The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0684 Monday, 3 April 2000.
Date: Monday, 03 Apr 2000 11:37:16 +0100
Subject: Comment: SHK 11.0656
I would spontaneously guess that "first name-last name combos" are
either a sign of respect or disrespect; Michael Cassio is also called a
"a Florentine" (by Iago), which I take to be a contemptuous reference to
the city where Machiavelli was born.
But previous postings contain useful bibliographical information. Peter
Holland mentioned Anne Barton's The Names of Comedy (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990), Jim Lake Murry cited J. Levith's WHAT'S IN SHAKESPEARE'S
NAMES, Archon Books, 1978, Terence Hawkes "a fascinating essay" by Harry
Levin called 'Shakespeare's Nomenclature' in Gerald W. Chapman (ed.)
Essays on Shakespeare, Princeton UP 1965, pp. 59-90, and Jonathan Hope
refers to Random Cloud, 1991, '"The very names of the persons": Editing
and the invention of dramatick character', in David Scott Kastan and
Peter Stallybrass (eds) Staging the Renaissance: reinterpretations of
Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, pp. 88-96 (Routledge).