For Wednesday: Shakespeare, King Lear, Acts 4 & 5 (see note)

NOTE: Remember, no class on Monday, since I have a schedule conflict that I can't avoid. We'll pick up King Lear on Wednesday. In the meantime, finish the play and answer two of the following questions...

Q1: In the early acts of the play, both Lear and Gloucester seem to believe in the power of fate and the gods to order the universe and dispense justice. As Gloucester proclaims before his eyes are put out in Act 3, "But I shall see/The winged vengeance overtake such children" (163). How do one or both men's views of fate/justice as the play reaches its conclusion? Do they feel that the gods are still watching over them, ready to offer justice? Or are we performing alone on-stage, without even an audience?

Q2: Why does Edgar pretend to lead his father to the edge of a cliff to watch him 'jump' in Act 4, scene 6? Is this an act of madness on his part? Is he being cruel/getting revenge? Or does he have another method to his 'madness'? Is this another scene that could/should be played for laughs?

Q3: As the most self-aware and rational/cynical person in the play, what is Edmund's endgame in Act 5? What does he hope to achieve by courting both sisters and plotting against Albany? Do you feel these plans are more active (a creation of his own nature) or passage (a reaction to the actions around him)? 

Q4: Did it surprise you that despite her very active beginning, Cordelia ends up a passive spectator in Acts 4-5, only to die off-stage? Why might the play have silenced and defeated her, letting Edgar be the true victor/survivor of the play?

Q5: What do you think happens to the Fool? Why does he disappear in 3.6 never to return? Is he killed? Does he run away? Is he simply no longer needed since Lear is 'cured'? (note that many staged versions show him being killed in some manner). Similarly, why does Cordelia only return to the play once he's gone? And why does Lear call Cordelia his "poor fool" at the end of Act 5? Is he confused about who she is...or he is remembering what happened to the fool off-stage at some point? (or do we buy the footnote that a 'fool' is merely an endearing term for a child?) 

Paper #3 assignment: The Role of Madness, due Nov.11th

English 3213

Paper #3: The Role of Madness

“We do and are done to, endlessly, neither pure agents nor victims. We live in the active and passive ‘voice,’ to use the grammatical term. There are other kinds of doubleness to the ways we live in time, in several tenses and moods all at once, in our sense of what was and will be, what should be and might have been, as well as what is” (Poole 99).

In both Hamlet and King Lear, people are constantly ‘playing mad’ or ‘playing the fool,’ or otherwise acting roles that are outside their normal (or society’s) character. However, we only see this in upper-class characters such as Hamlet, King Lear, Kent, Edgar, and Ophelia. While each one of these characters is clearly a victim and nursing some private hurt, they also lash out at others through their madness, becoming perpetrators themselves. Indeed, they often threaten, wound, and even kill in this new identity. So why is madness the only way in Shakespeare’s plays to usurp your given role in society? Why can’t Hamlet act, for example, without going mad?

Some things to consider:

• When do characters go ‘mad’ in the play? Is it sudden? A process? Is it announced? Does everyone do it the same way?
• What happens when two ‘mad’ characters confront one another?
• How does language determine who is mad and who is acting?
• Is madness itself active or passive? How do we know?
• Is madness the ‘real’ person inside the mask? Which one is the alter ego, the original character or the mad one? Which one seems more natural?
• Are the Fools in these plays ‘mad’? Is madness a way to speak secret wisdom? Is it a code?
• Is anyone cured of their madness? Is it permanent or temporary? Are the characters in command of this role—or does it command them?

REQUIREMENTS

• Discuss at least TWO characters, though you can focus more on one than another. But you’ll need more than one to really establish some of your ideas about madness.
• QUOTE from the plays and examine the language, since character is a performance, and the performance occurs through language.
• Be sure to cite all quotations with the page number or the act/scene number.
• No page limit, but please double space! I also prefer Word docs, even pasted in the e-mail, rather than a PDF if possible.
• DUE Friday, November 11^th by 5pm [no class that day]

For Friday: Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3

 REMEMBER, no questions this time! But read Act 3, since we'll do an in-class writing when you get here to discuss some aspect of our reading. So bring your book! See you then...

For Wednesday: Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 2

 Answer two of the following: 

Q1: In a play about nature/natural vs. unnatural/nothing, why are so many people acting and/or playing roles? Besides the Fool, both Kent and Edgar take up disguises as madmen/fools, and even Lear, to some extent, is playing a role (since he’s no longer the king). Why do you think Shakespeare has so many characters switching identities merely to perform before one another?

Q2: In some ways, Lear’s response to his daughters is similar to Hamlet’s response to his mother, as both use terms such as “adulterous” and “incestuous” to describe rather normal situations (a mother falling in love again, daughters rebelling against their father’s whims). Why does he find their behavior so unnatural, especially since he exclaims to Regan in 2.4, “I gave you all” (115). What does he feel he has given them—love? Land? Life?

