Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their Jews | John Kleiner | TEDxWilliamsCollege
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0:10 - 0:13Marlowe and Shakespeare walk into a bar...
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0:13 - 0:14(Laughter)
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0:14 - 0:16So runs the beginning of the joke
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0:17 - 0:20that Tom Stoppard concocted in 1997
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0:20 - 0:21about playwriting.
-
0:22 - 0:24Stoppard was at that point
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0:24 - 0:27working on the screenplay
for "Shakespeare in Love," -
0:27 - 0:29a film that, to a remarkable degree,
-
0:29 - 0:33concerns itself with the kind of questions
usually left to literary critics. -
0:34 - 0:36Why did Shakespeare become
a tragic dramatist? -
0:37 - 0:39Where did he find his voice?
-
0:39 - 0:42Where did the idea
for "Romeo and Juliet" come from? -
0:43 - 0:45In the end, "Shakespeare in Love"
answers these questions -
0:45 - 0:48along fairly conventional Hollywood lines.
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0:49 - 0:51Love, it turns out, is the answer.
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0:52 - 0:55Love, it turns out, explains
Shakespeare's genius. -
0:56 - 0:58But, before the movie gets there,
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0:58 - 1:00Marlowe and Shakespeare walk into a bar...
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1:00 - 1:03(Video) Shakespeare:
And the chinks to show for it. -
1:03 - 1:05I insist -- and a beaker for Mr. Marlowe.
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1:06 - 1:08I hear you have
a new play for the Curtain. -
1:09 - 1:11Marlowe: Not new... my "Doctor Faustus."
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1:11 - 1:13S: I love your early work.
-
1:13 - 1:16"Was this the face
that launch'd a thousand ships, -
1:16 - 1:19and burnt the topless towers of ilium?"
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1:19 - 1:21M: I have a new one
nearly finished and better: -
1:21 - 1:24"The Massacre at Paris."
-
1:25 - 1:26S: Good title.
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1:26 - 1:28M: Hum... yours?
-
1:29 - 1:31S: "Romeo and Ethel:
the Pirate's Daughter." -
1:33 - 1:35Yes, I know, I know...
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1:35 - 1:37M: What's the story?
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1:38 - 1:39S: Well, there's this pirate...
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1:43 - 1:45In truth, I have not written a word.
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1:46 - 1:48M: Romeo...
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1:48 - 1:51Romeo is Italian,
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1:52 - 1:53always in and out of love...
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1:54 - 1:56S: Yes, that's good... until he meets...
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1:57 - 1:58M: Ethel...
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1:58 - 1:59S: Do you think?
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1:59 - 2:00M: The daughter of his enemy.
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2:00 - 2:02S: The daughter of his enemy.
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2:02 - 2:05M: His best friend is killed
in a duel by Ethel's brother -
2:05 - 2:07or something. His name is Mercutio.
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2:07 - 2:08S: Mercutio...
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2:08 - 2:09Good name.
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2:09 - 2:11A man: Will, they're waiting for you.
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2:11 - 2:12S: Yes, I'm coming.
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2:13 - 2:15Good luck with yours, Kit.
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2:18 - 2:23John Kleiner: This fall I ran a tutorial,
that was in my own mind at least, -
2:23 - 2:25a restaging of Stoppard's joke.
-
2:26 - 2:29Every week Marlowe and Shakespeare
walked into my office. -
2:29 - 2:33Every week we brought
the two playwrights into contact. -
2:33 - 2:36Over the term we read
four Shakespeare's plays, -
2:36 - 2:40four Marlowe's and their
too long narrative love poems: -
2:40 - 2:43"Venus and Adonis," "Hero and Leander."
-
2:43 - 2:45The point of the tutorial
-
2:45 - 2:49was not to prove anything particular
about Marlowe or Shakespeare, -
2:49 - 2:50but to run an experiment:
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2:51 - 2:54what happens when these two playwrights,
-
2:54 - 2:56who lived side by side
-
2:56 - 3:00and who may or may not ever
have met each other, -
3:00 - 3:03are read side by side?
