The more I dig, the more I realize im just scratching the surface

This isnt the first blog this week but it the first blog about the new text being read named Henry V so this blog will be about  how to get the most out of Henry V.

The play is the final part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II, Henry IV, part 1 and Henry IV, part 2. The original audiences would have already been familiar with the title character, who was depicted in the Henry IV plays as a wild, undisciplined lad known as "Prince Hal." I found the perfect way to catch up is to go to cliff notes under “Henry V”. Henry isn’t the main character in the other plays that lead up to this one. The cliff note overview gives you a good brief description of what has happened in the pervious plays as well as highlight important characteristics to know about the main protagonist Henry V such as that he plays as a wild, undisciplined lad known as "Prince Hal" in the previous plays. 

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/Section/Shakespeare-Central.id-321982.html

The next idea actually came from Professor Burton’s Blog. He suggested that we research the political history and that help to understand the play better as well.

As previously posted I try to find a short video synopsis of the play acted out but I couldn’t find one for this play. However I did find a few movies that were made as a result of this play. After I finish reading the play I plan to watch those and report on them to see if how bad they ruined the text (I have never found a movie to do justice to a novel. However the text was designed to be a play I have a mustard seed of hope so will see).

Because of the lack of video synopsis I read an overview from sparknotes. I spent some time reading the actual words of Shakespeare and the no fear sparknotes too. I choose to do it this way so I can learn how to read Shakespeare how its written and learn to explicate it and still keep track well of what is going on for sure in the play. One thing I should also mention is that I enjoyed reading the analysis done in the sparknotes because they pointed out some obvious points Shakespeare wanted to make from the play that I didn’t notice from my own reading. I think it gives a great foundation for the play. I am really enjoying this text and by taking the time to learn background information and using the guides out there for reading shakespeare I’m getting a ton out of the play’s… go cougs

starting to get the most out of Shakspeare

I promised I have been exploring ways to for me to understand Shakespeare this is simply what I did this last week to understand Hamlet as I read it.
1. I have a hard time remember characters listed so I went to Wikipedia and wrote down a quick list of characters on paper so I could refer to it each time I read a name I could look at it and recall the characters history. This was very helpful and allowed me to follow the characters much easier and I could add stuff as I went along about the characters.
2. Watched the play online as suggested. I watched the sparknotes movie of the play preformed as suggested in the class. I was very helpful in getting a overview of the play. The problem is that I watched it after I read the play so it did seem very simple. I plan to watch the play preformed before I read the text on my next play.
3. I read the cliffnotes for the play and the no fear Shakespeare. I think this was very helpful. I have found that you could spend ALL your time reading Shakespeare and working on this class. So beginning with the cliffnotes and the no fear Shakespeare than moving to the text only is a great idea for anyone.

Finding the roots; Why do we read Shakespeare?

As have been researching Shakespeare one thing I think anyone that researches Shakespeare notices is that there is a lot of information about him. When you start to look up anything on Shakespeare it takes little time to notice massive amount of writing that has been done about him and his work. The word “Shakespeare” brings up 32,700,000 results. As I have been sifting through all the writings and YouTube videos I can’t help but wonder why he is read so much. Yes I understand he was an amazing writer of his time but why is it that so many people read his work? At the end of this blog I will begin to show why we read Shakespeare.

To begin to answer this You have to ask yourself the question “why does anyone read at all?”. Ever sense I can remember my friends and I have seen reading as a chore and got out of it every chance we got.  On my mission I learned to enjoy reading and from that point on I always seem to have something in my hand. So “Why we read” is an important question for me.

The article “The Rise of the Novel” by Ian Watt has been very informative in explaining as to why people read. In the article Watt makes the case that the reason we read is because of the experience that we have as a result of reading the novel. Watt says that “Life and reality are very close each others in the novels”. In his article he makes the case that a genuine novel should contain formal realism. Watt describes formal realism as “the narrative method whereby the novel embodies a circumstantial view of life”(32). As we read we are taken to a different time, person, and place. We either love or hate the book by what experience we have while reading the novel.  Now that we understand the underlying reason for why we read we can start to understand why we love to read Shakespeare so much. 

My learning Outcome (Feb edits)

 

Learning Objectives

This blog is for a college Shakespeare class. I began this class with very basic knowledge about the man and his texts. With my study of Shakespeare thus far I have been very troubled with the saturation of writing about him and his work. I have found that even scholarly articles cannot be completely trusted. We know very little about Shakespeare so we can’t completely discount what anyone says about him or his writing. I plan to get to as much primary information about personality and character of Shakespeare as much as is possible and put it in this blog or at least where you can find the information.

The successful accident

I began my research by taking a look at Shakespeare’s life. I have found that by looking at an authors life you can recognize experiences they had that lead to the inspiration for the work of art. I generally use Wikipedia because it can quickly give an accurate background about the author. This idea proved to be very informative but not in the way I thought it would. The background information about his life that I read was little help for me in understanding or getting the most out of Shakespeare. However the background information on style, religion, influence, authorship, was all very useful in understanding the play. I learned that to get the most out of Shakespeare’s background it requires specific facts on the subjects confronted in the play. The best example of this idea is found in the style of Shakespeare.

Truth is truth To the end of reckoning

My favorite part of reading is discovering little truths from the text and debating them with others. To me unlocking the little truths is an adventure and I love adventures. This blog is my creative narration of my process of discovery of Shakespeare. I will start by getting a good foundation of Shakespeare’s background, basic characteristics to look for, and rhetorical devices to watch for as I read. While establishing a foundation I will look for something I am passionate about in his texts. I will proceed to read what others have written on the topic I am passionate about.  My hope is that between discovering my passions about Shakespeare and research others have written I can create an explication that will change in some small way the way people can read Shakespeare.