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:
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