Talk:Sycorax

message: Another nice article on a Shakespeare character! Are you moving your way up to Hamlet? :) I think that this article is almost GA, but not quite. Here are my suggestions for improvement:
Lead:
*I have broken the lead up into three paragraphs, but these could probably be improved even further. The sentences are a bit choppy at the moment. See WP:BETTER#Lead section for tips on writing leads.
**I adjusted things per hidden comments, but it still may need a copyedit. Wrad 17:14, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added this. Wrad 21:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I should have been clearer - I added the phrase "around the time Shakespeare was writing the play" and I wondered if that was accurate. Awadewit | talk 21:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's correct, it would have been about half a century earlier, during Charles V's reign over the Holy Roman empire. I added that in. Wrad 22:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there any information on how Shakespeare might have become aware of this story? Awadewit | talk 23:22, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not that I've been able to find. It's just something Charles Lamb mentions, but he wasn't really able to go too in depth with it, and we don't have the documents he had. Wrad 00:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

text: *I would give a link to the internet version of Shakespeare you used, then. Awadewit | talk 21:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Wrad 21:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The only problem I have with that is that "how she avoided execution" is one of the common critical questions asked by scholars. I like it separate because it highlights it better, and makes it easier for a student to find the answer to a question she is likely to ask if she really wants to know about Sycorax. Wrad 01:02, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see. Perhaps you could expand the section someday, then? Since it only has one theory, it seems a little thin right now. Awadewit | talk 02:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I liked most of your suggestions, they helped me put things into context better. I've got everything covered now except expansion on  anti-matriarchal Sycorax feminism (that was a mouthful). I don't know how much is out there on that, to be honest. Most of the time Sycorax is just mentioned in passing by scholars. I've relied on a few broader works to help piece things together, but the matriarchal section was difficult to find sources for. That surprised me, since it seemed like it should be a larger part of the criticism. Maybe I should publish something on it to get more out there :) . Sadly, Sycorax is still not really seen as a woman so much as she is seen as a race, or as related to other characters in the play, such as Caliban. Wrad 01:02, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That surprises me, too. I see a senior thesis... Awadewit | talk 02:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: GA review

message: I don't see any evidence of a "struggle" to explain her blue eyes, as if they are in some sense a mystery. The concept of a "struggle" to explain something implies that it is recognised as anomalous in the first place. The only context in which it is perceived as anomalous is 19th century racial theory, in which there is an assumption that blue eyes are somehow "wrong" in an African. I can't see any evidence that any such "struggle" exists any longer, since the assumption that Shakesperare should follow Victorian models of racial differences no longer exists. It would be true to say that a sub-section of Victorian scholars "struggled" with the supposed "problem", but only because they were starting from a 'Bardological' view that Shakespeare must be scientifically correct - according to their own assumptions about what is correct. Modern scholars have no such problem. What you have is a set of comments, but I see no sign that anyone nowadays considers this to be some sort of contradiction that would require a "struggle" to explain it. In fact most of this section is very unclearly referenced anyway. The penultimate sentence is downright bizarre: "recent twentieth-century scholarship has suggested that Sycorax's blue eyes, paired with descriptions of her ugliness and foreignness, can be read as a synthesis of African and European ideals". Who are these "scholars"? Why would Shakespeare have any idea what an African "ideal" of beauty is, and why would we assume that he had some PC modern vision of harmonising racial ideals? It doesn't even make sense. Apart from being blue eyed, she's "ugly and foreign", but this is also an African "ideal". So ugliness is an ideal in Africa is it? Paul B (talk) 16:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think most of the references in that section are available at least in part on google books. I'd be interested in what you'd have to say about them on a closer look. Wrad (talk) 16:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the pointer. It seems that the blue eyed thing is a particular obession of Marcus, and is also very briefly disussed by Purkis in The Witch in History. Purkis herself states that "modern editors universally interpret the blue eyes as merely blue eyelids, signs of pregancy" (p.264 my emphasis). So it seems there is no struggle at all, but unanimity! Purkis seems to want to make something significant of the eyes. This seems to be because this chapter is about witches on "the margins of race", so she has to create the notion that Sycorax is racially marginal (contrary to the "universal" opinion of other modern scholars). She even adds the rhetorical question "is it we, and not Shakespeare, who are troubled by the idea of a hag from Algiers with blue eyes?". And yet she has provided zero evidence that anyone ever is troubled by it.. Marcus has a chapter on the subject, and again emphasises that modern scholars "are relatively uniform in their interpretation of the line" (p.7). That's less absolute than Purkis's "universally", but is equally clear that there is a wide consensus rather than any sort of "struggle" to make sense of it. Again Marcus provides ample evidence to support the standard view that in Renaissance culture "blue eyes" was more likely to refer to bluely/bleary-look about the eyes than to the colour of the iris, comparable to the modern phrase "black eye". He does suggest that Darwinian ideas affected Victorian writers, but his evidence for this is thin (some actually seem to be arguing for something similar to the modern view; others appear to be expressing personal thoughts about how pale blue eyes can look evil). So it seems that what we have is Marcus and Purkis suggesting that the blue eyes might have a significance beyond the standard view, while both acknowleging that there is unaminity, or at least consensus, among scholars that there is no mystery at all! This does seem to me to suggest that this is not a great problem or struggle for modern critics, certainly not sufficient to be picked out in the lede, and that the section should clearly give the majority view prominence with Marcus and Purkis as partial dissenters, per WP:UNDUE. Paul B (talk) 17:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds fair to me. We may even want to combine the section with another section... Wrad (talk) 17:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I'll do my best. Paul B (talk) 23:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Blue Eye struggle

message: Since William Davenant lived entirely in the 17th century how is his adaptation in the 18th? Dynasteria (talk) 18:12, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Dynasteria (talk) 18:17, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Davenant's 18th century adaptation