For Tuesday: A Thousand Acres (1997)

On Thursday, we watched the first hour or so of A Thousand Acres, which is an adaptation of Jane Smiley's novel which is in turn a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear. There are some significant changes, as you'll see when we read the play, but most of the main machinery of the play emerges intact, including the relationships between the daughters and Lear himself. What changes is how the story is told from Virginia and Rose's perspective (Regan and Goneril in the play), and by the backstory Smiley adds to their tumultous life with their father. We'll come back to this perspective when we start reading Lear next week.

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Why does the youngest daughter, Caroline, seem to refuse her father's offer of a one-third share in the company? What does she mean when instead of making up her father, she tells Virginia, "I hate the little girl stuff"? Does she seem to be doing this for the right reasons? 

Q2: How are Virginia and Rose a little like Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (at least before Act 5)? Why can they be seen as "fiendish wives" by some, even though their actions make sense in context? Are there any other other explicit connections between one or both of them to Lady Macbeth?

Q3: Why does Virginia strike up an adulterous romance with Jess Clark, the prodigial son who has returned to his father's farm? She seems to have a good marriage and a loving husband, unlike Rose, whose relationship with her husband hints at violence and disgust (especially of her recent operation). What might Jess see in her as well?

Q4: Rose drops a bombshell on Virginia the night of the storm, when she tells Virginia that their father had sex with them both for years (though Virginia claims not to remember any of this). Do you believe her? Is she saying this merely to get Virginia more on her side, and further away from their father & Caroline? Or was she simply waiting for the right moment to tell her (or maybe, waiting for Virginia to admit the truth herself)? NOTE: This isn't in Shakespeare, but is something Smiley added into her own novel. 

Q5: Larry Cook "Daddy" (or King Lear) is a figure of fear and malice in the movie, never kind, always menacing, and seeming to take pleasure in his daughter's disgrace. Why don't other people in the town see this, but instead, view him as a tragic, betrayed figure? And why does Caroline see the same "betrayed" father instead of the "betrayer"?  

Paper #2 assignment and A Thousand Acres

REMEMBER that we're going to start watching A Thousand Acres on Thursday, which is an adaptation of King Lear. Your second paper will be due on Tuesday, the day we finish the movie and start discussing it. 

English 3213

Paper #2: Magic or Madness?

INTRO: In Act 3, Scene 5, the character of Hecate enters the play, chiding the witches for their “trade and traffic” with Macbeth, and bidding the witches meet her at “the pit of Acheron…in the morning.” This scene could very well dispel the ambiguity of the play by making the witches, the magic, and a demon itself real, and potentially reducing Macbeth’s agency throughout the play. However, the scene also ties the play into the Elizabethan love of magic and devilry which we see in so many plays of the time, from Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (where devils pull Dr. Faustus into hell itself), and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (where fairies exist side-by-side with mortals and cast spells on them). So it can work, but it becomes a very different play than the one where the audience is left to interpret the witches’ role in Macbeth’s madness, leaving him at center stage.

PROMPT: For this short paper, you have been commissioned to adapt a new version of Macbeth for performance at ECU. But the question is, should this production focus on magic or madness? Should it emphasize that the spirit world is manipulating Macbeth for its own macabre ends, or should it leave the witches at the margins, focusing on the human drama of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? Which one would make the better play in your opinion?

To support your staging, discuss ONE PASSAGE/SPEECH that you feel would most benefit from your approach. Close read the passage, explaining the ideas/language in the passage, and show how emphasizing the magic or the madness angle would aid your interpretation of this passage, and give the entire play more power and purpose. You can briefly hint at other scenes as well, but focus your analysis solely on this one passage. A “passage” should be no more than a page or two, or even one speech. Don’t do an entire scene from an act, since this is designed to be a short, focused assignment.

ALSO: This is a short paper, so shoot for around 3 pages, though you can do a bit more if necessary. You MUST quote from the passage in question and close read it carefully to fulfill the assignment (don’t rely on summaries and paraphrases). You can use outside sources from the William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction or other sources (or other productions) if you think this will help, but it’s not required.

DUE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5^th by 5pm

For Thursday: Macbeth, Acts 3-4

An RSC production of Macbeth 

Though there are 5 questions here (I couldn't help myself), you still only have to answer TWO of them. 

Q1: Act 3.5, the scene with Hecate, is largely considered to be the work of Thomas Middleton, a contemporary playwright who wrote a play about witches at roughly the same time of Macbeth (he adapted Macbeth after Shakespeare’s retirement to make more money). In reading this scene, does anything strike you as different from the rest of the play? The language? Metaphors? Characterization? Or would you have assumed that Shakespeare wrote this, too?

