tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post2432058507552650245..comments2024-03-29T03:56:08.315-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: The Historical Background of Shakespeare's Tragic Equation by Ted Hughesjohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-58199365773089712212009-08-02T18:00:00.460-04:002009-08-02T18:00:00.460-04:00Probably there were some English who lived during ...Probably there were some English who lived during this epoch that did not feel a strong sense of being in the crucible of a 'controlled explosion' but existed during the brief course of their lives in a kind of neutral state, without much bother, simply following the simple conventions of everyday life, much like many Americans do today, at least until the actual civil war spred hardship, devestation and desperation through-out the land.<br /><br />With that caveat, I would still prefer that more historians were poets like Ted Hughes!johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-16192417630788360432009-08-02T14:50:08.285-04:002009-08-02T14:50:08.285-04:00"in other words, Shakespeare was a shaman, a ..."in other words, Shakespeare was a shaman, a prophet, of the ascendant, revolutionary Puritan will (in its Elizabethan and Jacobean phase) just as surely as he was a visionary, redemptive shaman of the Catholic defeat. As the prophetic shaman of the Puritan revolution, in opposition to his role as the shaman of Old Catholicism, he experienced a second initiation dream, opposite of the first,and enshrined in his second long narrative poem " Lucrece". That is presumably how he came to possess the extraordinary faculty of dealing with the visionary revelation of each side of the conflict from the point of view of the other. He was on both sides, simultaneously a major shaman of both types."<br /><br />"Shakespeare and The Goddess of Complete Being" by Ted Hughes; Faber and Faber, 1992/ pages 74-78. 92johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com