>At 6:58 PM +0000 12/9/02, paul murphy wrote:
> If he was paid to write the things that the powerful wanted to
>hear, what has really changed? The powerful are still so conceited
>to pay the artist for a flattering depiction, and equally intolerant
>of that which fails to flatter, pathetic really, and maybe it will
>always be thus...
Jan Kott, the brilliant Polish theatre critic, has some very
interesting things to say about Shakespeare's portrayal of power in
the history plays in "Shakespeare for Our Time" (and other works).
If Shakespeare were simply a flatterer of the powerful, he would not
have been so enthusiastically used as part of the samizdat theatre
movement in Poland.
Best
Alison
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead Online
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