Schedule Change: See Below

I'm changing the schedule slightly to reflect the flip-flop of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, but also to give you more time to write Paper #2 (after Spring Break  now!). Be sure to replace this calendar with the one in your syllabus...

MARCH

T 5:     Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Acts 2-3

R 7:     Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Acts 4-5

T 12:   Film: Stage Beauty

R 14:   Film: Stage Beauty/Discussion

T 19:   Spring Break

R 21:  Spring Break

T 19:    Sousa, Love, Chapter 4, “Reasons”

R 21:   Paper #2 due

           

T 26:   Shakespeare, Othello, Act 1

R 28:   Shakespeare, Othello, Act 2-3

APRIL

T 2:     Shakespeare, Othello Acts 4-5

R 4:     Scissortail Creative Writing Festival [no class]

T 9:     Wells, Shakespeare, Chapters 6-8

R 11:   Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 1

T 16:   Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 2-3

R 18:   Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Acts 4-5

T 23:   de Sousa, Love, Chapter 6, “Utopia”

R 25:   Wrap-Up Discussion  

T 30:   Group Presentations / Assignment due

R 2:     Group Presentations / Assignment due

Final Exam: Thursday, May 9 @ 9:00

For Thursday: Twelfth Night, Act One

For Thursday, please read Act One of Twelfth Night, so we can wade slowly into this wonderful and complex little comedy. There are no questions, but I'll give you an in-class response when we come to class--and I'll show you a few clips of the first act as well. However, here are some ideas to consider as you read and try to make sense of the play:

* As always, look for Prose and Poetry distinctions: scenes 3 and 5 in particular. Is there anyone who only speaks one or the other? Anyone who switches from one to the other? 

* How might Orsino resemble certain ideas encountered in the Sonnets, particularly the earlier ones? Also, does he resemble any characters in Romeo and Juliet?

* What do you make of a play where the characters have such absurd names as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch? Can you play such characters 'seriously'? Or are they just cartoons?

* In this play we have a bona fide fool, Feste, who is like a funnier (and less cynical) Mercutio. What role does he seem to serve in the play? How might he be like Mercutio, or how is he quite unlike that famous character?

* What role does Malvolio seem to serve in the play? Is he comic or serious? (remember that even in comic plays, there can be serious elements). Another way of putting this is, are we supposed to take him seriously? 

* Read the scene in 1.5 where Olivia flirts with Viola (disguised as a boy). Why does Olivia become interesting in him/her, and does Viola seem to encourage it? Also, why are they talking/flirting in prose? When does it change to verse (and why)? 

For Tuesday: Wells, William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, Chs.3-5

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: What did the First Folio preserve about Shakespeare’s legacy, and what did it confuse or mystify? Why does the context of the Folio remind us that we have to always read/interpret Shakespeare with a grain of salt (or a lot of close reading/research)?

Q2: Where does Wells seem to venture his own readings/interpretations about Shakespeare or his works? Where can we see the difference between factual statements about Shakespeare and his own suppositions? Does he always signpost the difference for us?

Q3: Wells notes that Shakespeare “was constantly experimenting with dramatic form and with the conventions of theatre” (50). Why would a playwright/actor whose business was to fill seats and make money being willing to take such risks? Which of the plays discussed in the book seems to do this most audaciously?

Q4: Reading about all his early comedies in a single chapter can give us a profound sense of déjà vu—or that we’re reading about virtually the same play. What themes or ideas seem to crop up the most in the early comedies? If Shakespeare has a unique theatrical thumbprint in his comedies, what might it be? In other words, how can we tell that The Two Gentlemen from Verona, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Twelfth Night are by the same author (according to what Wells tells us)?

For Thursday: Romeo and Juliet, Acts 4 & 5

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In a few of his plays, Shakespeare has a friar propose a very unorthodox solution to an ethical dilemma: in this case, drinking a potion that will give Juliet the semblance of death (a similar solution occurs in Much Ado About Nothing). How does Shakespeare characterize the friar’s motives and intentions in his language? Are we meant to trust him? Does Juliet?

Q2: How does Juliet’s family and her fiancée respond to Juliet’s death in 4.5? Obviously they’re all crushed, but look at their language: how does Shakespeare ‘stage’ their grief? Do you find it pathetic (emotion-laden) or bathetic (parody)?

Q3: Romeo had been kept away from the play in most of Act 4, but he comes to dominate it in Act 5. How has he ‘matured,’ if at all? Is his poetry more authentic and affecting? Or does he still rely on stock expression of grief and rage? Does he seem worthy of Juliet by the end of the play (you might look at some of his longer speeches)?