-
3:03 - 3:07What happens when Marlowe
and Shakespeare walk into a bar? -
3:07 - 3:11Today I'm going to restage Stoppard's joke
in a slightly different form. -
3:11 - 3:15I'm going to put into
conversation two passages: -
3:15 - 3:18one representing Marlowe,
one representing Shakespeare, -
3:18 - 3:20and see what they have
to say to each other. -
3:24 - 3:26The passage on your left
comes from Marlowe. -
3:26 - 3:30It is from his 1589 play,
"The Jew of Malta." -
3:31 - 3:33And it features the play's eponymous hero,
-
3:33 - 3:36a Jewish merchant named Barabas.
-
3:37 - 3:41Barabas is, when the play begins,
fantastically wealthy, -
3:41 - 3:44far and away the richest man
in all of Malta. -
3:44 - 3:47So great is Barabas' accumulated wealth
-
3:47 - 3:49that, in the play's opening speech,
-
3:49 - 3:52he says he finds
the counting of it tedious. -
3:53 - 3:57Then, barely a hundred lines
into the play, Barabas loses everything. -
3:58 - 4:01His ships, his goods, his wealth,
-
4:02 - 4:04they're all stripped from him.
-
4:04 - 4:08He is turned out of his house,
which is converted into a nunnery. -
4:08 - 4:11This happens because
the Christians of Malta -
4:11 - 4:13need money to pay off the Turks
-
4:13 - 4:17and because Barabas,
as a Jew, is an easy target. -
4:17 - 4:22This is the entire explanation
for Barabas' dispossession. -
4:22 - 4:28Marlowe makes no effort to disguise
or ameliorate the Christians motives. -
4:29 - 4:31In the passage on your left,
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4:31 - 4:34Barabas gives voice to his loss.
-
4:34 - 4:37Even as the other Jews urge patience,
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4:37 - 4:39Barabas insists on being heard,
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4:40 - 4:42insists on expressing himself.
-
4:42 - 4:46He wants his audience
to know what he is feeling, -
4:47 - 4:50to share imaginatively in his disgrace.
-
4:50 - 4:54And so he compares himself
to a captain in a field of battle -
4:54 - 4:57whose weapons have been
stripped from him -
4:57 - 5:00and whose soldiers lie dead at his feet.
-
5:01 - 5:04Shouldn't such a man
be allowed to grieve? -
5:06 - 5:09What Barabas asks
may seem to us unremarkable, -
5:09 - 5:12but was hardly so in 1589.
-
5:12 - 5:16The action that takes place
fictively at Malta -
5:16 - 5:19echoes the actual dispossession
of the English Jews. -
5:20 - 5:24Much as Barabas is stripped of his wealth
and turned out of his home, -
5:24 - 5:26so were the Jews of England
-
5:26 - 5:29dispossessed and exiled by Edward I,
-
5:30 - 5:35turned out of their country,
as so many strangers and aliens. -
5:35 - 5:40In the crowd that Barabas addressed
in the Rose Theatre in 1589, -
5:40 - 5:43there was not a single Jew to hear him,
-
5:43 - 5:45not a single Jew to weep,
-
5:45 - 5:48as the Jews weep in Marlowe's play.
-
5:49 - 5:53When Marlowe allows those Jews
to express their sympathy for Barabas, -
5:53 - 5:56as if it were a basic human impulse,
-
5:56 - 6:00"'tis a misery to see
a man in such affliction," -
6:01 - 6:05Marlowe is doing something surprising
by the standards of his time, -
6:05 - 6:08something bordering on the illegal.
-
6:09 - 6:13The second passage, the passage on your
right, is from "The Merchant of Venice." -
6:13 - 6:17Many of you will recognize it
as Shylock's famous Rialto speech. -
6:18 - 6:21Shylock's idiom is different
of course from Barabas'. -
6:21 - 6:23Still the influence of Marlowe's play,
-
6:23 - 6:27which precedes Shakespeare's by some
seven or eight years, is hard to miss. -
6:29 - 6:33Again, a Jew steps forward
to describe his mistreatment. -
6:34 - 6:38Again a Jew speaks
his pain aloud to an audience -
6:38 - 6:42that is asked imaginatively
to enter into it. -
6:43 - 6:48And again this invitation to empathize
exposes a contradiction. -
6:50 - 6:53Antonio, the nominal hero
of "The Merchant of Venice," -
6:53 - 6:56has with his Christian friends
scorned Shylock. -
6:56 - 7:00They have laughed
at his daughter's Jessica's desertion, -
7:00 - 7:03they have spit upon him in the street,
-
7:03 - 7:05and they have done so without compunction.
