ever spoke that way, so there is no point trying to make it irrelevant that way. Indeed. If we were to take Remant's cryptic logic, "that way," Shakespeare would need to be performed naked--given that never is a difficult time period to recreate.

Does not Remant find it ironic that a Roman General of the Republican period and a Renaissance Jewish Merchant both spoke in iambic pentameter but managed to dress differently?

What I find it ironic is that the same man that argues that, "any relevance has to be found in the realm of ideas," then proceeds to cut and paste someone else's work.

Go, get you home, you fragment!

REMant  12/27/2011 05:05 PM Report

I think modern dress Shakespeare is dumb, if only because nobody speaks that way, so there's no point in trying to make it relevant that way. Any relevance has to be found in the realm of ideas. This is not so simple, but it is there.

Coriolanus is a later play, the last of Shakespeare's Roman series and one in which it makes sense to look for signs of contemporary politics. The plot is pretty simple and most likely originates with Plutarch.* A hero of the siege of Corioles, given thus the name Coriolanus, is urged to run for consul and being met with political machinations from the tribunes, decides even a corrupt aristocracy better than democracy led by demagogues, goes over to the enemy, and lays Rome to siege. He is persuaded, however, by his mother to instead conclude a peace and is dispatched forthwith by his new masters proving I guess that there is no honor anywhere, and also, it appears, no appreciation of it in modern times since the character has been considered frequently in modern times fascist and the like. Plutarch blames Coriolanus' temper - the tragic flaw I suppose - only on his maternal upbringing.

Shakespeare's effort apparently found favor only after the Restoration, which should be suggestive of the motive, and curiously was turned against the monarchy by making the protagonist into a Jacobite in the early 18th c, it seems tho, fooling no one. A century later the Austrian Heinrich von Collin** portrayed him as a romantic hero, which appealed so much to Beethoven he wrote a celebrated overture for it. But after reading some viewer commentary, I would guess this production, acted and directed as well by Fiennes, again misses the point entirely. More to the point perhaps is the ability of Hollywood to crank out such propaganda with near impunity.

It has been suggested that the subject was influenced by Machiavelli's Discorsi,*** a commentary on Livy's history of Rome written about a century before Plutarch during the reign of Augustus, and resurrected in the Renaissance, which certainly covers the territory, much like Democracy in America, but concludes, like Livy, that Rome grew great through a combination of strong leadership, open immigration and ruthless foreign policy. Coriolanus figures in Book I, Chap VII: "Showing How Necessary The Faculty Of Accusation Is in a Republic for the Maintenance of Liberty" in which he is upbraided for suggesting that the Senate teach the plebes a lesson by withholding their bread, and Rome applauded for handling the case judicially unlike Machiavelli's Florence. And in Book III, Chap XIII: Whether An Able Commander With A Feeble Army, or a Good Army with an Incompetent Commander, Is Most to Be Relied Upon" in which it is pointed out that altho Livy had used Corilanus' success against the Romans as an example of the importance of leaders, Rome had won many battles without them. I might add tho that the Discorsi also contains chapters headed: "How Dangerous It Is to Trust to the Representations of Exiles," and "To Insure a Long Existence to Religious Sects or Republics, It Is Necessary Frequently to Bring Them Back to Their Original Principles."

Despite his well-known assertion of the potential God-given power of kings, during his reign James supported the Reformation Parliament's argument that the monarch ruled together with parliament, known as king-in-parliament, noting frequently that the prosperity of his people was in the king's interest.**** In this view, which is actually of medieval provenance, the legislature is not inherently opposed to the monarch, as implied by separation of powers, or mixed constitutions, and sometimes argued was intended in the US or even actually obtains, but is like his council, and the laws are made or abrogated only upon the consent of both. This concept obtains in Britain and the commonwealth to this day. But at the time, of course, Protestant-Catholic animosity which had been simmering for nearly a century was coming to a full boil, which meant not only was the need for taxes great, but also difficult to agree on, not unlike late republican Rome, or the present.

* http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/coriolan.1b.txt

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Joseph_von_Collin

*** http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=775&Itemid=27

**** http://www.archive.org/details/politicalworks00jameuoft