For Thursday: William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 5, "Shakespeare and Comic Form"

For Thursday's class, read Chapter 5 from the William Shakespeare book, and we'll continue our discussion about Shakespeare's background by discussing his comedies. What did he understand a 'comedy' was, and what makes his comedies all a generic unit, like his tragedies, or histories? NO QUESTIONS to respond to, though we'll have an in-class writing over it on Thursday which will feed into your Paper #1 assignment (which I'll always hand out).

However, here are some ideas to consider as you read...

* Shakespeare wrote basically four types of plays: comedies, tragedies, histories, and what we call 'romances,' which combine the first two categories. What does it say about him that at least half of his entire output was comedy? Why might he have prefered this genre to any of the others, considering he kept going back to it, even at the end of his career?

* Of all Shakespeare's plays, the comedies are often the most derivative (or borrowed, that is), as almost all the plots come from other plays, books, and poems. Why do you think Shakespeare preferred his comedies to be so second-hand? Is this still true of comedies today? Are most of them 'reboots'?

* What consistent themes, characters, or situtations seem to crop up most often in his comedies, according to Wells' summary of them? Why might these have particularly interested Shakespeare?

* Why does Shakespeare always set his plays in far-off locales when they could have just as easily taken place in England (and indeed, many of them reference English places and some characters have English names)? What might this have allowed him to do under the guise of "comedy"? 

* How do Shakespeare's later comedies differ from his earlier ones? What might have accounted for this biographically? Artistically?

* Why might have Shakespeare gravitated more and more towards prose by the middle of his career (around the time of Much Ado)? 

For Tuesday: Wells, William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, Chapters 1-2

At long last, we're going to read from our companion text, William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, by the renowed Shakespeare author and scholar, Stanley Wells. The book offers a short examination of his life, culture, and work to piece together how one man managed to write some of the most celebrated plays (and indeed, works of literature) ever written. Much of this book might surprise you by challenging long-held rumors and revealing some strange and interesting truths about his life and works. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: What exactly makes Shakespeare's early life (that is, before he came to London and became a playwright) so mysterious? Why might some of these details seem unlikely as the backdrop for the future great dramatist/poet? And why might some people use it as evidence that Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him (at least, not without help)?

Q2: Earlier in the class, we looked at four alleged portraits of Shakespeare, all of which capture some aspect of the Shakespeare myth (even if none are authentic). However, why might some of what we DO know about his life--especially in older age, after he retired from the stage, not square with the myth of his works and that of an inspired artist? Why might we also point to this portrait and say, "that's not the guy who wrote Hamlet!" 

Q3: When Shakespeare is taught to high school students, he seems to come out of thin air, as if no one existed before him to offer him guidance. According to the book, where DID Shakespeare, the artist, come from? Who were his heroes? Who inspired him? What did he learn from? And why might we argue that Shakespeare was just as good at adapting literaure as writing it himself?

Q4: What reality of theater or acting in Shakespeare's day might surprise us, according to the book? How might it change the way Shakespeare's drama was seen or experienced? Why don't we experience like that today? Would it still be entertaining? 

For Thursday: Much Ado About Nothing, Acts 3-5

For Thursday, try to finish the play, since after Act 3, Acts 4 and 5 are quite short. No questions this time, but we'll have an in-class response question when you get to class. However, here are some ideas to consider as you read (you do NOT have to answer these--they're just thought-provoking): 

* Consider how love is almost always a form of manipulation in this play. Don Pedro pretends to be Claudio to woo Hero; everyone lies to Benedick and Beatrice to get them to fall in love; and even Don John manipulates Claudio OUT of love with his lies. What might this say about the nature of love in this play? Is anyone in love of their own free will? Or is it always a "trap," as Hero suggests in Act 3?

* There is much more verse in the play in Acts 3 & 4: Hero and Ursula speak verse throughout their trick to Beatrice, and Claudio speaks it throughout the entire wedding scene, as does Don Pedro and Leonto. Why is this? Why might verse be more appropriate/effective than prose? What should it 'sound' like?

* As this is a play all about acting, it's also a play about seeing--or the inability to see. At one point, Claudio says, "You seem to me as Dian in her orb...But you are more intemperate in your blood/Than Venus" (127). In other words, you are not the woman I see (Diana--the virgin huntress) but the woman I've been told to see Venus (the goddess of erotic love). Why don't most characters trust appearances in this play? And which ones do? What is this even more interesting for the audience, since we 'see' everything?

* Why do you think Dogberry only appears in Act 3, almost at the end of the play? Indeed, he almost seems like an afterthought, but a very good one. Why do you think Shakespeare added him into the mix? 

* Why is it significant that Benedick never speaks verse in the entire play, and when he tries to write a poem, it's really awful? Does this suggest he cannot love sincerely? Is it all a sort of act to him? OR, is poetry itself a kind of act that can be more false than true?