-
7:07 - 7:10Shylock's degradation does not touch them,
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7:10 - 7:12as they understand it,
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7:12 - 7:14because, as they understand it,
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7:14 - 7:16he is different from them,
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7:16 - 7:18he is merely a Jew,
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7:18 - 7:19an alien,
-
7:20 - 7:21a stranger.
-
7:22 - 7:23"Dog Jew"
-
7:23 - 7:26is one of their favorite
epithets for Shylock. -
7:28 - 7:32And yet, when Shylock's pain
is made visible on the stage, -
7:32 - 7:36made alive in his language,
this justification fails. -
7:36 - 7:41To suffer is not to be
a Jew or a Christian, -
7:41 - 7:43but to be human.
-
7:44 - 7:46In his vulnerability,
-
7:46 - 7:49Shylock is no different
from his persecutors: -
7:50 - 7:53"If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
-
7:54 - 7:58"If you poison us, do we not die?"
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7:58 - 8:02That Marlowe and Shakespeare both
allow their Jews to make this point -
8:02 - 8:05suggests, I think, a shared understanding,
-
8:05 - 8:06on their part,
-
8:06 - 8:09about the peculiar enterprise
they are engaged in. -
8:10 - 8:13Both playwrights recognize in theater
-
8:13 - 8:16singular capacity
to make a motion accessible, -
8:16 - 8:20a means of dissolving
or overcoming difference. -
8:21 - 8:23When a character speaks his pain,
-
8:24 - 8:25when he performs it,
-
8:26 - 8:30an audience feels it,
and in the process becomes like him, -
8:31 - 8:32if only momentarily.
-
8:34 - 8:36Put even a Jew on stage,
-
8:37 - 8:39and so long as he speaks movingly,
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8:39 - 8:42we can recognize ourselves in him.
-
8:43 - 8:47This is what Marlowe and Shakespeare
are telling each other. -
8:47 - 8:49This is what Shakespeare
takes from Marlowe, -
8:50 - 8:53or at least this is part
of their conversation -
8:53 - 8:58about Jews in the theater.
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8:58 - 9:02The easiest and most palatable part of it.
-
9:03 - 9:05As I noted earlier,
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9:05 - 9:09the Jews in Marlowe's play
exit with tears in their eyes. -
9:09 - 9:11Barabas bids them farewell
-
9:11 - 9:15and then alone takes
possession of the stage. -
9:15 - 9:17Once alone,
-
9:17 - 9:21Barabas steps out further,
close to the very edge of the theater, -
9:21 - 9:23or at least this is how I picture it.
-
9:23 - 9:25He moves close to the edge of the stage,
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9:25 - 9:28right up to the crowd of theatergoers
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9:28 - 9:30gathered at his feet,
-
9:30 - 9:33and, once there, he taunts them:
-
9:34 - 9:38"See the simplicity of these base slaves,
-
9:38 - 9:42who, for the villains
have no wit themselves, -
9:42 - 9:45think me to be a senseless lump of clay,
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9:45 - 9:50that will with every water wash to dirt!"
-
9:52 - 9:53This is a violent speech,
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9:53 - 9:56violent in its contempt.
-
9:56 - 10:00Baraba's contempt for the Jews
who have felt for him, -
10:01 - 10:03who have wept for him.
-
10:03 - 10:07Marlowe's contempt
for the members of his audience -
10:07 - 10:11who, like the Jews, have been
reached by Barabas' words -
10:11 - 10:13and moved by his suffering.
-
10:14 - 10:17All at once, that suffering
is revealed to be a sham, -
10:17 - 10:19and empty spectacle.
-
10:19 - 10:22Barabas has not lost everything.