Q2: How informed is Lady Macbeth about the murder of Banquo and the attempted murder on Fleance (his son)? Is she still the mastermind of the play, or has Macbeth usurped her role? Is there any way to tell who’s calling the shots at this point?

Q3: The “Murderers” that Macbeth hires in 3.1 aren’t really murderers at this point in the play (it’s clear that they haven’t murdered before, and are not professional assassins). How does Macbeth convince them to murder Banquo and/or how does he justify it to himself? Why, too, does he hire murderers now instead of doing the job himself, as he did with Duncan?

Q4: In Act 4, scene 3, Malcolm tells Macduff that "black Macbeth/will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state/Esteem him as a lamb, being compared/With my confineless harms...there's no bottom, none/In my voluptousness" (143). Why does he threaten to be an even worse ruler than Macbeth, and vow to debauch women, ruin men, and destroy order?

Q5: In Scene 2, Lady Macduff tells her son that Macduff (who has fled lest he be killed by Macbeth) is "dead" and "a traitor." Why does she say this, especially as her son knows that neither of them are true? Is she joking with him, or being deadly serious? You might also account for her line, "Why, I can buy me twenty [husbands] at any market."

For Tuesday: Macbeth, Acts 1-2

NOTE: The version of Macbeth by Roman Polansky we watched in class on Thursday covers Acts 1 and up to Act 2.1, right before the murder. Since Act 2 is very short, this will bring you up to speed on all the action in the play, and help you visualize it as you read. But pay close attention to the language, since the language of Macbeth is some of his most evocative, and is utterly unlike anything we've read in class so far.

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: Though most of the play is in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), characters often end scenes with rhymed couplets, such as the following: “Away, and mock the time with fairest show./False face must hide what the false heart doth/know” (1.7). Why does Shakespeare do this? What does the flash of rhyme do for the play or the speech? How would we hear and experience this in the audience?

Q2: Most productions of the play portray Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as a couple that is fiercely in love (as we see in Polansky’s 1971 film). Is this corroborated in the text of Acts 1 and 2 itself? Where do we see a couple in love, rather than just another medieval arranged marriage? Why might this relationship be important for the audience to see, and hear, in the play itself?

Q3: One of the most famous speeches in the play is Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” in Act 2.1. Read this speech carefully and discuss the construction of a particular line that would be difficult to translate into modern English. Why is this? What is Shakespeare trying to show us through this tortured syntax?

Q4: Macbeth is a play that is often staged historically, meaning its set in a time very close to the one Shakespeare portrays in the play. Why do you think this play might resist modernizing or setting in, say, modern-day New York or London? Discuss a scene or passage that might be difficult to realize in translation, and makes much more sense in an early medieval Scotland (as Polansky does).

For Tuesday: Ten Things I Hate About You (1999)

NOTE: We still have a bit of the film to watch, maybe 30 minutes or so, but feel free to answer these questions before we finish...OR, you can answer them sometime after class on Tuesday. But I want to grapple with the adaptation element of the film, since eventually this aspect will become important to your writing in the class (hint, hint). 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: First, the most obvious question: can Shakespeare be Shakespeare without the language? While they make a few "easter egg" attempts to preserve his language, such as when Cameron (Lucentio) says, "I burn, I pine, I perish...", most of it is completely modern. Is the plot and characters enough to perserve the tone and feel of a Shakespearean comedy? Or is this merely a comedy "inspired by" Shakespeare? Try not just to say yes or no, explain WHY you think this could still count as an adaption or not. 

Q2: How might the film explain some aspect of the play which either doesn't make sense, or isn't really explained by Shakespeare? In other words, why might this film be a 'theory' or a 'staging' of the play, which answers some of the questions left by Shakespeare for the actors and the audience?  OR, how could we take some of the ideas in this film and apply them backwards to the play? 

Q3: When Kat tells her friend (who has no real counterpart in the play) that she intends to boycott the prom because it's an antiquated mating ritual, her friend replies, "oh, so we're making a statement...oh goody, something new and different for us!" It's a funny line, but why might it also be pertinent to the play itself? 

Q4: Kat and Patrick lack a big "courting" scene like we get in Act 2 of the play, though they have several smaller ones sprinkled throughout the play. According to the film, why does she begin to fall in love with him? Is it because he's "crazy"--or willing to defy the roles of a typical lover--or is it more superficial (he learns what she likes and pretends to like them)? In other words, is their relationship closer to the play or closer to Hollywood comedies? 

Q5: Even though the play distances itself from its Shakespearean source, how does it subtly marry itself to a Shakespearean identity throughout the play? How effective are these attempts? Are they merely there for the 'insider,' or do they actually add something to the film itself?