Q3: Somewhat related to Q2, why does Lear insist on maintaining his knights even when he’s no longer king? When asked why he needs 25, 10, 5, or even 1 knight, he thunders, “O, reason not the need!” (117). Why might this speech in 2.4 shift Lear from being a rather flat, antagonistic character to someone more round and compelling? Is this the moment Lear becomes a more sympathetic character to you?

Q4: Act 2.2 is a strange scene, where Kent goes after Oswald like a man out for revenge. He not only viciously berates him (pp.83-85), but attacks him and seems on the verge of killing him. Since this scene almost comes out of nowhere, is this scene supposed to be played for laughs? Is Kent just acting mad here for the audiences’ entertainment? And if so, why does Regan punish him so severely?

For Monday: Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1

On Friday, we watched Act 1 from Trevor Nunn's 2008 film (based on his 2007 production) of King Lear starring Sir Ian McKellan. If you want to learn more about this production, or about Lear in general, here's a great article/interview about it: https://www.rsc.org.uk/king-lear/past-productions/trevor-nunn-2007-production

For Monday's class, be sure to read Act 1 of King Lear and answer two of the following questions:

Q1: As always after we watch a production, is there anything that you saw in the lines that you didn't necessarily see on screen? OR, did the staged version help you see something--an interpretation, reading, staging, etc.--that you wouldn't have noticed from the text itself? 

Q2: Why does Cordelia refuse to tell her father how much she loves her, when it seems clear she actually does (as opposed to her sisters, who seem pretty damn tired of him!)? In the play, she has the aside (not shown in the production) where she says to herself, "What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent" (11). Does her silence show love? Is that what "nothing, my lord" is supposed to convey? 

Q3: Edmund makes two speeches in Act 1, scene 2, the first in verse, the second in prose. Both speeches are "asides" to the audience alone, and so show something 'naked' about his true character and motives. What does one (or both) of these speeches reveal about him as a character? For example, what might he mean when he says in the first speech, "Thou, Nature, art my goddess" (29)? 

Q4: For the first time in this class, we have a true Fool in the play, who plays a very specific role with Lear: he entertains him by speaking a witty form of the truth. What is he trying to tell Lear through his jokes and banter? Does Lear seem to catch his meaning, or does he dismiss it as mere nonsense and buffoonery? 

For Wednesday (see note below): Poole, Chapter 8, "Timing"

NOTE: No class on Monday. I have to cancel--check your e-mail for details. We'll pick up the reading and questions below for Wednesday. 

For next week, after Fall Break, be sure to read Chapter 8 of Poole, "Timing" to dovetail with our discussion last time of Hamlet, Act 5. We'll return to some ideas in Act 5 a well. Enjoy the break! 

Answer two of the following: 

Q1: Poole writes that “it’s all in the timing” (97). Why is timing particularly important for tragedy, particularly for at what moment a tragedy begins? With Hamlet, why don’t we begin with the murder of the king? Or much later? After all, couldn’t the entire Act 5 be the play itself?

Q2: Poole notes that the word crisis comes from the Greek word for "justice," and climax comes from the Greek word for "ladder" (102). Why might tragedy then suggest that you need to climb to the top of the ladder to find justice? How might this explain the events of Hamlet? What 'climax' do we have to reach (and on how many rungs?) to achieve justice? And what kind of justice is it?

Q3: Poole reminds us that tragedies are about rites of passage, and specifically, rites such as weddings, coronations, death, funerals, etc. He goes on to note that "These things can go wrong. And tragedy represents the moments when they do, when the rites are challenged, thwarted, violated, aborted" (107). How is Hamlet a tragedy about aborted/thwarted rites? What rites? And how do they go wrong? Whose fault is it that the rites don't work as planned? 

Q4: Quoting the critic Gail Holst-Warhaft (what a name!), Poole notes that tragedy “is, at least in part, an appropriation of the traditional art of women and we sense in its language, its inscrutable echoes of music and dance, an older body of ritual, a sub-stratum which informs and at times intrudes itself into an urban, male art” (106). What do you think she means that tragedy combines the female art of lamentation (since women traditionally were mourners of the dead) with the male art of war/action?

For Wednesday: Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5

For next class, finish Hamlet but don't worry about answering any questions this time. We'll look closely at Act 5 in class and do a brief in-class response looking at some of the strange features of this very exciting act, which is one of the rare acts in Shakespeare's plays where the fifth act is actually one of the most eventful--not a mere tying-up of loose ends. 