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10:22 - 10:24As he subsequently reveals,
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10:24 - 10:27he still has a fortune hidden away.
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10:27 - 10:29He is not broken or wretched,
-
10:30 - 10:33he has merely played misery
like an actor on the stage. -
10:34 - 10:37What he is after is not empathy,
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10:37 - 10:38but power,
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10:39 - 10:42the power to manipulate an audience
-
10:42 - 10:46and so in the process
degrade it and debase it. -
10:47 - 10:49The Jews who pity Barabas
-
10:49 - 10:54become to Barabas "so many base slaves,
-
10:54 - 10:57so many witless villains,"
-
10:58 - 11:00because they misunderstand him
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11:00 - 11:03and the nature of human suffering.
-
11:06 - 11:09That we suffer in common
is nothing to be proud of, -
11:09 - 11:11just the contrary, says Barabas.
-
11:12 - 11:15To suffer is a sign of our common dust,
-
11:15 - 11:20or to use his nastier phrase,
"our common dirt." -
11:20 - 11:23To suffer is to be dirt.
-
11:23 - 11:29To empathize with suffering
is to be a villain and a slave. -
11:31 - 11:34Barabas' treachery and contempt are ugly.
-
11:34 - 11:36Indeed, much of
"The Jew of Malta" is ugly. -
11:36 - 11:39Much of Marlowe's art is ugly.
-
11:40 - 11:41At another moment in the play,
-
11:41 - 11:46Barabas will wipe out
an entire convent of nuns, -
11:46 - 11:50including his own daughter,
with a gift of poisoned porridge. -
11:52 - 11:54He will strangle a friar in his bed
-
11:54 - 11:59and then gleefully sit up the corpse
in the street as if it were alive. -
12:00 - 12:04That we bridle at such
ugliness is the point. -
12:05 - 12:08We come to the theater
expecting to be flattered, -
12:08 - 12:14expecting to be confirmed in the happiest,
most hopeful account of who we are. -
12:15 - 12:17After all, we bought a ticket.
-
12:18 - 12:21And, instead, we are
betrayed and attacked. -
12:22 - 12:26And what of Shakespeare,
what of his Jew, what of Shylock? -
12:26 - 12:30How does he follow up his eloquent
plea for understanding, -
12:30 - 12:31for fellow feeling?
-
12:33 - 12:36"If you prick us, do we not bleed?
-
12:36 - 12:38If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
-
12:39 - 12:42If you poison us, do we not die?
-
12:43 - 12:46And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
-
12:47 - 12:50If we are like you in the rest,
we will resemble you in that. -
12:50 - 12:53If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? -
12:53 - 12:55Revenge.
-
12:55 - 12:57If a Christian wrong a Jew,
-
12:57 - 13:01what should his sufferance be
by Christian example? -
13:01 - 13:02Why, revenge."
-
13:04 - 13:07If Barabas opens his heart
as a prelude to violence, -
13:07 - 13:09the same can be said of Shylock.
-
13:10 - 13:13We may cite his stirring
lines out of context -
13:13 - 13:16to teach lessons about
the importance of empathy -
13:16 - 13:19and the value of art
as a means of combating prejudice, -
13:19 - 13:21but that's not their function,
-
13:21 - 13:25or at least not their entire function
in Shakespeare's play. -
13:26 - 13:27In "The Merchant of Venice,"
-
13:27 - 13:32Shylock delivers his moving speech
and seems moved as he delivers it. -
13:32 - 13:33As he speaks,
-
13:33 - 13:38he appears present in his words in a way
that few of us ever are in real life. -
13:40 - 13:43And yet, what in the end
does he speak up for? -
13:44 - 13:47Not empathy, not sympathy,
-
13:47 - 13:48but revenge.
-
13:49 - 13:51This is a surprising turn,
-
13:52 - 13:53a disorienting turn,
-
13:54 - 13:56perhaps a disappointing turn.
-
13:57 - 13:59When it comes, we don't expect it,
-
13:59 - 14:02just as we don't expect
Barabas to voice his misery, -
14:02 - 14:05and then all of a sudden jeer at us.