* Why do Beatrice and Benedick almost fall out of love at the end of the play? Why might this very misunderstanding explain the nature of their conflict in Act 1? Might this have happened before?

* Why does Don John just disappear from the play after Act 4, and when he is finally mentioned again, Benedick merely says, "Think not on him till tomorrow"? Is it clumsy of Shakespeare to use him as a mere plot device and then discard him? 

* And related to the above, in a sense, is Don Pedro just as bad as Don John (they are brothers, after all)? Or to put this in another light, is Don Pedro just better intentioned than Don John? Do they basically do the same things to the same people, just with slightly different results? And is Don Pedro secretly a bit malicious himself? 

For Tuesday: Much Ado About Nothing, Acts 1-2

For Tuesday's class, read Acts 1 and 2 of Much Ado, which hopefully will seem very familiar to you after the film. But I hope you also notice a lot of lines, passages, and even characters that escaped your notice in the film (especially, since some of them were cut). Keep thinking about why the film made the choices it did, and if you feel the adaptation best served your sense of the text--its comedy, its poetry, and its humanity. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How does the play suggest that Beatrice and Benedict have a back story, as the film suggested they did in the opening scene (where he sneaks out the 'next morning')? Do they both feel the same way about each other? How do their lines hint at this secret (and possibly very powerful) relationship?

Q2: What characters speak most often in verse, even though most of the play is spoken in prose? (and every character speaks prose--no one exclusively speaks verse). Why might Shakespeare shift gears in certain scenes, and what would the verse help us 'hear' in the characters' ideas/sentiments? NOTE: if you're having trouble seeing the difference, remember that verse looks different on the page. After 10 syllables, it goes to the next line; prose goes on until the end of the page.

Q3: There are a LOT of characters in this play, even though the play really centers around four: Beatrice, Benedick, Don Pedro, and Claudio. So what do you make of the subplot of Don John and his scheming? Why does he hate everyone else in the play, and what is the end goal of his mischief? In other words, what is he doing in a comedy that is "much ado about nothing"?

Q4: Comedy is much harder to understand, generally, than tragedy, since it's much more topical. A lot of the references are lost, and the wit/humor dated. Find a passage in the first two acts that you DO NOT understand, and try to explain what doesn't make sense about it. Do the footnotes help explain the meaning? And once you get the general meaning, does it become funny? Why or why not? 

Q3: 

For Thursday: Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing (2013)

NOTE: Even though we’ll finish the film on Thursday, we’ll watch the largest part of it in class on Tuesday, so you can easily answer these questions for Thursday’s class. We’ll discuss them a bit after the film as well.

ALSO, if you missed class, come on Thursday and you can see enough of the film to answer the questions below.  

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Though this version is utterly faithful to Shakespeare’s text, it makes a number of modern adaptations, some of which are quite unusual. Explain why you think they decided to do ONE or ALL of the following: (a) the modern, Hollywood setting; (b) black and white cinematography; (c) the low-budget, almost documentary feel; (d) all American actors—not a British accent in sight!

Q2: How do the film/actors help sell the comedy of Shakespeare’s play? In other words, what meta-textual elements do they bring out to help us see, understand, or expand the lines? Also, what made you laugh that wasn’t technically in the play? Do you think this is necessary to make the comedy work, or was it just a bonus?

Q3: What scene or moment in the film did you feel resisted translation the most? In other words, how might the modern setting and the non-Shakespearean actors have almost gotten in the way of understanding? Also, how might a more traditional approach make sense of this scene (or maybe, why might reading the play be an advantage)?

Q4: Which actor or actors do you feel most embodied their character, and helped us see them as a real person, and not just a handful of lines? What did they do that will help you ‘see’ this character when you read the play itself? Be as specific as possible 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Course!

Welcome to ECU's Fall 2024 seminar on Shakespeare! This course will explore why Shakespeare continues to be the most-performed dramatist worldwide (even in languages other than English!), and why, like Jane Austen’s novels, you can change almost everything in the text and the play will usually survive intact. To understand this, we will attempt to uncover the unique DNA of Shakespeare’s writing, by examining five key texts (both comedies and tragedies) and some of their big-screen adaptations. Ultimately, I want to discover what is more important for Shakespeare: the story or the words? The setting or the characters? His time or our own? As Stanley Wells suggests in the quote above, Shakespeare seems to have done more than write plays; he created a mythology of language and character. So why do we still believe in his work, even if most people don’t particularly know or like it? Why does Shakespeare still haunt our 21^st century American lives?

Make sure to buy a copy of the five plays we're reading in class (any edition, though Folger is the most helpful IMHO): The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. We'll also be reading a supplementary text, Wells' William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, which will help us contextualize where these plays came from, and whether or not they are still tied to their distinct moment in the past. The bookstore is currently out of this latter text, but assures me that new copies will arrive this week. Stay tuned! 

NOTE: The posts below this one are from previous semesters, and though they won't reflect the work we're doing this semester, feel free to browse!