Q4: In the 19^th century, the play often ended with Juliet’s death (and some versions had her and Romeo survive altogether). What do you make of the ending of the play, where the Prince re-emerges and acts as a Chorus to the play (which has been absent since Act Two)? Is this really the moral of the play—that “never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”? Or might this conclusion be bathetic itself? 

For Tuesday: Romeo and Juliet, Acts 2 and 3

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Many of you wrote in your first paper about how men and women write (and speak) differently, and ascribed specific sonnets to either sex based on how candid or florid they were. With this in mind, examine how Romeo and Juliet use poetry in Act 2, scene 2. Are they both idealistic fools blinded by love? Is one more realistic than the other? Is one a better poet than the other? How does Shakespeare characterize them through their use of poetry in this scene?

Q2: Why does Act 2, scene 4 begin in verse and quickly descend into prose for the rest of the scene? Who starts the “prose-fest”? Also, why does the Nurse speak in prose to her superiors (Romeo and his friends)? How might this scene read/sound differently in verse?

Q3: Mercutio is sort of the antidote for the poetry and idealism of this play; and yet, Shakespeare kills him relatively early on, in Act 3, scene 1. Are we supposed to read his death as tragic or comic? If you were the actor, how would you play it? What does his language suggest? Is he ultimately here for comic relief, or does his death truly begin the play’s descent into tragedy?

Q4: Note that Juliet dominates this play much more than Romeo, and in Act 3 is given numerous long speeches while Romeo has very few. Why does Juliet seem to interest Shakespeare more than Romeo? What does he say through her that might not make sense through Romeo? Also, what does she say that might remind us more of the Shakespeare from The Sonnets?

For Thursday: Romeo and Juliet, Act I

For Thursday, read Act One of Romeo and Juliet, though feel free to read more if you like. During our next class, I'm going to play a few scenes from a recent Globe Theater production of the play so we can compare the page to the stage. As you read (or re-read) Act I, keep in mind questions you have: lines that don't make sense, stage business you don't understand, and passages that seem to have little to do with the plot. Remember that Shakespeare rarely invented his plots, usually preferring to borrow them wholesale from other poems, stories, or plays. 

Here are some other things to look for and consider:

* Pay close attention to characters that speak in PROSE and those that speak in POETRY (sometimes characters switch, as well). Prose is normal speech, without meter, whereas poetry has a strict rhythm and often rhymes (though many characters speak in blank verse--unrhymed lines). Who speaks prose and why? When does it shift? Does anyone speak both? 

* What do you make of Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech in Scene 4? It has arguably nothing to do with the plot, and even Romeo interrupts him at the end, saying, "peace./Thou talk'st of nothing." 

* Can you find the hidden sonnets in this play? That is, where does Shakespeare use actual sonnets (poems in iambic pentameter following an ABAB CDCD EFEF rhyme scheme)? 

* As we learned from Wells, boys rarely played female roles beyond age 20, which would make acting as an old woman relatively difficult. This play has three older women: Lady Montague, Lady Capulet, and Juliet's Nurse. Would any of these roles be difficult for a teenaged boy to pull off? Does Shakespeare try to capture a realistic sense of a mature woman's personality and ethos? Or is it all played for laughs?

* Though Romeo and Juliet is technically a "tragedy," Act One might make you question that distinction. What about this act is more overtly comedic than tragic? Why might Shakespeare willingly mislead his audience? Also, are there any clues to the tragedy to come?

For Tuesday: Wells, Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, Chs.1-2

Be sure to read chapters 1-2 in our little Shakespeare book for Tuesday's class to learn some important details about his life and cultural moment. When you return to class, we'll have an in-class response over some big ideas I want to focus on. Here are some ideas to consider as you read:

* What did it mean to write plays in Shakespeare's time? What kind of "author" was he? 

* Similarly, what were some of the realities of being an actor at this time? Where/where did you perform? How did you make a living in a profession that has always been somewhat precarious?

* Who 'set the stage' for Shakespeare to become one of the most successful playwrights in English history? Rather than inventing the world of the theater, how do we know he inherited it? 

* Since so little is known about Shakespeare's life, how do we know when he made a splash in the London theatrical world? At a time where most playwrights were anonymous and their plays unpublished, what proof do we have that Shakespeare was ever famous?

* In a famous tribute to Shakespeare after his death, the poet/playwright Ben Jonson claimed that, "And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek," he was still one of the greatest writers of his time. How do we know that Jonson was wrong--that Shakespeare had plenty of Latin, and probably quite a bit of Greek as well? 

* What did Shakespeare do with his money once he became rich (and presumably, somewhat famous)? Why doesn't this necessarily go with the image of the 'immortal bard' that we have today?