-
14:06 - 14:09And yet, the turn
in Shylock speech is logical. -
14:11 - 14:15Empathy and revenge may,
in a superficial sense, -
14:15 - 14:16seem opposites.
-
14:16 - 14:19Empathy may even seem
to preclude revenge, -
14:20 - 14:22but really, underneath it all,
-
14:22 - 14:25they are two sides of the same coin,
-
14:25 - 14:29two expressions of the same
underlying pattern. -
14:30 - 14:34In empathizing, I make myself like you,
-
14:35 - 14:37by feeling what you feel,
-
14:37 - 14:40by knowing what you know,
-
14:40 - 14:42by suffering what you suffer.
-
14:42 - 14:46In revenge, I make you like me.
-
14:47 - 14:49I force you to know what I know,
-
14:50 - 14:53I force you to feel what I feel,
-
14:53 - 14:56I force you to suffer what I suffer.
-
14:58 - 15:00Shylock does not want empathy.
-
15:00 - 15:02He wants revenge.
-
15:02 - 15:06He wants the power
to compel identification. -
15:06 - 15:07He wants the ability
-
15:07 - 15:11to force another
to see the world on his terms. -
15:12 - 15:14And, more than that,
-
15:14 - 15:19he claims this desire of his
to be the same as ours. -
15:20 - 15:21According to Shylock,
-
15:21 - 15:25what links us as humans
is not suffering -
15:25 - 15:29or the capacity to empathize
with another's suffering, -
15:30 - 15:36but the common human compulsion
to answer suffering with revenge. -
15:37 - 15:43He wants and we want
the power to make others feel as we do. -
15:44 - 15:49And this is, I think, his point
of contact with Shakespeare -
15:49 - 15:50and any other serious writer,
-
15:50 - 15:55any artist who doesn't merely want
to please his audience, -
15:55 - 15:57but to reach it, to move it,
-
15:57 - 16:00whether that audience
wants to be moved or not. -
16:01 - 16:03And by serious artists,
let me be clear here, -
16:03 - 16:06I don't mean respectable
high-culture artist. -
16:06 - 16:08If anything just the opposite.
-
16:08 - 16:10The ambition I'm talking about
-
16:10 - 16:14is the ambition to find
some sharp or blunt instrument -
16:14 - 16:17that will allow you to compel
an emotion in someone else, -
16:17 - 16:20to force an understanding,
-
16:20 - 16:22by whatever means is available.
-
16:23 - 16:27This is, I think, what Marlowe
and Shakespeare's Jews are talking about, -
16:28 - 16:32the search for power
that often masquerades as empathy. -
16:32 - 16:35This is, I believe, what Marlowe
teaches Shakespeare. -
16:36 - 16:39Or at least it is the substance
of this particular barroom lesson. -
16:40 - 16:42It is in this particular small room,
-
16:42 - 16:44what they hear each other saying
-
16:44 - 16:47about theater and about us.
-
16:47 - 16:48Thanks.
-
16:48 - 16:50(Applause)
- Title:
- Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their Jews | John Kleiner | TEDxWilliamsCollege
- Description:
-
John Kleiner is a professor of English at Williams College. He is a scholar of classical and medieval literature whose work has been supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The author of Mismapping the Underworld: Error in Dante's "Comedy," he is at work on a new book, The Art of Losing: Versions of Failure from Virgil to Shakespeare. His articles and essays include "On Failing One's Teachers," "Criminal Invention," and "Diffusion of hydrogen in a' -VHx." He has taught courses on Shakespeare, expository writing, Chaucer, Dante, allegory, Hollywood film, journalism, and violence. He has a B.A. in religion and physics from Amherst College, an M.S. in physics from Cornell University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 17:01
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Leonardo Silva edited English subtitles for Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their Jews | John Kleiner | TEDxWilliamsCollege | |
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Leonardo Silva edited English subtitles for Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their Jews | John Kleiner | TEDxWilliamsCollege | |
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Raissa Mendes edited English subtitles for Shakespeare, Marlowe, and their Jews | John Kleiner | TEDxWilliamsCollege |
Raissa Mendes
Correction: "breath" was replaced by "grieve":
5:01 - 5:04
Shouldn't such a man
be allowed to grieve?