Pay special attention to the graveyard scene of Act 5.1, which is definitely something Shakespeare added to the pre-existing story of Hamlet. Remember that the play is based on two sources: 1, an old Danish story that was in circulation for some time, which was translated in French around Shakespeare's time, and 2. an actual play called Hamlet which was popular just before he took to the stage, and seemed to have had many of the same features and plot, though it was reportedly full of stiff speeches (a bit like the speeches Shakespeare mocks in Act 3, with the Mousetrap play). However, the original story didn't have a graveyard scene, it has Shakespeare's stamp all over it. It's not important for the plot, and yet, it's one of the most iconic scenes in the play. So why did he include it? Hmm...

For Monday: Shakespeare, Hamlet, Acts 3 & 4

REMEMBER, Paper #2 is due on Friday by 5pm! You can turn it in late, but you lose points (see syllabus). For next week, read Acts 3-4 and answer TWO of the questions below, even though I've given you six this time! Sorry, but there's a lot of ground to cover...

Here is the original (?) To Be Or Not To Be speech from the 1603 version of Hamlet to compare to the one we have:

 To be, or not to be, aye, there’s the point.

To die, to sleep, is that all? Ay, all.

No, to sleep, to dream--ay marry, there it goes:

For in that dream of death, when we awake,

And borne before an everlasting judge,

From whence no passenger ever returned,

The undiscovered country, at whose sight

The happy smile, and the accursed damned—

But for this, the joyful hope of this,

Who’d bear the scorns and flattery of the world,

Scorned by the right rich, the cursed of the poor?

The widow being oppressed, the orphan  wronged,

The taste of hunger, or a tyrant’s reign,

And thousand more calamities besides,

To grunt and sweat under this weary life,

When that he may his full quietus make,

With a bare bodkin? Who would this endure,

But for a hope of something after death,

Which puzzles the brain, and doth confound the sense,

Which makes us rather bear those evils we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of.

Ay that, O that conscience makes cowards of us all.

Q1: Compare Hamlet’s famous To Be Or Not To Be speech carefully with the version above. How does seeing the original—which is different in a few particulars—help us really see what he’s trying to say here? In both versions,  he begins by asking, basically, “is there a difference in living or dying? Isn’t it just like sleeping—letting go of yourself?” How does our version develop this idea in a few different ways than the 1603 version? And what do both versions agree on?

Q2: Why does Hamlet turn so violently on Ophelia in Act 3, scene 1? What does he seem to be accusing her of?  Is he merely acting mad here, or is he using his madness to speak the truth? Any clues? 

Q3: In Act 3, scene 4, Hamlet argues with his mother over her 'bad' behavior much as he had earlier chided Ophelia in scene 1. By the end of it, the Queen gasps, "O Hamlet, thou has cleft my heart in twain!" Is she saying this because he's made her see the true nature of her sin? Or is she heart-broken at his apparent madness? In other words, has he won her over to his side, or does she just seem to be humoring him? 

Q4: By the end of Act Four, Laertes becomes a second Hamlet, swearing "my revenge will come." What distinguishes Laertes from Hamlet? How might Laertes' reaction to the business of revenge help us read and understand something important about Hamlet?

Q5: How has Ophelia changed by Act Four, particularly in her language? Has she gone truly mad here, or is she, too, taking a page from Hamlet's book? Is there any "method" in her madness, or is she truly speaking nonsense?

Q6: We also see a different side of Hamlet in Act Four: how does he present himself to other people in these acts? Is he still acting mad? Or is he trying another approach? Consider his lines, "Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar" (197). 

For Wednesday: Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2

Can you name one of the actors portraying the famous duo, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?

As always, answer two of the following for our next class (or shortly after class)...

Q1: All of Act One is in verse (unrhymed imabic pentameter), but in Act Two, when Hamlet enters in scene 2, he talks in prose throughout the entire act. Why would Hamlet, a prince, insist on speaking prose, which is usually a “low” language of the common people? Also, why does everyone around him, including Polonius, also follow his lead? 

Q2: Hamlet has another famous speech at the end of the Act where he compares himself unfavorably to an actor: “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I…” Why does he, a prince, envy an actor? What can the actor do that he can’t? And why might this be a meta-moment where Shakespeare (a playwright) is marveling at the power of actors (and the theater)?

Q3:  Polonius seems quite willing to exploit his daughter and expose Hamlet’s follies to the King and Queen. Why is this? What does he hope to gain from showing them Hamlet’s love letters? And why does Ophelia (who may be in love with Hamlet) go along with this? Couldn’t she have refused?

Q4: Two of Hamlet’s old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, arrive to keep watch on him for the king. Hamlet knows they’re dong this, but plays along. However, he probably talks too much. What does he reveal about his state of mind and his character in this passage? In other words, how does Shakespeare show us what’s really going on in his mind when he’s acting “mad”?